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Know Why Your Email Signatures Suck! (How to Create TheBest)

How often do you see emails with no contact details, or even no email signatures at all?

With nothing but a simple “sign-off.”

Why is that?

Doesn´t good old business email etiquette require that you have email signatures?

At some point, it most have been a misconception about email signatures being effective.

Because even though email signatures is a free marketing tool …

…and an incredible (right in front of our face) branding asset for companies.

It´s still one of the least used marketing tactics today.

I get it… People don´t buy from companies, they buy from people.

Therefor, Marketers seem to think it´s a good idea to go over the top with a personalized reader experience andskip it all together.

But Wait!

Before arguing my point, wrap your mind arround this…

If your organization has 30 employees, each of whom sends 15 emails daily outside the organization, then(assuming 250 business days) that’s 112,500 business cards or ads distributed annually, at no cost. If you have100 employees, that’s 375,000 cards or ads annually.Nancy E. Schwartz

Even if you´re alone and have an email list of 1000 and send one email per week… That´s still 26,000 adexposures annually. (Considering that 50% of subscribers are inactive on average.)

Thus… It´s a good idea to make the best out of every corner of your email. Including your email signatures.

Sounds reasonable, don´t you think?

“But Jesper, signatures scream company all over the place…”

Do they really… Do they have to?

Not if using it for its sole purpose!

So what´s the sole purpose for email signatures?

Not what it used to be in my opinion such as, “name,” “title,” and other contact information.

It´s a fun way for engaging subscribers to interact with you further. Plus… It´s the perfect “non-pushy” tool formarketing your services.

Great, now that we agree you should start consider your email signature as your online business card..with marketing and branding capabilities.

Now when we know what awesome email signatures can do for you…

It´s time to dig into what makes email signatures great, and how you make them work in your advantage.

Let´s start from the rock bottom with some dos and don´ts, and common mistakes.

…then we climb the ladder of obtaining the email signature design we´re looking for.

(HINT: The Best One.)

Behind The Scenes of Signatures

9 Surprisingly Silly Mistakes, That Will Embarrass You

We all make mistakes, that´s just human right. But some mistakes are just darn dumb.

Committing any of these 9, easily forgotten, email signature examples.. is bad for business.

“I apologise in advance if I´m about to offend someone .”

#1. Email address. The first mistake is the most common and quite a hilarious one. It´s including your emailaddress in your email signature?

That´s like telling your readers you think their stupid enough to not know how email works.

Completely waste of space!

An Email statistics report from radicati shows that the average employee send 41 emails per day.

According to Evercontact, 39% of people having an email signature still make the mistake of including theiremail address.

So even professionals are making this mistake.

#2. Fax number. Then we have the fax number wich I thought I´d illustrate below…

Fax… You might aswell send it over on a DINOSAUR. Please keep up with this century :)

#3. Not including a CTA. This is done quickly by adding a simple link and unique call-to-action. Yet, it´sunderutulized.

Simplicity sometimes does the trick…

For Example: Here´s a simple but probably very effective one.. (since it has stayed static for some time.)

The only change I´ve got recorded before then is that the link says, “click here,” instead of “go here.”

#4. To many social icons. Instead of slamming all of your social networks in your readers face. Only add yourtop 3 top performing networks, that are relevant to your target audience.

That´s way more than enough and it looks better. (Depending on your business, you might want to include aphone number.)

Here´s an example that includes “almost” all necessary elements… Can you spot the one missing?

If you guessed on the call to action, you´re right.

The one thing missing if you want to drive traffic, is the incentive for clicking on your link.

It´s important that you understand this difference.

For example, If I were to add “we really should connect” before “here are my pages.” It will drive more clicks.

#5. Huge graphics. I know that most feel discouraged from using images within emails, due to delivery issuesand what not.

First of all, I never recommend or use HUGE graphics. But the days were graphical content was a risk to add inyour email signatures are long over.

Modern email programs can handle this quite well when using mobile responsive templates.

Adding a photo of yourself make your email signatures more personal. You add a face to your name, justremember to make it colorful and somehow represent what you do.

Secondly… For the signature and header, I´m not concerned and let me explain why.

It´s more important that you focus on getting whitelisted and stay whitelisted with ISP´s.

Here´s a few examples on how to get a great start.

