Email signatures are a classic but effective way to keep your brand or your product in front of people without spending a fortune in advertising costs.
Consider for a moment all of the emails you receive on a daily basis. Oftentimes you'll see a short description after the name of the person sending the email that will show:
- The contact's email address
- Their website address
- Their blog address (if different from their website)
- A contact phone number
- A physical address
You can think of an email signature a bit like a business card on the internet. It's purpose is to let those who receive your email know that you have other locations online they can visit whenever they want to.
They're easy to set up and you can use it multiple times a day and not spend a penny in advertising costs!
So, how do we create an effective email signature?
Within nearly all email clients (even ones online that are free), you have the option of including a signature that will automatically go out with every email you send. This is usually located within the "Settings" area.
When you write the signature, keep it short and to the point but also very obvious as well. One of the best ways to do this is to include an image with your signature. This could be your company logo, an image of yourself or even an image of your product.
The only thing you need in your signature are the basics: your name, contact information, title of your website, it's address, your phone number and your physical address.
Keep the number of links minimal however. Too many links such as those to your website, your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn profile, can get a little messy and confusing for the reader. Keep it simple.
Change up the colors!
People are used to seeing black text on a white background but what if instead, you used red text, or blue text? This will make that email signature stand out like a sore thumb (which means that it's doing it's job).
Be careful however, with the words that you use in your signature. Many email clients today have pretty stiff spam filters and the words free and money especially tend to get flagged as spam almost as soon as it hits the receiver's inbox - regardless of how harmless the context of the message is.
If you have something to give away for free, place the word free within an image, add that image to your signature, and then have a link next to that image where people can immediately go to get that free resource.
All in all, creating an email signature is a very under-used but effective way to drive new traffic to your site and above all, it's free to use.
