7 important tips for your email signature

A good email signature is a free marketing opportunity. Here are 7 tips on making the most of a free marketing opportunity.

• Your email signature offers free advertising for your business.  I recommend you ALWAYS have the following in your signature:
  1. Your name
  2. Position (optional)
  3. Main contact number, ideally direct or alternatively switchboard. I use my direct line and my mobile number.
  4. Your email address. If the recipient wants to add you to their contacts this makes it easy.
  5. Your company’s web site address like www.alpha-tango.co.uk  Use hyperlinks even though they sometimes get stripped out.
  6. If you have social media profiles and/or pages add a link to these here. Try to avoid icons as the are often not shown in the end users client and they make the signature look scruffy.
  7. Company legal information.

• In your email client make sure your reply name is properly formatted and accurate. For example when you see an email from me it will be from: Alan Tomkins. I regularly get emails that have from: “alan” or something similar. This is caused by a poor setup.  Although no harm is done how people think of you is influenced by everything you do so getting this right is important. If your correspondence looks sloppy, you look sloppy.
• If you’re a limited company in the UK it’s a legal requirement to include your company registered address and registration number in the email, the same way it’s required on your letterhead. There is a fine of £1000 for noncompliance. There is a useful resource on this here https://www.out-law.com/page-5536  You can make the text smaller but it needs to be there. Required are:
  1. Registered name
  2. Company number
  3. Address of registration
  4. Country of registration
• Don’t use a legal disclaimer as it just suggests that you’re trying to preempt any incompetence or failure on your part. You don’t have one on your letterhead so why on your email?  No one reads it and it’s unenforceable, it also makes your emails look a mess as part of an email thread or conversation.
• Create a shorter version of your signature for email replies with perhaps just your name and number.
• Make sure you have a good signature on your mobile devices if you use them for email, such as your smartphone or tablets.
• Lastly test your email signature in as many email clients as possible, Outlook, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, should be the minimum if possible.