Outlook automatically inserts a signature for you in emails. It is best to keep signatures as small as possible but still convey enough information to help the reader and represent you. What are the essential elements of information that you should include in your signature?
ESSENTIAL
- Your Name (obviously)
- Your Phone Number (don’t lose out on a sale just because you’ve made it hard for someone to call you for more information)
- Your website URL (makes it easy for them to find out more about your company by clicking on a link)
OPTIONAL
- SMALL corporate logo and slogan (for branding purposes)
- SMALL Picture of yourself usually instead of the corporate logo (depends on the nature of your business… better suited to people in sales… or where you are the brand you are promoting)
- Links to follow you on Twitter, Facebook etc (can be useful for social media marketing)
A WASTE OF TIME
- Email Address (they can just click reply… don’t waste space at the bottom of your email)
Agree… Disagree. Did we miss something? Let us know by leaving a comment on the blog.
Good points, but I disagree about leaving out the email address.
Sometimes you may want to show a different email address to the one actually used to send the email – if, for example, you have a more “professional”-looking company address but you prefer to continue sending from your existing account. Or you may have multiple addresses (eg, for sales, or service, etc) that you want to show.
A more common problem is that in large organisations your email may be forwarded to other people (and sometimes forwarded again) or even printed out to be put in someone else’s intray or to filed as a hard copy with whatever attachments you have sent with it.
Having the email address in the signature can save the final recipient from having to hunt back through either an electronic or physical paper trail to find the sender’s address.
Finally having the email address in the signature block makes it slightly easier to add them as a new contact without retyping. For example, I copy the whole block for a new contact into that handy area in the bottom right of the Outlook contact form (don’t know what it’s called) and then cut and paste the individual sections, including the email address, into the relevant fields. I think there may even be software which does this.
Alex
If not a logo, at least your company name and a tag line that conveys what you do!
You should keep your email with your signature as folks may be forwarding your message without including you. If someone else down the line wishes to contact you directly and their system does not resolve headers well they can refer to the correct email adderess in your signature area of the message.
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