In this digital day and age, an email signature is considered an essential aspect of online communication. Despite the growth of social media and the informality that comes with it, an email signature is a popular technique helping establish a solid corporate or personal identity.
What is an email signature?
In simple words, it is the text that appears at the bottom of every email sent or received. It comprises crucial details such as the name of the email sender, company name, official website URL, company registration number, address, phone number, and so on.
An email signature is also known as an email footer as it provides the recipients with the necessary information about the business, just as a website footer does.
It is fine to consider the email signature as an online business card that helps create a memorable impression and build a foundation for future relationships.
Five reasons why email signatures are important
1. It helps build a cohesive image across the company’s communication channels and makes the business appear more credible and professional.
2. Since an email signature is designed for every company employee, it accelerates creating brand recognition in those to whom the employees send an email. This includes elements like the business logo, which subtly reinforces our brand identity with each correspondence.
3. It helps establish and reinforce who you are as a company. In fact, the primary goal of professionals in using email signatures is to add visibility to their businesses.
4. An email signature helps employees make a personal association with the people they email to by adding their photo or a handwritten digital signature.
5. Research shows that many professionals use email signatures to market periodically. Yes, that is right. Most people do not realize how it can be used as a marketing tool to promote your social media profiles, a newly launched whitepaper, or a newsletter subscription.
Top nine email signature tools to use for your business
If you have decided to change the way you sign off on email, that is great. You can work with your in-house designer to create a powerful footer for your emails. If you do not have in-house support, you can always go for an email signature tool. Here are the top nine to choose from:
1. WiseStamp
This award-winning email signature manager is perfect for small, medium, and big businesses who are looking to scale-up their game. It allows IT, Marketing, and Brand managers to fully customize their company signature — right from the layout, font type, colors, image shapes, and so on They can then deploy their new branded email signature company-wide, for a limitless amount of employees. Using this tool, every email your business sends out will contribute to building your brand awareness, keeping your brand constantly top-of-mind.
WiseStamp automates your email signature management by integrating with Office 365, and G Suite. This synchronizes your user directory and automates adding or removing users, as well as your users’ signature installation.
You can give your signatures an edge by adding rich features such as a banner, disclaimer, CTA button, scheduler, and so on and tracking their performance during set campaigns. If your company has an active Instagram account, add the images to your email in the form of a grid to share them with your recipients.
WiseStamp is priced at $2 per user per month, so procurement cost will depend on the size of your organization.
WiseStamp also has a free email signature generator for personal use, which can be leveraged to promote yourself as a professional.
2. MySignature
This is a free email signature maker that helps create visually attractive email footers. It offers many templates which you can customize as per your branding guidelines and the information you want to add.
You can use MySignature on the go and design signatures right from your mobile phone. The templates offered by this tool are mobile-friendly and work with most popular email clients such as Apple Mail, Gmail, and Outlook.
You can promote your services more effectively by personalizing email banners with links to necessary sources such as blogs, white papers, landing pages, and so on.
The tool also has various built-in analytics that helps monitor the success of banners, links, and logos added to the signature. The paid packages for MySignature start from $144 per month, billed annually. It gives a special quote to agencies and resellers on request.
3. Email Signature Rescue
It has an intuitive editor that builds and configures HTML email signature — right from the Email Signature Rescue dashboard. They offer a range of attractive pre-made email signature templates that can be customized rather easily from the user account.
If you have a large team, you can duplicate the primary signature and edit accordingly. The footers can then be distributed from the dashboard by clicking the “Email All” button on the dashboard.
The user’s HTML signature package, installation instructions, and the API Key are included in the email. You can create your email signature for Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, and Gmail. There is also a Google Chrome extension for easy usage.
Purchase Email Signature Rescue for $120 per year, and create, manage and install HTML email signatures for up to 10 users. Its pricing touches $240 for 20 users.
4. Crossware Mail Signature
It is an email signature solution catering specifically to enterprises and SMEs. CrossWare Mail Signature has a rich text and HTML editor that enables you to add your unique branding to each email sent by your business every time.
It is an on-premise software that can be installed swiftly. You can centrally add a disclaimer on your emails, adding a layer of legal protection. Your signatures are applied after you hit “Send.” Meaning, no individual device setup is needed.
You can also give specific users on your team access to the software without making them an admin. For example, if you only want your marketing team to create and assign signatures and not your sales team, you can.
Check out the tool for 30 days for free or request a custom quote by visiting their website.
5. Newoldstamp
This email signature builder lets you create a footer for Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail with signup for free trial. It comes with a dynamic and straightforward to navigate online builder, enabling you to design personal signatures without any coding or HTML skills. Newoldstamp signatures are fully responsive across all devices and browsers.
The paid offering of this tool enables you to create a unique design for every department to meet specific business objectives and brand requirements. You can integrate this service with Office 365, Google Workspace, and Exchange.
Some of the features offered by the paid tool include template development, banner campaigns, built-in analytics, and signature auto-updates. You can add a CTA button and social media badges to the footer.
