7 Features of an Effective Email Signature That
Gets Results
How well is your email signature working for you? For
most people who use email, an email signature is just a basic contact
information signature file that they append to their emails without
giving it much thought, if they choose to use an email signature at all.
However, for online business owners, an email signature can be the least
expensive yet most effective tool in your online business marketing
toolkit. Why? Because it enables you to promote yourself and your
business without any blatant advertising. It's like sending a business
card with a call to action in every single email that you send.
Where should you be using your email signature? Here's a quick list:
- on every single piece of email that you send to friends,
family members, colleagues, etc. from your computer's email
program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.)
- in every email that you send in response to a posting on
email discussion lists
- in every posting that you make on an online discussion
forum
- anytime you send a broadcast email out to your list
through your email broadcast service
You never know where you email will end up (how many emails do you
forward in one day?) nor who will be reading it, so it pays to attach an
effective email signature to everything that you do. It serves as a
wonderfully effective free marketing tool that works for you 24/7. I've
gotten countless subscribers to my newsletter from simply using a
compelling call to action in my email signature.
What are the components of an effective email signature? I've seen
horribly long email signatures (as many as 20 lines), signatures missing
basic contact information, and email signatures that leave me thinking,
"So what?". Here's how you can create an effective email signature that
will help you get clients online:
1. Keep it short. Nothing is worse than reading an email
signature that's longer than the email itself. To be most effective,
limit yourself to no more than 7 lines. As you participate in
discussion lists or online forums, the list moderators may limit your
signature to as few as 5 lines. So, just like you make your printed
business card "Rolodex proof" (i.e. don't put essential contact info at
the bottom of the card where it will be lost when holes are punched into
it for your Rolodex), keep your most essential info in the first 5 lines
of your signature file. That way, if some info is cut off when you post
to a discussion forum, it won't be the essential info that you want to
convey. Better yet, do as I do and create various email signature files
for different uses, including ones specifically created to comply with
the rules of various discussion lists to which I belong.
2. Include only essential contact info. This would include your
name and title or tag line, as appropriate, phone number, website, and
email address. The phone number and email address may be optional,
depending on the purpose of your email and how it might be displayed
(for example, sometimes an email discussion list will post your email
address automatically in the body of your post, so you can use that
space in your signature for something else). Don't list every single way
that someone can contact you -- only the most important, essential
methods that you prefer. I've seen some email signatures contain 5
phone numbers. The lines listing those phone numbers can be much more
effectively used for another purpose. And, make sure your email address
is the email address at your website. Sometimes you might not get the
option of posting your website URL, so if you can only post an email
signature, savvy readers can ascertain your website URL from your
signature. Don't use your email signature real estate to give any more
free publicity to Yahoo, Google, AOL, Earthlink, or any number of other
ISPs.
3. Make an offer for a free introductory product. What's your
free giveaway on your site -- an ecourse, email newsletter, special
report, ebook, audio or video clips? Give people a reason to visit your
site by offering your freebie in your email signature. If your freebie
contains info that they want, publicizing it in your email signature is
a definite way to get them to visit your website.
4. Auto sendout. Every email program has the capability to
automatically append an email signature to every piece of email that you
send. Make sure that feature is turned on in your email program so that
you don't miss any valuable marketing opportunities. It's tough to
contact you if your email is missing its signature file.
5. Plain text or HTML? I'm still a big fan of sending out plain
text emails for day-to-day correspondence. For the most part, I don't
use fancy fonts or special colors or formatting in my signature file. I
want my email signature to be clearly displayed in any email program,
and plain text is the best way to accomplish that. There are services
like Plaxo (for users of Microsoft Outlook) that will let you create a
business card image that is appended to your email as your email
signature and import that into Outlook. However, I don't use Outlook
and I find these cumbersome, as there isn't a way to cut and paste the
sender's contact info into my contact database. Additionally, many
online discussion lists and forums don't accept images or HTML in their
posts. So, even though the business card images look pretty, I would
encourage you to stick with a plain text email signature.
6. Make it clickable. Because you never know what email program
your recipient is using, type in a few extra characters in the email
address and website URL lines of your email signature file to guarantee
that the link will be clickable. For a website URL, type in the entire
URL, starting with http://
rather than simply www. to make sure that your link is universally
clickable. For your email address, adding mailto: at the beginning of
your email address, i.e.
mailto:yourname@youremailaddress.com, will enable the reader to
click on that link and will open a blank email addressed to you in any
email program.
7. Use a border. Having a simple border to separate your name
from your email signature as you close an email will lessen the
confusion as to what is considered the main text of the email versus the
email signature. ASCII characters like == or ~~~ will create a simple
border that is effective but not distracting.
You can view my email signature
here.
An effective email signature has incredible power to drive traffic to
your website. Take a few moments and evaluate your signature and see if
it's doing its best work for you. Your email signature is an incredibly
effective marketing tool that can provide great "bang" for almost no
bucks.
(c) 2009 Donna Gunter
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Internet Marketing Automation
Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create prosperous
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Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get
results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by
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