Suggestions for Email Signatures

Overview

Leaving a lasting impression is hard. Doing it at the end of an email is even harder. A strong email signature is attention-getting, but professional. It’s not flashy, but it’s not bland either. With that in mind, read on for some suggestions on how to craft your own unique email signature.

 

In this article:

• Purpose
• Key Elements
  • Core Elements
  • Extended Elements
  • Listing Credentials
  • Being Social
  • A Splash of Color
  • Organization Continuity
  • Keep it Short
• Email Signature Formats
  • Plain text
  • HTML/CSS
  • Graphic
• Crafting the Signature
  • Standard Email Signature Delimiter
  • The Basics
  • Add Your Email Address
  • Add Your Office Phone Number
  • Add Your Office Location
  • Include Your Photo
  • The Results
• Recommendation

 

Purpose

An email signature helps your recipients learn essential information about you, such as your name, your employer, and your contact information. It has effectively become a digital version of a business card. Moreover, a signature can help your email message stand out and allow an immediate response via your contact information.

 

Key Elements

There are several elements that should be in every signature regardless of purpose. Additional elements can be included depending upon individual preferences, and if the signature is personal, or professional.

Core Elements

Every email signature should include the following elements:

• Your full name (either legal, or known as)
• Contact information (at minimum your email)

 

Extended Elements

Students

Signatures used by students typically differ from one to another; however, they typically can include the following:

• Photo

 

Staff & Faculty

Signatures used by employees of any organization may differ from one to another, especially in relation to listing credentials; however, they typically include the following:

• Job Title (Tier 2 Technician)
• Office phone number
• Department Name (e.g. Information Technology Services)
• Company (e.g. University of Alaska Anchorage)
• Your credentials, such as degree, or professional designation if relevant. You should list your professional certifications, and academic qualifications only if your current line of work is somehow associated with them. For instance, it would look a bit out of place to put RN (registered nurse) after your name while working as a graphic artist.
• Photo (optional): If you use a photo in your signature it should be a professional image.

 

Listing Credentials

If you've determined that listing professional, or academic degrees is relevant there are a few additional things to be aware of. These references, typically called Post-nominal letters, have a standard practice, which vary by region and context. When deciding on which credentials to list, consider the following guidelines based upon standard protocol in the United States:

• Your signature is not your résumé, you do not need to list every professional certification, and/or academic degree you've earned.
• If the professional certification isn't intrinsic to your job, don't list it.
• Order of post-nominals are:
  1. Religious institutions
  2. Theological degrees
  3. Military decorations
  4. Academic degrees
  5. Honorary degrees, honors, decorations
  6. Professional licenses, certifications, and affiliations
  7. Retired uniformed service
• Select at most the top 2, or 3 relevant professional certifications (e.g. P.E., PMP, etc.)
• List capstone/terminal degrees (e.g. Ph.D., J.D., etc.)
• Typically, you don't list non-specialized education credentials, such as an associate, bachelor, or master degree.
• When two, or more academic degrees are listed after a name, list them in order in which they were awarded.
• There is no specific rule for listing professional certifications after a name.
• Do not use titles such as Dr., Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms. before your name if an academic degree follows your name (e.g. "Dr. Jane Smith", or "Jane Smith, Ph.D.")
• Other titles may precede your name if they do not have the same meaning as the degree following the name (e.g. Professor John Doe, Ph.D.)
• Most professions have a standard format for listing their licensed credentials plus their advanced degrees. Following the standards of the profession is strongly encouraged. An example for a registered dietitian who also holds a master of science degree might list their name as Jane Smith, RD, MS
  • Note: Yes it is likely that a profession's standard format for listing post-nominal letters may contradict one, or more, of the above recommendations.

 

Being Social

Social media provides another way for individuals to contact you. If you include social media contact information, the accounts you link to should be professional, such as your organization's social media page. If you're not sure about a specific account, it would be wise to review it before referencing it in your signature. When in doubt, simply leave it out.

 

A Splash of Color

Depending upon the email signature format you elect to go with, you might consider adding a bit of color. It's one of the easiest ways to catch attention. However, be sparing in your use of color as too many colors can make your signature look unprofessional, or childish. When adding color to improve the pop of your signature, consider the following guidelines.

