A carefully enacted branding and marketing strategy are critical to enhancing a brand’s reach in its target market. A wide range of visuals, such as a logo and business card, contribute to implementing the strategy successfully. But an email signature is often neglected visually, but it is among the most effective tools to build trust for a company’s branding and marketing campaign.
Most companies, especially smaller ones, need to pay more attention to their email signatures. Instead, they randomly sign away their email messages without knowing that it builds confusion and mistrust amongst the recipients. In turn, such wrong messaging harms a business more than doing good.
So, put a professionally created email signature before you start your email branding and marketing campaign.
What should an email signature include?
While creating your email signature, include some key details in it to make it worthwhile for the recipient of your message. Include these details:
- The email signature owner’s name
- Company name
- Company or the signature owner’s address
- Social media page links and icons
- An image of an individual or brand
- A brand’s tagline
You can add some more details. But ensure they do not make the design cluttered and overwhelming for the viewers.
What makes a unique email signature?
Before you start designing your email signature, know what makes an email signature stand out. Here are two characteristics of such a signature
- It conveys information and a message – Make sure your email signature has all the essential details your audience needs to know. They should not be looking for contact information elsewhere.
- It engages viewers – Your email signature must also immediately make a rapport with the viewers and engage them with your brand. Only a crispy design relevant to your brand’s campaign can drive their attention.
Here is what to ensure while designing your email signature.
- Keep it simple and clean: Avoid using too many colors, fonts, or graphics in your signature. Stick to a simple, clean design that is consistent with your brand.
- Include your logo: Your logo is a key element of your brand, and including it in your email signature will help to build brand recognition.
- Include your contact information: Make sure your email signature includes your name, job title, company name, and contact information, such as your phone number and website.
- Use actionable call-to-action (CTA): Add a call-to-action like “Learn more” or “Contact us” in your signature. This can help drive traffic to your website or encourage recipients to get in touch with you.
- Use social media links: Include links to your company’s social media accounts in your email signature. This can help increase visibility and engagement with your brand on social media.
- Keep it consistent: Use the same email signature across all your email communication to create consistency and a professional image.
- Make it mobile-friendly: As most of the emails are opened on mobile devices, make sure that your email signature is optimized for mobile devices so that it doesn’t look distorted.
- Test it: Before finalizing your email signature, test it across different email clients and devices to make sure it looks as it should.
Know your business goal.
Before designing your email signature, know why you need one such signature. You should see if it is to increase your social media following or if it is to invite people to an event. Considering the purpose, you will incorporate the design elements and content accordingly.
For example, if social media promotion is the goal, include links and icons of your social pages in the signature design. You will choose the links, banners, graphics, and pictures depending on the purpose.
Explore different design elements.
In the initial phase of designing your email signature, try out a range of colors, fonts, graphics, etc., elements. While exploring these elements’ potential, think of an overall picture of how the signature should look.
In deciding which will best suit your brand personality, compare them for impact and legibility. Each color, font, and graphic should contribute its bit to making the signature look aesthetically pleasing.
When experimenting with different designs, keep your competitors’ email signatures in mind to create an email signature that stands out.
Make it minimalist and clean
Your signature design should convey its brand message and personality cleanly and simply. Avoid incorporating every other element and thought that comes to your mind. Instead, remove all the extra parts of the design and keep only those sufficient to achieve your design goals.
A large image on one side and a name, along with an address on the other, make an impressive email signature.
Create for brand consistency
While experimenting with different elements of colors, fonts, shapes, etc., remember your brand image and personality. Your signature design must be consistent with brand visuals, such as the website, business card, and logo.
The viewers should immediately identify with the signature design if they have seen your logo and other visuals elsewhere. So, ensure that the signature design is consistent with your brand image to build trust.
Pick colors and fonts strategically
Colors and fonts are two distinct elements that will give your business email signature personality and emotion. Choose one or two colors and fonts that best stand for your brand.
If it is a signature for a brand, use brand colors and fonts already in its logo, website, business cards, and other visuals.
Think of the file size and dimension
Another consideration is the format file size and dimension of the signature. For most email signatures, the recommended file size is 100KB. So, keep your image file size within this limit.
When determining the signature dimensions, it should preferably be around 300–600 px wide and 150–200 px high.
Create visual hierarchy
Your email signature design should be such that it leads the viewers’ eye from start to finish in a systematic way. A randomly designed piece might confuse viewers since it fails to bring their attention to the most important element first.
The most important part of designing a business email signature is that it should catch the eye first and instantly. It could be a name or an image, or anything else.
Then, give the call to action at the bottom of the signature. But make it distinguishable and recognizable.
Make a mobile-friendly signature
Most of your target customers search and shop on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which have smaller screens. Therefore, your branding and marketing campaign will yield results if people quickly locate your signature for trust on the smaller devices.
So, consider these device screens as well. Then, create a signature that responds well to the tiny dimensions of such devices. You should learn how to create responsive designs first before setting out to create signatures.
Get feedback
Don’t get satisfied with your email signature design until you win others’ appreciation. Once you finish the design work, take it to your company’s officials, co-workers or friends and ask for their feedback. Get a different perspective to make the design look great.
Overall, the right decision about the design elements will help create an email signature that stands out from your competitors’ similar visuals. Take a look at your email signature and redesign it if more is needed to convey its message to the new target audience.
Conclusion
Your email signature design must include all key contact details for the recipients, but it should be a clean and simple signature that is aesthetically pleasing. Color and font must reflect your brand personality.
