Email Signature Best Practices

An email signature is the bottom section of an email where the sender gives their regards to the recipient and signs off with their name, address, website, and any other relevant information. Email services allow marketers to create branded signatures and add them automatically to every email.

Email continues to be a powerful marketing tool for businesses, with 215.3 billion emails sent and received every day in 2016. This number is projected to reach 257.7 billion emails in 2020. Worldwide email use is forecast to reach 4.4 billion users by the year 2023. With so many emails sent every day, getting readers’ attention is getting tough.

The end of your email is just as important as the beginning. So, how can you create a better email signature to improve your overall email marketing strategy? Here are some tips.

Include the Company’s Contact Information and Motto

After a recipient has read an email, they may want to contact the sender directly. Including contact details is completely up to the sender and may include name, position, company, phone numbers, office addresses, photo and logo, website/blog, and social media icons. If you have a website, include a link to it. A brand motto can be added to the footer. Use SendPulse to create a unique email template with an email signature of choice.

Here is a good email footer example from Bonobos. Notice that it includes Their brand name, phone number, office address, and motto:

Provide Links to Your Social Media Profiles

Include buttons leading to your social media profiles in the email signature. This way, subscribers will have more chances to learn about your brand and join your social media audience. Check out this simple email signature where Monsoon shows recipients how to find their brand on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube.

With SendPulse you can easily add social media buttons to your email signature.

Use Colors and a Simple Font in Your Email Signature

Consider using a generic font so that it is properly displayed on various email clients. If you want to use a fancy font, always have a fallback font (in case the original font doesn’t work on some devices). Don’t use more than two fonts in one email signature. Some generic fonts are Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, Helvetica, Arial Black, and more.

Using SendPulse you can customize your email signature either by choosing a pre-made template that already contains a footer or create your own from scratch. You just need to drag the signature section to your email, choose a layout you like and add the necessary information. Find out more here.

Below is an email signature from Bonobos. They’ve used two fonts including Arial font.

Use Colors that are Associated with Your Brand

Be sure to use your brand colors to increase brand recognition. However, “less is more” is the best approach here. The more colors that you use, the higher the likelihood is of picking clashing colors.

Check out the color of the email footer added by Fairygodboss. The brand uses purple in its logo and text:

Finally, ensure that your email signature design is compatible with mobile devices. Around 80% of people read their emails on their phones. If the email is too wide or complicated, users will not see the message correctly and will have to scroll sideways to view the whole message. An email service, like SendPulse, will help you design excellent emails for your campaigns.

Add Images

Images bring out a company’s personality in email. A company logo or any graphics that adequately represent the brand are a great addition to an email signature. However, limit yourself to just one or two images. Apart from the brand logo, another image that is commonly used in the footer is the email sender’s headshot.

Below is an email signature from Fairygodboss with the company logo added to the email footer.

Include a One-step Unsubscribe Link

Every brand should offer their customers a way to easily unsubscribe from marketing messages. This way, you not only follow the law but maintain a mailing list containing interested subscribers. There’s no point in sending promotions to those customers who are not interested in your brand. Moreover, low open rates harm the sender's reputation. So, to be on the safe side, make unsubscribing a one-step process as Forever 21 does:

The response one gets when they click the unsubscribe link:

SendPulse adds an unsubscribe link to every email by default so you won’t get into trouble anyway.

Provide a Link to a Preference Management Center

Have a separate link for managing preferences and unsubscribing. It should enable users to manage their subscription, for example, the type of messages they want to receive and their frequency. Use SendPulse to segment and manage subscribers based on their interests and preferences to send the right messages at the right time.

Here is an email signature with a manage subscription link from Social Media Today:

After subscribers click the link, they’re redirected to their account where they can set preferences.

State Why a User Has Received Your Email

Most brands send marketing emails or newsletters to contacts that have either opted in or previously purchased from the brand. Always state the reason why the recipient is receiving emails from the company in the email signature.

Just add the same sentence to every email footer as Fortune does.

Add a Link to Your FAQs

Include a link to the frequently asked questions on the company website to drive more engagement. By going through the FAQs, potential or existing customers may get solutions to common issues they face. In addition, this step helps users move down the sales funnel by discovering the benefits of joining your brand community.

Bonobos put a ling to FAQs to every email footer. Check out!

Last Updated: 11.12.2020