The Best Email Signatures are Simple.

Many small businesses spend hours designing the perfect email stationery. From the choice of font to the text to the logos and awards arrayed under the email body, it is possible to spend days creating an eye-catching layout.

The reality is that all the time spent on “fancy” email signatures is completely wasted. Anything that distracts attention from your core business operations and which does not add anything to your customers’ experience is, by definition, a waste of time and money. 

Three things to consider when designing your email signature:

• Heavily designed email signatures tend to be nothing more than a vanity project – your customers do not care. If you want to brag about your latest award win, do it somewhere people will notice – on your company's blog.

• Most people now read email on their mobile devices (56%) – and they don’t want to spend ages scrolling past many logos and banners that add nothing to your message. If you want people to pay attention to what you are saying, don’t make their life harder.

• It is almost guaranteed that your recipients never see your email signature artwork. Almost every email client ‘clips’ your messages, so the signature is hidden from view to help readers easily read an email thread without large signatures littered throughout.

And ever since Outlook 2000 was released, Microsoft email clients have prevented the automatic download of images to protect against email malware. Your recipients have to click another button to see your signature – so why would they bother?

An email signature that really works - should be text-based and simple

The only way to ensure that clients see your signature is through simple, plain text. A text signature communicates essential information (your contact details) quickly and gets through every content filter and clipping mechanism, ensuring people see it.

Setting up the signature is also extremely easy. Create a template in Google Docs, share it with your workers (in view-only mode), and they can quickly and easily copy and paste the layout and update it with their own personal information – which means no more messing around with image alignment and funky fonts.

More importantly, the time and effort saved in creating a plain text mail signature can be put to good use, serving your customers and doing “proper” online marketing.