Signatures can be a useful form of providing contact information and adding a bit of personality in your emails for the people you communicate with online. Email signatures provide contact information to your correspondents. More importantly, they can be effective ways of promotion and building brand awareness. Like a signature in a forum post, you’d be hard pressed to find a marketing technique that is as easy as adding a few lines to the bottom of every email that you send.

The signature below is a typical signature designed to primarily offer contact information. A traditional business may include this form of contact email signature and may include a ‘one-liner’ to help promote their business.

Brian Hawkins, Site Administrator
http://briandhawkins.com/
Belleville, MI 734-732-9230
“That’s Right, I Said It”

As an internet marketer, I want to do more promoting with less formal contact information. I want them to go to my site/s and see what I offer.

Does that mean you should only use a signature for correspondence to new contacts? I don’t think so. Every email you send should have an email signature. If I send my mother an email, I attach a signature. It may seem a little arrogant at first, but I want everyone that I stay in touch with to remember that I’m in business. We don’t want to talk exclusively about our business during every conversation and email, that would be very boring for the other party. A signature is a simple and subtle reminder about your business. Your Brother or Mother may not require your service or even be interested in it but they do meet other people. If they just glanced at your signature earlier that day they may be more likely to mention your site to someone that does need it.

Here are a few actual examples that I use. The first one primarily promotes one site and the second one invites them to visit other sites. The third is a little cross promotion.

_________________________________________________
Brian Hawkins http://extremeezine.com/
:: Internet Marketing & Advertising experts ::

_________________________________________________
Brian Hawkins
Visit Our Other Sites
Extreme Ezine: http://extremeezine.com/
Ad Tracker: http://youradtracker.com/
Personal blog: http://briandhawkins.com/

_________________________________________________
Brian Hawkins
http://extremeezine.com/

– know WHO clicked WHAT and WHEN
http://youradtracker.com/

HTML:
I don’t recommend it but you can use HTML in your signature to spice it up a bit. Don’t get carried away though. Some email clients/services may block your html so they won’t even see the file or worse yet, it displays as raw html code.

Here’s a tempting exception but still a bad idea:

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Use this format when adding links in your text signature: http://youradtracker.com/ This format will allow most email hosts and programs to read the URL as a hotlink. A hotlink just means that it’s ‘clickable‘.

Graphics:
I recommend that you avoid graphics in your signature. Many email services and clients offer image blocking to reduce the chance of viruses and to eliminate the risk of finding offensive graphics. Adding your banners or Company Logo may be tempting but unless it’s in an opt-in newsletter it’s a bad idea.

The second reason not to use graphics in your signature is file size. It adds to the overall file size and may take too long to load. If too large, the file email may fail to load altogether.

And the final reason is it can look amateurish. Everyone’s going to see you as a newbie. Especially with animated graphics. It’s distracting and unprofessional. Resist that need to look ‘cute’ and concentrate on promoting your business.

Sound:
Bad idea. For all the same reasons as graphics but I believe using sound is even worse. Never use a jingle in your email. Can you say ‘obnoxious’?

Jokes and Quotes:
These may seem like a good idea but they can be distracting. And to what end? Unless you are promoting a Jokes and quotes site what is the point? The same with inspirational or poetic phrases and similar junk. It’s just a pointless waste of ad space.

Keep it simple:
Remember, it’s a signature not a monologue. Too long or too many links defeats the purpose. Writing an entire paragraph for an email signature is overkill and just seems desperate.

Promo Taglines:
Taglines, slogons and one line promotions fit nicely in an e-mail signature. I would avoid silly taglines that are funny and stick to those that will attract the recipient’s attention and make them click through.

Reply emails:
Have you ever sent correspondence back and forth by using the reply feature of email? We all do it because it’s easy and both parties can scan the older emails to remind them what was last said. These are the exception when it comes to email signatures. There’s no need to keep adding your signatures over and over on the same page.

Fun and Creative:
If you absolutely must be unique and show your creativity then ASCII art might be the way to go. Personally, I think it looks amateurish but I can see where a little well thought out piece might attract attention.

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Image of ASCII art from http://www.network-science.de/ascii/:

Just my opinion,
Brian Hawkins

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