You can purchase Newoldstamp for $79, billed annually for up to five admins, or opt for their most advanced plan for $109, charged annually. Check out the free trial of the builder as well.
6. Xink
Xink is another excellent tool to create and apply email signatures from a dashboard. It fully integrates with Office 365, Apple Mail, and G Suite. It is also GDPR-compliant, which makes it a favorite amongst businesses operating in the UK and EU.
Xink-created email signatures are mobile responsive. If you want to do banner campaigns, you can create personalized, targeted, and professional banners and share special offers, free white paper downloads, and newsletter sign-ups.
You can also benefit from built-in integration with Apple, Salesforce, Google, Zendsk, Campaign Monitor, and so on. They have superior customer service, which is available most of the time on live chat and email.
You can purchase Xink for USD 0.71 per user per month. You can use a calculator on their pricing page to come up with the most appropriate plan. They offer custom pricing plans for education companies and nonprofits.
7. Gimm.io
Formerly known as ZippySig, Gimm.io is a freemium email signature builder that offers 45+ visually compelling templates, 1000+ selected fonts, over 2046 social media icon variations, and multiple interface options such as modifying field names and inserting columns.
Creating a signature using the tool is pretty simple. All you have to do is choose from any of the templates, change the details in it, and instantly share it with your team.
You can also import customer employee information in one go, thanks to Gimmio’s varied table-based formats such as Excel, CSV, and Active Directory.
If you want to access advanced features such as grouped signature updates, pro layout personalization, and multiple signature syndication, purchase it. You can store up to 10 signatures for $70 per year, billed annually.
If you are not sure about Gimm.io, use it for free for 14 days before taking a call.
8. signature.email
It is a flexible email signature creator that helps create beautiful, personalized signatures. signature.email comes with a powerful visual drag-and-drop editor that lets you choose a template followed by colors, fonts, spacing, and the number of fields.
You can save the main structure of the email design and share it with your team via Slack, email, or any other preferred method so that they can personalize it individually. Accomplish uniformity and up your brand consistency with signature.email.
The email signature tool lets you add complex field functionalities such as user fillable fields, locked down fields, and optional fields. signature.email takes pride in being affordable. Its premium version starts from $199 per month for ten base signatures.
9. Rocketseed
This is a solution that helps design and deploy company email signatures at scale. Compatible with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Exchange. You can create signature designs professionally and achieve company-wide brand consistency.
You can be legally compliant by adding the email disclaimer text and run banner marketing campaigns for promoting specific site links and deals. They also have a built-in analytics dashboard for measuring campaign performance.
They have unique pricing plans for businesses operating in Australia and New Zealand. You can get started on their paid version for $2.5 per sender per month. The paid versions also get you a dedicated account manager.
Six best practice tips for a business email signature
1. Keep the signature design minimalistic
Only use your corporate colors and fonts in the footer but do not go overboard while designing. Remember: less is more. Be very clear about what information you want to put in the signature. Too much text can ruin the design. At the end of the day, your signature should look clean.
2. Prioritize your information
Adding to #1, organize and prioritize your information to effectively draw attention to the most important bit of content. For example, you could use the following hierarchy: Name >> Designation >> Business Email >> Company Address >> Social Media Accounts. The entire textual body should not have more than 72 characters.
3. Format the signature properly
Use bold letters on the essential details in the signature and experiment with the font size to showcase specific aspects of the footer, such as your name, awards won, new blog post, and so on. Your font size should be between 10 and 12. Use space dividers to separate different elements in the signature for greater clarity.
4. Use no more than four social media icons or affiliation logos
An email signature is ideal for sharing your social media profiles and promoting your affiliations or accreditations. Your email footer will look cluttered if you add them all. Therefore, choose any two social media channels where you are most active and add 2-3 affiliation logos.
5. Check your signature on mobile
Business emails will also be opened on smartphones, so you must ensure your signature is responsive and adapts to the screen size. Split your contact information into multiple lines so that every line of the text fits on your recipient’s screen.
6. add UTM codes to keep track of signature performance
If you are promoting your social media pages, monthly newsletter, or eBook, add a UTM code to the links and then hyperlink them on the email signature. That way, you can keep track of the number of times a recipient clicked on a specific element.
Over to you
Before you pick an email signature tool of your choice and get busy creating the perfect business email signature, ask yourself: “what do you want to convey about your company?”
The end goal is to create something which represents your brand and gives all the necessary information to the recipients. Whether you are an SMB or an MNC, be sure to treat your email signature with care. Invest time in it and design it wisely. All the best!
Author Bio –
Gaurav Belani is a senior SEO and content marketing analyst at Growfusely, He has more than seven years of experience in digital marketing. He likes sharing his knowledge in a wide range of domains ranging from eCommerce, startups, social media marketing to human capital management and much more. His work is featured in several authoritative business publications. Connect with him on Twitter @belanigaurav
