Everyone and anyone who sends emails on a regular basis should have an effective email signature; email signatures that are long, or overly formatted signature can distract people from the content of the email.
An email is part of who you are; and therefore your email signature reflects you, and your business and as such a poorly thought out and executed signature has the potential to hurt your professional reputation.
An email signature should be professional, easy to understand and be informative; tips for an effective email signature include:
• Keep it short, without neglecting to include information you think is the most important (keep your signature under four lines).
• Simple plain text is best; colours, special fonts and graphics can distract and detract.
• Condense information into fewer lines by using pipes (|) or colons (::) to separate the text.
• Include your email address. Don’t just rely on email clients to include all header information in replies and forwards.
• Including multiple phone numbers and email addresses can be confusing, use only your preferred contact preferences.
• Only include methods of contact such as your IM or Skype information if this is how you want to be contacted by everyone receiving your emails.
• Think about whether you want, or need to include your postal address; if you’re including your web url there’s probably no need to include your postal address in your email signature.
• If you’re using HTML formatting check how it will appear to people who receive your email.
• Check that your email signature; test your signature with as many email clients as you can, especially if you use HTML.
• An email signature service maybe needed if you have unique or specific formatting needs or want to include graphics and other design elements.
• Only include links to external sites, e.g your social media profiles; if they are appropriate to your business and the situation.
• Multiple signatures maybe required i.e. a shorter version to be used when replying to emails. You may want a longer signature for some situations and a shorter for others.
• Don’t forget your mobile devices, makes sure email signatures on these are updated
• Quotes aren’t necessarily a good thing. Consider this; will any quote included have the potential to offend anyone likely to see the email message (not just the original, intended recipient).
• Legal disclaimers aren’t always necessary; do you need one in your email signature?
|
Posted in Blog | July 29th, 2010. Author: admin
