Email’s are currently the primary form of communication across businesses worldwide, and with professional communication comes the necessity for a professional way to sign off. Email signatures are an essential part of the business communication world, but if you haven’t spent the time to create one previously you may be unsure about what to include.
Crossware365’s Email Signature platform provides an array of informative inclusions to help you ensure your email signature looks professional at all times – But if you’re unsure what to include, read more in our blog below.
What is an Email Signature?
At the end of every corporate email, you’ll find a person’s name, place of employment, title and contact details – This is known as their email signature.
A signature is essential for anyone using email as a form of communication, and even more-so for those using email for business purposes. Used to ensure clear brand consistency, establish identity and provide further contact information, an Email Signature is essential for every business owner and their employees.
Why you need a professional Email Signature
Before we discuss why you need a professional Email Signature, it’s important to discuss the difference between a personal and professional Email Signature. While it’s not a big deal if you use your professional Email Signature in a personal setting, it can be seen as unprofessional if you use your personal signature in a professional setting.
Professional VS Personal Signatures
Personal and Professional Email Signatures are two very different things – While one is designed for a professional setting, the other is designed to be used between family and friends and should not be used through corporate communication.
While personal signatures are not always necessary, if you choose to create one they can be fairly simple – Including your name, a nice photo of yourself and a simple message such as ‘Merry Christmas’ if you choose to do so.
Unlike personal signatures, Professional Email Signatures are designed to be used specifically in a business setting and should be set up more formally. These signatures should include your company logo, your name and job title within that business, alternate contact information and any other details that may be important.
What to put in an email signature
When you design your first Email Signature, it can be confusing to know which information to include. While you want your Email Signature to be short, clear and professional, you also want to ensure it includes all of the essential information that someone may need when they’re communicating with you.
When putting together an Email Signature, there are several essential items and extra recommended items you can include to make sure your signature has what it needs.
Essential Inclusions:
- Company Name and Logo.
If you’re using emails to send professional communications on behalf of a business, it’s vital that you include the company name and logo in your signature so that recipients can identify what business the email has come from. The Crossware platform makes it very simple for you to do this – You simply add your logo and Company Name into the specified fields and Crossware will ensure they’re both populated across all your email communications moving forward.
- Your Full Name.
Alongside including a company name and logo, it’s vital that you include your full name in your signature so that recipients know who the email is coming from. You can do this easily within Crossware’s Email Signature Platform, adding your name into the specified fields. You can also choose to add your job title beside or below your name if you wish, so that people understand your role in the company.
- Contact Information.
While the creation of email has made communication significantly more efficient than it used to be, sometimes you need an instant answer through a phone call. This is why it can be beneficial to add your other contact information into your email signature, so that should a business partner or client need to contact you urgently, they have your number readily at hand to get in touch.
Extra Inclusions:
- Corporate Headshot.
While not everyone recommends adding a headshot to your email signature, if you’re the face of the brand or you want to make your communications less formal, adding a nice, polished headshot can be a good option to do so. As it can help identify the person behind an email chain and add a face to a name, adding a corporate headshot may even help to improve relationships through your communication.
- Company Address.
If you find yourself regularly welcoming clients or business partners to your office, it can be beneficial to add your address to your email signature so that people can easily find you. If you find yourself regularly communicating with international parties, adding your Country can also help alert people to any time zone differences and make them aware of when you’re more likely to be online.
- Pronouns.
In today’s day and age, adding your pronouns to your Email Signature or online social channels is a popular way to ensure people know how to best address you. At Crossware, we also offer the opportunity to include your pronouns in your Email Signature if you choose to do so, providing the choice between ‘she/her’ ‘they/them’ or ‘he/him’ so that people know the best way to refer to you.
- Social Media Channels.
In order to grow a Social Media following, you need to be driving traffic to your channels – One of the easiest ways to do this is by adding your handles to your Email Signature. Regardless of whether you’re sending emails to existing clients, internal business partners or potential new leads, it’s important to include links to any relevant Social Media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or X (formerly known as Twitter) so that recipients can visit those handles if interested. Crossware’s Email Signature platform provides a pre-created space for you to add all of these links, so you don’t have to worry about custom-creating your design and manually adding the links to your Social Media channels each time you change a banner.
- CTA.
When you’re writing your emails, it’s important to think about the recipient’s journey – Where do you want them to go next, what do you want them to do? If you’re running a specific promotion or sale your signature is a great way to continually promote this, and Crossware’s Email Signature platform makes it really simple for you to promote these. All you have to do is design some graphics to promote your deal or sale – likely in line with other promotional material – add the graphic design to Crossware’s portal and it will attach to the base of all emails. If you’re only running a promotion for a certain period of time, you can also choose to only run a banner up until a certain date, meaning that you can seamlessly switch between banners at a moment’s notice without having to ask team members or IT departments to manually make these changes. When you have a much larger team, this automated system can save huge amounts of time and stress.
- Legal Requirements
Depending on your company type and where you’re located, you may be legally obligated to include certain things in your email signature. For example, those in the UK are required to provide their company name, company registration number and location where the company is registered. Certain companies may also wish to include legal disclaimers, and protecting your company from liability is an important part of email marketing.
What NOT to put in an email signature
With a wealth of options to include in your professional signature, also comes a list of things that we recommend avoiding at all costs.
These include:
- Custom fonts
- Cramped text
- Videos or GIFs
- Large or high-quality photos
While it can be tempting to utilise unique fonts, videos and fit a large amount of information into your email signature, these things can all make your signature either look unprofessional or even unreadable. Certain fonts are also incompatible with certain email platforms which can cause issues when your recipient tries to load your email.
The Importance of Email Signature Brand Consistency
Over 4.26 billion people utilise email worldwide for either work or personal purposes. With email currently the primary form of written communication for businesses globally, it’s never been more important to ensure your email signature looks sharp, professional and consistent.
Here at Crossware365 we offer a range of email signature solutions for enterprises in the Education, Government, Real Estate and Consumer Brands sectors, ensuring businesses can implement consistent and compliant email signatures across their entire team.
Providing a single dashboard to centrally manage thousands of signatures, the ability for departments to edit and control their email signatures as promotions come and go as well as the ability to upload custom images, templates and more, Crossware’s email signature solution is essential for anyone looking to streamline their businesses email signatures.
Enterprise solutions are available now – Visit our Enterprise page to learn more.
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