The professional e-mail signature, a real guarantee of credibility
22.7 million. This is the number of French people who logged on to at least one e-mail account every day in 2019 (Médiamétrie). Email therefore remains the main mode of communication in the professional world, and represents a real guarantee of professionalism for users.
With nearly 30 e-mails sent every day in France (Radicati Group), the e-mail signature is essential and represents a significant opportunity to leave a good impression on your interlocutor. It deserves special attention. Indeed, with a quality e-mail signature, you'll attract more attention from your recipients and considerably improve your company's image.
Would you like to create or optimize your e-mail signature? You've come to the right place. Discover the 4 essential steps to setting up your signature, supported by valuable advice, tools, examples and best practices!
6 examples of professional e-mail signatures
Signature mail with social networks
Signature mail with CTA (Call to action)
Mail signature with certifications
Simplistic mail signature without logo
Signature mail with news
Mail signature with banner
How to create your professional email signature?
1 - Adapt your content
The shorter your e-mail signature, the greater its impact. Signatures that are too long generally fail to attract attention. Bear in mind that an e-mail signature is first and foremost a signature, so it needs to be concise and clear.
👉 We advise you not to exceed 3 or 4 lines of text.
So, for optimal, appropriate content, you should include the following elements in your e-mail signature:
- First and last name,
- Position,
- Company name, logo and link to website,
- Telephone number and/or postal address
(Inserting a photo is optional but recommended).
Now that you've got the essentials for creating the perfect signature, you've got one or two lines left to personalize your content. For example, we recommend :
- Insert your social networks, in the form of logos, to save space. This can be a real communication lever. For this reason, you should only include in your content the social networks on which you are active.
- Include a "Call to action" (CTA). It can link to the latest article you've posted, the platform on which you manage your appointments, the link on which you offer visitors quotes... This can considerably enhance your content strategy.
- Highlight relevant certifications or achievements, such as an SEO certification, award or ranking. This will promote your expert status and credibility as a professional.
2 - Adopt an HTML format
It's one thing to offer relevant, attractive content; it's quite another to implement a clean, optimal layout! The question of readability must be given just as high a priority as visuals and content.
Not all your recipients have the same e-mail system. As a result, not all images are displayed in the same way. It's therefore advisable to present your content in text format and not 100% image.
👉 Give preference to HTML format. It guarantees optimal display for all mailboxes, and is highly adjustable. You can add images or adjust your text at any time.
If you're not familiar with HTML, don't worry! There are plenty of tools available to help you create your HTML e-mail signature easily and optimally!
We'll introduce them a little further on in this article.
3 - Make sure your e-mail signature is responsive
It's also important to adapt your design and content to all digital formats. An e-mail signature that doesn't display properly on cell phones or tablets can be problematic. Your content must therefore be " Web adaptive" and " Responsive Design". In other words, your content must be adaptable and attractive on any digital device.
The main points you need to pay particular attention to are :
- Font size
Minimum 10px
-
Image size
→ Width between 320 and 600 px
→ Height between 90 and 150 px -
Overall mail signature size
600px wide and 250px high -
Weight
Maximum 120Kb -
Dimensions of clickable areas
They must be large enough to allow the user to click easily. -
The distance between clickable elements
They must be far enough apart to avoid confusion.
4 - Adapt your signature to your teams
By now we know that a beautiful, professional email signature makes you more professional in the eyes of your contacts. But if the customer is communicating with several team members, different signatures will lose you credibility .
A professional email signature must therefore be corporate and respect the company's graphic charter. You must therefore harmonize and unify your collaborators' signatures.
However, harmonizing your e-mail signatures doesn't necessarily mean that they're all identical. Each department or employee can personalize their CTA and/or end-of-line elements. For example
- the sales department can add a CTA to book an appointment or to read the latest white paper;
- the marketing department can add a link to the latest content it has created (article, infographic, etc.);
- the human resources department can add a link to its recruitment platform.
Use the right tools to create a professional e-mail signature
There are several tools available to help you create your professional e-mail signature, whether in terms of content, layout or format. Mail signature management software is a highly effective tool with a number of advantages:
- comprehensive support,
- attractive, optimal signature templates
- automatically generated HTML content and images,
- easier, more intuitive unification of your teams' e-mail signatures,
- optimized signature management,
- analytical functions that let you know how many people clicked on the links you presented in your e-mail signature.
Boost My Mail
Boost My Mail is an ultra-intuitive , easy-to-use editor for creating and automating professional e-mail signatures , enabling users to set up attractive, designer e-mail signatures injust a few clicks.
In addition to its many ready-to-use, 100% customizable e-mail signature templates, the solution offers advanced management of your communication campaigns. As a partner of Canva, Microsoft and Google, the creation and rotation of your automatic banners is simplified and adapted to your business needs. Measure the performance of your campaigns at a glance, with a dashboard of statistics updated in real time , and reinforce your brand image .
Letsignit
The ultra-intuitive, customizable and easy-to-use Letsignit platform is a good example of all the benefits that a high-performance signature creation tool can bring you.
In addition to its RGDP certification, and its Drag & Drop email signature editor, the solution lets you centralize and deploy all your teams' signatures with a single click. Your internal and external communication is amplified and your management simplified. What's more? Thanks to its synchronization with your directory, all your users' details are automatically pre-filled in a secure manner.
The professional e-mail signature, a true guarantee of professionalism
A professional e-mail signature is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, despite an eloquent body text, it represents your last chance to make a good impression on your recipient. If it's optimal and well-executed, it can considerably increase the power of your marketing campaigns and boost your brand image.
That's why it's a good idea to pay special attention to this often untapped tool. However, it is not advisable to implement all the best practices at once, but to select those that are best suited to your needs.
Article translated from French