Everything is branded these days, even email signatures. But there was a time when people used the same footer: "Sincerely," "Best regards," and a name followed by position. Ever since then, things have been different. For those who want to benefit from every single opportunity to promote their brand, it's no longer acceptable to use such incomplete sign-offs. Especially with email signature generators on the market. 

(Photo : newoldstamp.com)

We are going to talk about the evolution of professional email signatures and the ways how a well-designed email footer can help every business growth. 

The original purpose of email signatures

The original purpose of email signatures was to provide recipients with a sender's name and some additional information about them and their company (job title, phone numbers, additional email addresses, etc.) Some email users even managed to have multi-lined signatures that listed all their current projects with progress bars for each. However, in most cases, emails were ended by simple phrases such as "Sincerely," "Best regards," or "Looking forward to meeting with you soon," followed by a sender's name.

Source: https://twitter.com/glcarlstrom/status/988378101552992257?lang=da

Adding images to signatures

Later on, it has become popular to add little profile images aligned with the text of an email signature. This added a personal touch and helped partners and new clients get to know a sender better through an email message. Of course, it was common to see pictures from the beach with a glass of tequila, a hero from anime which a user associated with themself, and other poor-quality unprofessional shots.

Turning email signatures into business cards

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Over time, personal email signatures have evolved into digital business cards. Companies started automatically append signature blocks to messages of all employees. These electronic business cards had company logos, the sender's name, position, phone number, office address, and even a legal disclaimer. Often, the signatures even had the exact appearance of a business card.

The main idea behind such unified sigs was to create instant brand recognition, maintain organizational consistency, and communicate professionalism and credibility from every company representative.

Using email signatures as marketing messages

While creating a professional email signature for each member of an organization is a great idea, a so-called electronic business card doesn't use the potential that a modern email signature has to offer. 

Think of how many emails each employee sends and replies to every day. Now, let's say your company is going to present a new version of the app at an exhibition. How many current and potential customers do you want to know about that? As many as possible, right?

If all the employees add information about your app presentation to their email footers, email by email, more and more email recipients will see the news about the exhibition.

Now, imagine that all these contacts have an option to ask you a question, schedule a meeting, reserve a seat, download some additional information about your product/service right from your email signature.

Good email signatures always include a clear call to action (CTA) that helps the recipients take the action the sender wants. Recipients simply click the button and get to a landing page, download something, buy tickets, etc. 

So, if designed and used properly, email signatures can become a good marketing channel that doesn't require large sums of money. You create an email footer template once, and it works for you the rest of the time.

Managing corporate email signatures

We have all seen some crazy email signatures with rainbow colors, fancy fonts, multiple CTAs, links to all social media accounts, and perhaps we have even been guilty of creating those. However, email signatures in companies are an important part of a brand. Non-uniform crazy sigs are unacceptable. That's why it's not the best idea to let employees create the signatures themselves. 

Big companies usually have IT staff to install the signatures. But when it comes to email footers as a marketing channel, it's obvious that teams will need to update the signature banners on a regular basis. Not every employee is so tech-savvy to be able to do it without the help of IT people. 

And while on average, it only takes an employee about five-ten minutes each to update the email sigs, when you add up the number of employees, you will see that that's quite a lot of precious company time spent on just updating email footers. 

Fortunately, it is possible to update and manage all the company signatures in just a few clicks with the right email signature generator at hand. 

Here is an example of a good corporate email signature.

(Photo : newoldstamp.com)

Final words

Gone are the days when organization-people ended their emails with their name, job title, "Sincerely," and "Best regards." Nowadays, many are already taking advantage of their professional email signatures to let their email recipients know who they are and where they work. They treat their email signature as a business card. That's why they add a professional headshot, company logo, name, job title, and contact details.

However, an email signature can be designed and used even more wisely. Then it can become a powerful marketing tool that promotes a brand in every email an employee sends and replies to.

With signatures, employees can promote the company's recent blog posts, software releases, updates, events, items in an online store, white papers, newsletters, and much more. Calls to action and promotional banners help engage recipients and make them take the desired actions right from the email signature. 

For large companies, it's difficult to create, install, and manage all the employees' email footers by hand. But many already know what email signature software is and how it can help save time and money by letting them manage all the company's signatures from a central location. 

As you can see, there is nothing complicated about email signatures. When you know how to do it right, you no longer will hire extra staff, ask employees to update anything, and miss huge marketing opportunities a professional email signature can provide.