1. Use confirmed optin.

2. Ask for a quick reply to confirm their interest.

3. Ask them to add you to their contacts.

4. Be clear about content and frequency.

5. Let them know that they can unsubscribe at any time and show them how.

6. Don´t send huge attached files.

7. Remember that one “spammy” email can be enough…

As for the CTA. In 98% of my emails, I´m linking back to relevant resources on my blog.

The result…

I get away with more.. just like you when sending huge files to a friend.

If you still don´t want to add a picture of you, or your company logo to your signature for emails?

You can just add links with an appealing, “non-pushy” call to action. (Shown in the previous example.)

#6. Wierd fonts and colors. This is something I´ve seen A LOT when I was working with B2B Telemarketing.Why on earth go crazy with different fonts and colors.

(Keep yourself to two different fonts.) Preferable the same as your websites fonts.

I mean they sure pop, but looks like it´s sent directly from a kindergarten class.

Yes, I´ve seen worse examples too.

There´s a bunch of other mistakes in that email signature sample such as…

#7. Footer quotes. No one wants to read your quotes. Don’t do it because it dilutes your brand. Keep yourquotes for Instagram or Pinterest.

#8. Size. What a f***, The email signature is bigger than the actual email.

Less the better!

In your signature…

You should only put the necessary information such as name, job title, number, and website; Your company’s logoand social media buttons linked to most popular pages.

#9. Using ugly hyperlinks. Instead of typing out the full URL, (https://www.Facebook.com/Me-And-You-Marketing/804566286305650).

Just make it Facebook.

There´s a lot of email signature best practices and mistakes to cover. According to xink.io, there´s 101 dos anddon´ts… But these are the most vital ones in my books.

OK, we´ve had our laughs. Let´s get down to some real email signature 101.

Email Signatures 101

We´ll look at the email signature design and how to make it effective in just a sec…

Then we´ll look at some tools you can use for creating it and tools for tracking whether it´s successful or not.

But first, I need you to understand this one thing.

Your first impression is always important, but what about your last impression?

When I was working with sales. I realized that it didn´t matter how many benefits you told your clients.

Their likely only going to remember the last thing you say to them, or 3 things at the most. If one of those thingswere a bad thing…

…that´s the only thing they´ll focus on.

So my question to you is, what do your leave your readers/prospects with?

Whether it is your sales letter, your blog post or email.. You must give them a great last impression.

For example: Most sales letters/videos ends with revealing the catch right. So no matter how great you felt abouttheir promises, your decision comes down to that one thing in the end.

What´s the catch?

If you turn the catch into a benefit, you leave your readers with an easy decision.

Just look at what Russell Brunson did… He turned his catch into a sexy guarantee.

So how can you implement this into your email signature?

Your call to action should give them the feeling of a benefit, rather than “oh, so he only wanted me to buy hisproduct.”

Tweet this,

There´s No Such Thing as a Catch - If You Make it a Benefit... Click To Tweet

…or share this!

Your Offer Never Have A -Catch- - If You Turn It Into A -Benefit-

Design – There´s a couple of things all good email signature design have in common.

It doesn´t include too much information.

Colors aligned with your brand logo.

Keeping font type and sizes to a minimum.

Uses strong hierarchy for particularly important information.

Graphical elements are simple.

Includes social media icons to drive traffic.

The design is aligned, (ex; logo height matches information.)

Use dividers and vertical bars to make good use of space.

It´s mobile friendly, looks good when scaled down.

It´s balanced.

Efficiency – How do you make your email signatures more efficient?

The key is to make people want to interact with you. You do this by linking to relevant pages, and I´m not talkingabout your social networks.

For example: It could be an ultimate guide on your blog.. that further include links to your services, tools orproducts.

Link to your best-selling e-book, to a video of an interview with industry experts, case studies ortestimonials; Offer a free consulting call, free trial or membership access.

My point is that you have the opportunity to showcase relevant things that strengthen your authority, boosts yourrevenue or educates your readers on your business.

So make the most of it.. and switch it up to see what benefits your readers the most.

Note: That´s why it´s important that you don´t make your entire email signature an image. It will give you aheadache if you want to split test or make any changes to your signature samples.

Key Takeaways for Effective Email Signatures

So what´s the takeaway from all this, let´s sum it up before we move on to tools.

Less is absolutely better!