• Pick one, or two colors that complement each other.
• Don't use too many colors.
• Avoid clashing colors, unless those colors are part of your organization branding.
• Stick to subdued tones.
• Select colors that align with other branded materials such as your organization's website, stationery, or business cards.

A colorful signature is a great way to attract attention, but don't forget that Black and White are complimentary colors as well. A signature using HTML/CSS formatting and smart use of design, font selection, and layout can be just as effective. Signatures using a black and white theme can be perceived as more conservative, formal, or depending upon the design it could also be modern.

 

Organization Continuity

When creating an email signature for your work account there may be other elements to consider. Remember, emails sent using your work account represent you, as well as your organization. Many organizations work hard on developing, and promoting their brand/image. Additional elements to consider for a work email signature may include:

• Confidentiality Statement: Many business, or non-profits, require the inclusion of a specifically phrased confidentiality statement with emails sent from employee accounts.
• Organization Branding: To help support the brand of the organization, you may be limited on the colors and fonts available in order to standardize the look and feel of the organization's communications.
• Organization Links: Some organizations may prefer that signatures provide links to their website, and social media accounts.
• Legal Requirements: Some locales may have laws, or other regulations requiring business emails to contain certain elements.

You should check with your organization's communication, or legal department to see what, if any, elements should be included in your signature.

 

Keep it short

Keep the signature as short as possible, overly long signatures are typically ignored by recipients. Additionally, be careful about including irrelevant information such as quotes, or sayings. These often add no value to your signature. A search of the web returns many articles To quote, or not to quote? That is the email signature question..., Should Email Signature Quotes Be Used?, What Not to Include in Your Business Email Signature all of which discourage the inclusion of any form of quote in your email signature. Accordingly, don't include your organization's mission or vision statement as it makes for an overly verbose signature.

 

Email Signature Formats

There are several common formats used in creating an email signature all have pros, and cons associated with them.

Plain Text

• Pros:
  • The most accessible option available, all email clients can easily display plain text with little likelihood for text mangling.
  • Your signature can be edited at any time.
• Cons:
  • Basically no control over font size, color, formatting, margins.
  • Contact information may not be interactive depending upon specific characteristics of the recipients email software.

 

HTML/CSS

• Pros:
  • A wide range of styles, colors, formats are available to implement almost any idea.
  • Accessible, if crafted right these are easily readable by accessibility technology such as screen readers.
  • Your signature can be edited at any time.
  • Contact information is interactive, allowing individuals to reach you via email, phone with a simple click, or tap.
• Cons:
  • You, or someone you know, needs to be versed in HTML. While learning new skills is always a good thing, writing HTML code that displays similar across the wide range of operating systems, and applications is not a trivial task.
  • No matter how well coded your HTML signature is, you can rest assured that not all recipients will see it as you intended. Why? Some recipients may have disabled HTML in their email client, which causes all text to render as plain text. While other email clients may subtly, or drastically, display the information based upon what version of HTML and CSS it supports.

 

Graphic

• Pros:
  • You're only limited by your imagination, creativity, and time.
  • You have full control over font color, size, style, placement, margin, images, and so forth, and so on.
  • Almost universal assurance that your signature will display the same for everyone who receives it.
• Cons:
  • Editing your signature is a bit more time consuming any time you want to change it.
  • If you're not a graphic artist, designing a good looking signature can be quite challenging. You can either take this as an opportunity to brush up your skills, or request assistance from a pro.
  • Contact information is non-interactive, which means that people will need to manually type, or tap, your phone, email, fax, etc. to contact you.
  • Least accessible option. Detail text information in graphic format (e.g. PNG, JPG, GIF) is not the easiest method for accessibility software such as screen readers to access.
  • Sending signatures as graphics increases the size of your overall email message, which increases the time it takes for both you sending the message, and your recipient to receive it.
  • Depending upon the content of your email message, if your signature is an image it may increase the likelihood of your message being flagged as spam.
  • If the signature is included in the email as a link to an image hosted on a website (i.e. a remote image), recipients with automatic download of remote images disabled will not see the it.

 

Crafting the Signature

Now that you have a good understanding of the elements, and formatting options associated with email signatures, lets start crafting one. In the examples below we'll be creating a signature for Spirit, the UAA mascot.

