Email Signatures that Make an Impact

Your email signature is more than just a virtual business card. If utilized effectively, it can also be a great and inexpensive tool for marketing and branding your business, growing your database, and even generating leads. Here are a few tips to help maximize the full power of this simple, but often overlooked, marketing marvel:

Create Consistency - According to marketing experts, your email signature should be short and sweet, which means between 5 and 7 lines of text. Just be sure to include at minimum the following information: name, title, company name, phone number, and website address. Some companies include an email address in their email signature, but others see it as redundant since the email is coming from you. Either way, it is essential that everyone in your organization is consistent about it, and follows the exact same format.

In other words, your email signature should look like a uniform company stamp of which only the names and titles change from person to person within the organization. That's the first step in branding your name and image. And it's the easiest part of creating a consistent experience.

Forget the Bells and Whistles - Avoid unusual fonts, colors, and symbols in your email signature. Not only can these come off as unprofessional, some email software programs simply do not support these high-end graphic features.

Acceptable options to your signature, according to the experts, are a line separating your signature, short inspirational quotes or marketing taglines, brief announcements of a new product or service, small banner invitations to an event, seminar, workshop, or subscription to a newsletter, e-zine, or other publication. These should all link directly to your website, driving traffic and strengthening your brand with every email that's sent out by you or anyone in your organization - something even the best business card can never accomplish. Here's an example of an ideal email signature:

Mr. John Smith
Vice President, Platinum Realtors
3000 Main Street, Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(310) 555-1212 Ext 23
PlatinumRealtors.com

"Your Real Estate Solution Specialist"

Pay it Forward - Finally, while using an email signature is a great way to advertise your products and services for free, spare your co-workers and close colleagues from your signature appearing over and over again on reply and forwarded messages. Set your signature to appear on "new messages only" or simply delete everything except your name before sending your message.

If you think of any more tips on utilizing email signatures as a tool to increase our businesses, give me a call. Your thoughts and ideas are always welcomed and always appreciated.