All you need is…

Details – your name, title, company name/logo, phone (optional,)

Personalized – Social icons linking to pages relevant for your audience. (If your target audience is CEO´s, youdefinitely want to include LinkedIn.)

Design – Simple, responsive, perfectly aligned and with brand colors.

Showcase – How you done something really cool you want to show your readers?

Call-to-action – Include a line of text that prompts your recipient to take action. What action do you want yoursubscribers to take? This should be aligned with your end-goal, whether it is for downloading an e-book, signingup for a webinar or scheduling a consulting call.

Combination of the three signatures below would make a perfect one. They´re still strong on their own.

How to Create Beautiful Email Signatures

#1. Email Signature Generators

WiseStamp – I never recommend using a free mailbox providers, (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail.)

But I realize that some of my readers are not email marketers or website owners.

So if you´re a company in need of a quick solid solution?

WiseStamp is a great tool you can use for creating beautiful email signatures in no-time.

Here´s a few email signature samples showing how they look like.

I´m glad that you spotted all the mistakes in this screenshot.. that I told you about earlier.

If not, go back and read that section again :)

For alternatives, here´s two similar email signature generators you can choose from

htmlsig

newoldstamp

#2. Create One inside Your Autoresponder.

Ok, first of all!

Most Email Autoresponder´s let you create an email signature like one of the examples above pretty easily…

…by using one of their responsive templates and adding what you want such as images, contact details anddividers.

Thus, I want to show you a complete other sample of email signatures.

One of the email signatures in particular.. that I´ve been really impressed by and made me feel almost obligated toengage with.

Was this mind-blowing sample of email signature from Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels.

All though it links to most of his offerings, it´s fun, personal and really innovative.

So I decided to model his email signature with my brand colors and make it slightly different.

Here´s mine…

Stands out, don´t you think?

I created this one inside Aweber and here´s how you can do the same.

Step 1. Go to Aweber´s “ Drag and Drop Email Builder,” and pick a template of your likings.

Step 2. Use the tools on the left side to for creating your signature. Add dividers above and under to separate itfrom the rest of your content.

Add Images for your social icons and enter your URL (and Alt Text.)

Use the width of your email and place them nicely.

Make sure their the right size and hosted on a web server from the beginning . They might end up being allover the place or appear as an attachment otherwise.

Change font size and colors so it identifies with your brand.

How to Track Email Signatures Success

If you use an autoresponder service, you can simply check on what links your subscribers are clicking on in yourBroadcast stats.

But that´s kind of a hassle right?

So I recommend setting up a tracking URL with Google Analytics, to track your email signatures seamlessly andaccurately.

I´m not that tech savvy, so here´s an example from Mail-Signatures.com.

Adding Custom URL Tags to Your Email Signature: The simplest way to create Custom URL Tags for yourlinks is by using the Google Analytics’ URL Builder. Thanks to custom URLs you can also monitor other activitiessuch as newsletters, banners, blog posts, social media updates (tweets, facebook statuses, etc.) or linkcampaigns. Here are some hints how various UTM parameters can help you manage your campaigns: •Campaign Source (utm_source) – Identifies the source of your traffic, e.g.: newsletter, banner, linking. •Campaign Medium (utm_medium) – Identifies the medium the link was used in, like: email, SEO, CPC. •Campaign Term (utm_term) – Optional parameter suggested for paid search to identify keywords for youradverts. • Campaign Content (utm_content) – This is an optional parameter as well, it gives additional details forcontent-targeted ads. • Campaign Name (utm_campaign) – Identifies a specific promotion or campaign, such asa Christmas promotion or summer sale.

Here´s how it looks (based on their own,) of how to enter information for a custom tagged email signaturelink. Using the Google Analytics’ URL Builder.

Just a tiny Email Signature, but A LOT you can do with them.

This extensive guide for how to create the best email signatures have almost come to an end…

…and I really hope you´ve realized the signature´s power!

I wanted to round-up this post with some very interesting case studies. That I came across when doing someresearch for this piece. You can read them here.

Conclusion

Just like your first impression, your last impression is vital for repeat business.

Split test different versions that only includes the necessary elements. (Feel free to model my email signature ifyou like.)

Test with or without logo and photo, to see if a plain text or more graphical email signatures works best foryou. Split test your call-to-action line but also where you take your subscribers.

I´d love to hear how this works out for you.