What is an email signature? Definition, best practices, and examples

Reading Time: 10 minutes

The final touch to your promotional email that will create a lasting impression about your brand is a high-quality email signature. It enhances the reliability of your company’s reputation, making it the icing on the cake. But it takes some practice to create one that simultaneously conveys professionalism and individuality.

Here we’ll discuss more in depth about email signatures, share our outlook on creating good signatures, design tips, and more. 

What is an email signature?

Let’s start by clearing up the email signature meaning.

An email signature is a block of text that appears after an email body text and functions as a business card with important details about the sender. Its primary goal is facilitating communication and giving recipients a clear way to contact you.

The goal of great email signatures is to leave a lasting impression. It serves as a visual reminder of your company and yourself that the recipient may remember long after they have closed their inbox.

It’s a powerful tool for introducing a call to action (CTA), improving engagement across several channels, and producing new leads. 

It gives you a chance to incorporate aspects that are significant to your business or professional position, such as your company logo and social media symbols.

Why you need an email signature

Making a small investment of time and effort to perfect your email signature is well worth it. If this part of your campaign is high-quality, it’ll bring high-quality results in terms of KPI and compliance. Experts at Flowium, a professional email marketing consulting company, note the following benefits that you receive when your signature is done correctly:

• Client experience: Giving your clients easily accessible contact information, such as your phone number, social media accounts, and physical address, can also help to facilitate communication. Shortening order inquiry times and encouraging more brand-customer engagement might help to boost customer satisfaction.
• Raising brand awareness: Generally speaking, a well-branded email signature will make it simpler for clients to recognize you. Put your company name and logo in the signatures of your emails to remind them what your firm is all about.
• Developing credibility: Including contact information, such as your company’s phone number and registered office address, demonstrates your transparency and lends credibility to your business. Spam filters may even prevent emails that don’t look professional.
• Social media promotion: Emails that contain links to your social media profiles encourage readers to follow and engage with you on other platforms, ultimately increasing the number of potential leads and conversions. Social proof is another use for it.
• Increasing website traffic and lead generation: You can direct recipients from your email to your website via links in the signature. This allows you to increase traffic and generate high-quality leads.
• Compliance: The CAN-SPAM Act and other laws, depending on where your company is based, require that you always include unsubscribe links and other pertinent legal information in the signatures or footers of your emails. Delivering your emails to clients’ inboxes without getting marked as spam is made easier with a legally compliant signature.

What you should include in email signatures

Over the years, email signatures have evolved significantly, but one thing has stayed constant — it’s crucial to include accurate and useful information. 

Email signatures need to be informative, but they don’t have to be boring. You can have some fun with them but do not overdo it. The golden rule for content is to keep it brief and to the point. Here are some things your email signature should have if you want to get the most out of your template:

Full name and professional info

For clarity, your entire name should always appear in the first few lines of your signature. You can optionally include your pronouns. 

Pro tip: Use a slightly larger font or make it bold.

To create authority and credibility, include your professional details, such as your job title and firm.

Contact details

A company email signature should include clear contact information to increase accessibility and confidence. Incorporate:

• Phone number
• Website
• Email address
• Location (if applicable)

While freelancers might utilize personal information, business-to-business (B2B) professionals usually list firm connections.

Graphic brand elements

Like a business card, an email signature should be visually striking. Including a logo or a personal photo strengthens branding by increasing awareness and trust.

Social media links

Every marketer is thinking about social media these days. Give contacts an easy way to find you there by including a social media link in your signature, thus integrating social media with email. Add icons for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn that connect to your accounts. 

CTAs

Including a prominent call to action or promotional banner in your email signature can increase interaction. Make it simple to locate clickable items to improve user experience.

Disclaimer of privacy information

Email disclaimers are frequently necessary for compliance and confidentiality. For readability, keep them brief and put them beneath a dividing line. 

Email signature best practices for designing

We’ll also provide some more thorough guidelines on how to design an email signature properly. This is a list of best practices from the best designers you should use to make sure your signature works and makes a good impact on your subscribers:

1. Make it impactful

Make the layout as impactful as possible. The links and photos should be the main focus, not the arrangement. Be ready for testing to support any bold or over-the-top ideas you try. Indeed, if you can test how it will appear in several email programs, such as Outlook, Apple Mail, and Gmail, do so. Nevertheless, make sure it looks good in every situation.

2. Use of the right tools

Avoid using Microsoft Word or Outlook to create your template if you are not familiar with HTML. These products format it differently, and other programs may read the layout differently and display it inaccurately. Instead, you can use special email signature creation tools and generators that comply with your email service provider.

Overall, there are two better alternatives widely used by professional email designers:

• Use email signature generators: Some tools include HubSpot Email Signature Generator, WiseStamp, MySignature
• Manually code in HTML with inline CSS: Use a simple table-based layout with inline styles, test across different email clients 

3. Use tables for design

To organize your signature arrangement, use tables. If you don’t want the borders to show, you can make them transparent. This guarantees that every element of your design remains in its proper location, preventing photos from showing up in the wrong place or job titles from being crammed together.

4. Write full-length HTML

HTML guarantees compatibility with Apple, Outlook, and Gmail. Always type out the entire HTML instead of utilizing shortcuts for the same reason. Abbreviated coding styles are not recognized by many email services. Use a tool made especially for email signatures if you’re not a developer. Don’t use Word or a marketing email CMS to create your signature.

