Thanks to Abu Salem Saem for contributing to this article!
Email signatures can help your emails come across as more professional while providing your correspondent the means to learn more about you. Think of a signature as a 21st-century business card. It makes you more memorable. Here’s how to create a signature.
What Information to Include
If you use one email address for sending all emails, then you’ll want to include all relevant information about you – possibly including all positions you currently hold.
However, as is more likely, if you use different email addresses for sending different types of emails, you’ll want to tailor what information you include based on the purpose of the email address.
Here are some pieces of information to consider including:
Name. This one should appear in all signatures. Typically, you’ll only want to list your First and Last Name.
Email. Whether to include your email is up to you! Considering you’re sending the message from your email though, including your address is redundant and we therefore don’t recommend it.
Phone Number. Only include your phone number if you’re comfortable with anyone you’d potentially send an email to receiving your phone number. For this reason, if you’re creating a signature for your company email, you might want to use a company phone number and not your personal cell phone number.
Positions/Experiences. This information should mimic what you’d usually find in your LinkedIn tagline. If you’re currently sending emails on behalf of a company, you want to just list your position at that company. If you’re sending personal emails, you might want to list various job types that characterize you. For example: Author | Data Scientist | Entrepreneur. You can use the | symbol to split these different types.
Company Logo & Website. If you’re sending emails on behalf of your company, including the logo and website will make your email come across as more official and professional – which can actually improve your response rate!
Personal Websites. If you’re sending emails out on your own behalf, you might want to include your personal website if you have one.
Social Media Profiles. You should definitely include your LinkedIn profile. You might also want to include your Twitter handle, Instagram, or wherever else you’re active professionally. I (Janani) once got a response just because I’d included my LinkedIn profile and they were able to check out my resume without having to contact me first.
Call to Action. If you’d like your readers to do something, you can also include a call to action with a link to more information. For example, “Read my latest articles” or “Get involved today.”
How to Create an Email Signature
You can create your signature design with Photoshop, Illustrator, or even Word/Google Docs.
If you’re trying to create it in Word/Google Docs, you can use a table to space out the information.
You’ll want to make sure that the color scheme either fits your company (it’s the same as the ones for your company) or your vibe (if you’re a hard rock band member, you’d hardly want to use a pastel).
Check out this document for some of our Word Templates and feel free to use them!