Let’s pretend we’re playing a game of Operation. Only instead of little plastic white bones and organs that you’re delicately lifting from their place in the body, we’ll be dissecting an email signature, and what makes for a successful one.
You’ve got limited (but very, very valuable) real estate to make an impression that often lasts longer than the content of the email itself. Pack it full of every useful piece of information you can so your recipient is left thinking about you long after they’ve moved on from the email.
We spend a great deal of time overanalyzing our email signatures, so we’re inviting you to overanalyze with us. And don’t worry. In this version of the game, there’s no jarring, triggering buzzing sound.
Your Name and Other Vitals
Yes, this is an obvious one, but it’s not just your name you need to be thinking about. What size is the text? Big enough to read, but not so big that it’s weirdly overwhelming to your recipient?
What about your font? Avoid a cheugy (did we use that right?) font like Comic Sans, or a bright color that will inevitably distract from your information.
For a clean, easy-to-read design, stack your name over your title, then over your phone number and any other vitals you want to include (pro-tip: You don’t need you to include your email address. They, uh, already have that one).
It’s cool if you want to set your name apart from your title and other information with a different color and slightly different size. Remember: It’s all a fine balance of being memorable without being too gaudy or, worse, becoming email furniture.
Keep it simple like this:
A few examples of what NOT to do (lolz):
Call-to-Action Button
We said it before, and we’re saying it again: Don’t👏 waste👏 a 👏 single👏 pixel in your signature. A well-placed call-to-action button can make a WORLD of difference in giving your recipient as many clickable options within your email signature.
For example, use a CTA to move the conversation to chat (made easy with Terminus’ Chat From Anywhere™) or request more reviews from your customer base.
Social Icons
Think of your email signature as a beautiful byproduct to the body of an email. A side effect, if you will (bringing it back to our Operation theme).
You obviously know who you’re sending your email to, and why. That’s all a given. But what you don’t know is what else they could be interested in spending their time on. In fact, they might not even know that. So, once more: Give your recipient no option other than to continue connecting with your brand.
By including every social media platform you’re on, they’ll be able to click straight to the platform of their choosing—creating a connection with a potential fan longer than the 45 seconds it took them to read that email.
“We added social icons into our email signature template and tagged them to understand what kind of traffic we were generating to our social channels. We saw 173,000+ clicks on these social media icons across all employee email signatures, which led to hundreds of new followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Glassdoor.” – Kimberly Bird, Director of Communications & PR, Kforce
Dynamic Email Banner
This is the big one. This is our bread and butter, obviously, so we’re saving the best for last here. When we talk about email signature real estate, this is your multi-million-dollar mansion with the three swimming pools on a private island. We hope the exaggeration indicates just how invaluable this space is, but there’s no exaggeration about what you can do with it.
Terminus is able to identify the sender and recipient of each email, allowing marketers to use their employee email volume as a new strategic channel for ABM. Teams can import lists directly into the application or connect to the smart and static lists in other platforms. Audiences can vary from industries and verticals all the way down to specific accounts and contacts. Recipient lists can even be built around and triggered by opportunity stage in your CRM!
With Terminus Email, you’ll be able to manage banners with ease, creating perfectly on-brand promotions to your latest events, product news, content releases, and more. Retargeting at its finest, these sender-based or recipient-based banners will always be timely and on point, using this valuable channel to its fullest capacity. The creative possibilities are endless, and you can take comfort knowing no opportunity was wasted.