5. Make use of inline CSS

Although this is more complicated, email HTML and inline CSS work together. Many common W3C-approved techniques are incompatible with the programs we use regularly. Use inline CSS to guarantee correct rendering. Inline styling is the easiest way to ensure that your email styling is consistent across email clients. If you’re not technical, use an email signature editor that automatically translates your design into compliant code. Thankfully, there are many ways to make external or embedded style blocks inline.

6. Make use of JPEGs

Email signatures function differently, even though PNG files are the industry standard for the web. In most email situations, use JPEGs and GIFs rather than PNGs. Additionally, make sure all photos have the “no-sent” tag applied to them so that emails display them properly.

7. Size your images properly

Hard-code the image’s width and height in HTML instead of depending on its actual dimensions. If not, Outlook and other services might skew the picture. 

8. Determine the proper ratio

Make sure the pictures don’t overpower the words by making them excessively big, numerous, or ostentatious. Every email is unique, what seems appropriate in a lengthy email may seem over the top in a brief one. To maintain a professional but unobtrusive presence, modify your signature for answers. For the initial email in a conversation, use a bold, professional design, and for replies, use a smaller, simpler version.

9. Shrink your links

It’s acceptable for the majority of links in a signature to be hidden by graphics. However, think about utilizing a shortened URL when you have visible links (such as “Visit: www.example.com”). To maintain a clean signature while yet guiding users to the appropriate page, contact your web administrator to put up a redirect. We also recommend not going overboard with the number of links. Remember that this email part is for essential information only.

Common mistakes in creating email signatures

Our list of “dos” would be incomplete without adding “don’ts”, practices that you should avoid to ensure the effectiveness of your email signatures. Here’s what we advise not to do:

1. Don’t leave it to DIY

The most common problem with email signatures is inconsistency throughout the firm because each person generates their own. Make sure every signature adheres to a polished, fashionable structure that you have approved by using the same template throughout your business.

2. Don’t include your personal info

It can jeopardize security and privacy to include private information in a business email signature, such as your home address or personal phone number. Additionally, it ensures that only pertinent firm contact information is shared, keeping communication business-focused.

3. Avoid utilizing bullet points

It is common for different email programs to display bullet points differently. Outlook defines a bullet point differently than Gmail does. Don’t use bullet points at all to maintain consistency. To make a table look like a list, utilize various rows if necessary.

4. Don’t go overboard

Very wide signatures won’t look good in Outlook’s preview pane before opening a message or in the window that appears after double-clicking. Although 650 pixels is the industry norm, we would even advise reducing it to 600 pixels to make sure nothing is omitted.

5. Avoid animating

Even though it’s a good design practice to use GIFs in emails, steer clear of animation in signatures. GIFs frequently don’t appear properly in Outlook and the majority of business email clients, and embedded videos won’t play.

6. Don’t forget alt text

Don’t forget to provide image alt text. After being forwarded, you never know where your email can wind up. Recipients can hover over an image with alt text to learn more about its purpose. For instance, a promotional banner might read, “Sign up for our event,” while a social media symbol might have alt text that reads, “Follow us on Instagram.” This improves the accessibility and friendliness of your links.

7. Don’t forget legal Info

Around the world, a variety of legal disclaimers are necessary. For example, regulations like CAN-SPAM require companies to disclose a physical address in marketing communications. Keep yourself updated on the regulations that affect your company, particularly as you enter new areas.

Our tips on how to create email signatures

Based on the extensive experience of Flowium’s email marketing specialists, we also wish to share some best practices for email signatures. You can make effective email signatures for your company by applying these design tips:

• Brand-consistent design: For improved recognition, make sure your signature matches the colors and emblems of your brand
• Important information only: To prevent clutter, keep your signature to the most important information — contacts and a single, succinct statement 
• Verify responsiveness on mobile devices: Many users open their correspondence on mobile devices, so test the mobile version too to avoid distortion, make sure your logos, photos, and fonts are mobile-friendly
• Make trackable links: To measure link activity, use Google Analytics and UTM tracking codes
• Limit colors: Stick to two or three colors that complement your logo
• Select readable fonts: Make use of formal fonts such as Arial (10–12 points), Calibri, or Times New Roman
• Enhance graphics: Use icons for social media links and keep logos minimal
• Add a divider: To distinguish the email signature from the body of the message, use a line or a small graphic
• Use just one CTA: It is more effective to use just one call to action
• Include an international prefix: Make phone numbers more accessible by including country codes
• A/B test signatures: Experiment with your signature trying out different layouts, elements, and copy to see what design brings the best results

Conclusion

We hope this post fully answers your question “What is an email signature?” and gives you more understanding of its importance in your promotions. Adding a visually appealing email signature to a marketing email does more than just add a final touch — it increases the likelihood that your customers will interact with it. 

Use your email signature as a chance to briefly highlight the best features of your company. Make sure your signature follows best practices, and you’ll have a professional, effective design with minimal hassle.

FAQ

Author bio

Nataliia Guivan is an SEO Copywriter for Flowium. After earning a Master’s degree in English Philology, Nataliia refined her language proficiency and pursued SEO copywriting. She spent two years writing programming and tech-related articles in an IT company’s marketing team and is now expanding her expertise with email marketing.