 

Standard Email Signature Delimiter

There is a long-standing convention, originating in Usenet news as early as April 1983, and commonly used in email (documented in RFC 3676 section 4.3) of using "-- " (that is Dash Dash Space) as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message.

The benefits of using the standard email signature delimiter aids readers in identify the end of messages; more importantly, though it also lets email programs and services identify signatures easily. Some programs opt to treat signatures that start with a standard signature separator in a special manner. They may:

• Layout the signature in a special color or font
• Hide the signature and all quoted text initially altogether, only to be viewed on demand

There is no need to use the email signature delimiter if your signature block is obviously identifiable; however, it is a nice touch and a place to display your Internet acumen.

 

The Basics

There is no reason to over think an email signature. All you really need is the following:

--  Your Name Title (optional) Department (optional) Company

 

Simple. Here's an example of what that might look like:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage

 

Add Your Email Address

There is a train of thought that believes putting your email address in your signature is akin to placing two return address stickers on an envelope, or at a social event reintroducing yourself after the host has already done so.

"Jane, this is Matt."

"Hi, Jane. My name is Matt."

It certainly seams superfluous, and a waste of space because one could always hover the mouse over the sender's name to display the address, unless it's already visible, or just hit the reply button.

However, consider that email communication goes out to a wide variety of destinations that often does not retain the originating message's "from" line such as in the following circumstances:

• Mailing lists typically replace the sender's email address with that of the list
• It is not uncommon to forward messages to other individuals

Including your email address in your signature allows individuals to contact you easily, regardless of how they received your email message.

So our example might become something like the following:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage E: spirit@alaska.edu

 

Add Your Office Phone Number

While electronic communication is the norm for many, sometimes people just need to talk to someone. Including your office phone number is a great way for individuals to reach you.

So our example might become something like the following:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage E: spirit@alaska.edu P: (907) 786-0000 F: (907) 786-0001

 

Include Your Office Location

Including your office address is a great way to make it easier for individuals to locate you for in-person meetings.

So our example might become something like the following:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage 3211 Providence Drive, ADM 000 Anchorage, AK 99508 E: spirit@alaska.edu P: (907) 786-0000 F: (907) 786-0001

 

Include Your Photo

Research has shown that people find it easier to remember visuals better than words, and the most memorable photos contain people. Consider adding a face to your name to help people remember you easier.

If you elect to include a photo, here are some suggestions:

• It should be a professional image, avoid selfies, or crops from larger photos.
• Dress professionally.
• Keep the image small. Large images makes the overall email larger, and takes longer to send.
• Use a neutral background to avoid distractions.
• For a more approachable image, look straight at the camera.
• Use a headshot instead of a full body photo to avoid making your face too small.

So our example might become something like the following:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage 3211 Providence Drive, ADM 000 Anchorage, AK 99508 E: spirit@alaska.edu P: (907) 786-0000 F: (907) 786-0001

 

The Results

 

Plain Text

The final result for a plain-text signature may look something like the following:

--  Spirit Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage 3211 Providence Drive, ADM 000 Anchorage, AK 99508 E: spirit@alaska.edu P: (907) 786-0000 F: (907) 786-0001

 

It gets the important information across with the minimum amount of fuss, and is just about guaranteed to be accessible no matter what device a person is reading your email on.

 

With Style

You definitely want your email signature to be easy to read as this improves the ability for people to find your contact information. Adding a little bit of HTML/CSS formatting can improve the legibility of the signature by breaking up an otherwise potential wall of text into bit sized chunks that is easy for eye to scan.

 

Spirit  Mascot University Advancement University of Alaska Anchorage p: (907) 786-0000 f: (907) 786-0001 e: spirit@alaska.edu 3211 Providence Drive, ADM 000 Anchorage, AK 99577 www.uaa.alaska.edu

 

Recommendation

We generally recommend the use of either plain text, or HTML/CSS formatted email signatures in order to ensure both greatest compatibility/accessibility, and ease of maintainability. For those desiring a signature with a bit more flare, without having to learn a bunch of HTML/CSS coding, look for a good signature builder online. There are many free, or low cost options available.

 

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