Common Email Signature Mistakes

Did you know the average person sends 41 emails per day and over 1,000 emails per month?

Over half of professionals have an email signature and if you’re one of the smart ones who does, that’s a lot of emails going out with your signature on it, so lets be sure you’re not making some of the common mistakes people make with their email signature.

39% of us make the #1 mistake in their email signatures, so you are not alone if you are making this mistake: 

Including your email address in your email signature.

Why is that a mistake you may ask?

It’s like introducing yourself to someone, and then introducing yourself again before you leave. It just doesn’t make sense.

Lets take a look at the most common email signature mistakes so we can be sure you’re not making any other signature etiquette mistakes at work.

1. Including your email address

   When someone can simply hit the reply button and your email address is printed out at the top of the email, whats the purpose in repeating that information?

2. Sent from my iPhone

   Most people like to leave this default setting because they think it will remove the responsibility of proper grammar and spell checking, but if you’re sending work emails from a mobile device, you had better be sure both your grammar and spelling are up to check. Missing these types of things can reflect poorly on your attention to detail.

3. Not promoting your website, in a unique way

   Create a call to action in your signature so people have a reason to visit your website.
   E.G – Latest from our blog: 7 Important Things Your Business Needs to Know About Content Marketing

4. Listing every social media profile

   Keep it to the relevant social media profiles that matter most to building your business or personal brand. No one wants to see 20 social media icons, keep it simple and you have a higher chance of someone clicking through.

5. Using large images that take forever to load

   If you’re adding images to your email signature, make sure they are low in size, as your recipient is not going to wait around for your email signature to load.

6. Copying and pasting images into your signature

   If you paste an image as your signature, it will most often appear as an attachment rather than embedded in the signature.

7. Not including a contact number

   The two most common ways people will contact you is via Email and Phone. They already have the first, so don’t forget to provide them the second.

8. Forgetting an area code or international prefix

   If you’re dealing with interstate or international clients, don’t forget to add your area code or international prefix, the email recipient shouldn’t have to look it up.

9. Using a cheesy quote

   You may find a particular quote inspirational, but keep the motivational images and quotes to your social media pages, email signatures are about contact information.

10. Coloured, large or weird font

    Keep in mind some people are still printing your emails off, so don’t use colours in your fonts that will not print off well or make it hard for the viewer to read e.g Yellow.
    Extra large or weird fonts are not pleasant on the eye when reading an email, they look unprofessional and messy, so keep it to clean styled fonts.

11. Long URLs or Hyperlinks

    Keep your URLs short and your Hyperlinks as titles
    For a URL keep it to iproperty.com.au, we don’t need the whole http://www.iproperty.com.au.
    Instead of https://iproperty.zendesk.com/hc/en-us, make it a title such as Help Centre that hyperlinks to that URL.
    Now we are telling them what they will find there, rather than where to look.

12. Including every service you provide

    Like your social media links and/or icons, keep it relevant.
    People aren’t going to read a large list of services, so best to keep it short and simple and that way people will actually notice the services, rather than just an eyesore of a list.

13. Using an entire email image as your signature

    Not all email clients handle images well, also some people may have a security setting on their email client so that images are not automatically displayed. We don’t want to risk a recipient not seeing our entire signature, so if you are adding images, keep it to items that are not imperative a recipient receives, such as your profile photo.
    As long as the recipient still receives your contact information, your signature is still fulfilling its purpose.

14. Not testing your signature in multiple email clients

    Just because your email signature looks great on one email client, doesn’t necessarily mean it will look great on another.
    If you are using Gmail, send it to someone you know using Outlook, and someone else using another email client such as Apple’s Mail.

Keep in mind these 14 mistakes are only for email signatures, when it comes to your website or social media, feel free to express yourself a lot more freely, as that’s where people have come for more information.