How to use your email signature as marketing tool

An email signature is a block of texts attached to the end of an email (Wikipedia). It is generally used to provide information about the email sender.

Though inconspicuous, an email signature is one of the most important aspects of the entire email, which can be used as a free marketing tool to enhance your business.

Imagine your email signature as a billboard where you have to pay N1 for placing your contact details on, how much would you have spent so far using it?



Not only is the email signature free, it can also serve as your personal billboard which can be customisable to suit your needs or to reflect your brand personality.

Still unsure how to use your email as a marketing tool? Here are ways to help.

Reflect your brand personality

What does your company stand for? What are your values? What image should your brand reflect?

Your email signature should reflect your brand persona – serious, fun-loving, feminine or masculine, etc. First, you have to understand the psychology behind your brand.

It simply helps the person at the receiving end to attach an emotion to your company if the person is coming in contact with it for the first time. It also is a great way of communicating a new change in your business.

To achieve this, you can incorporate images into your email signature that reflect the core of your job role or if you’re working in a bigger agency where there is a standard template, you may suggest this. Your choice of font, placement of your name; even as little as whether you use cap lock or not, can reflect your brand personality.

By paying attention to this, you use your email signature to market your business without paying for it.

Contact details

Ever signed an email with your name without bothering to add contact details? You’ve missed out on great opportunities for the recipient to contact you in the future.

Not just your phone number, your contact details can also include alternative email addresses, social media links where available, website and/or blog address.

A friend of mine presents her contact details in an automated ‘Out of office’ response email such that when you send her an email, you instantly receive an automated email from her end outlining multiple ways you can reach her instantly without waiting for her to reply her mail. This is a creative way to grab attention./

Ad space

You can treat your email signature as an adspace where you run information on what’s new in your business, make announcements, advertise a product or share contest details. You can promote conferences, events, downloads and others. These can be treated as a link below your name where details are presented in an illustration which will prompt visitors to click.

To achieve this, you can design a block to use as your personal ad space placed below your name and contact details. Create links or put up your ad image as a link ensuring the links work in directing the recipient to landing pages that have a solid call-to-action. Also, ensure that portion of your email address is visible enough to attract but not small enough that the recipient dismisses or misses it altogether.

Share posts

If you write or publish often, your email signature is a great way to show others your work. Now, this may be a bit tricky to do manually; that is, inserting a link every time you want to send an email. However, several software programmes for generating email signatures can help pull information from your blog or even LinkedIn articles. The result is that anytime you send an email, your latest post automatically shows in your email signature.

Before you start

Before you start redesigning your email signature, there are one or two things to note. Your email signature should not double the length of your mail. In other words, keep it short, simple and straight to the point but not inconspicuous.

Also, remember to include relevant contact details in your email signature, and if you have multiple email addresses, configure each email signature to sufficiently represent the email address you’re using.

Finally, the more illustrative your email signature is, the more attractive it will become, the more likely recipients engage with it. It’s not out of place to use your photo in an email signature or an image that reflects what you’re selling.

In one of my email signatures I use the photo of a pen to showcase my writing/communication skills. If I owned an email address tied to a restaurant, I could use the photo of one of my special recipes! That would surely tempt more customers to my door if that photo links directly to my website.

Conclusion

As trivial as an email signature seems, it can be used as a marketing tool for your business if used creatively. Hopefully, the notes above can help you make the most use of your email signature.