The Anatomy of a Killer Email Signature Block

What’s in an email signature? Well, for one, it’s often your only opportunity to “market” yourself [and your firm] in a professional correspondence. You see, no one likes getting a “pitch” via email from anyone, much less a professional service provider that they respect. But an email signature? That’s just a benign, boiler-plate block of text that goes on every email, right? Wrong! When done properly an email signature can:

• Reinforce your Brand
• Establish your expertise
• Increase your audience
• Increase event attendance
• Provide means of connecting
• Humanize your persona
• Avert embarrassment
• Offer your services
• Demonstrate your technical prowess
• Promote your cause
• Solidify consistency across your organization

Wow, can it do all that? Yes, it can! But… but… how? Hold on, I’ll show you.

 

Each day I get at least two email responses along the lines of: “BTW, your email sig is so cool. Can our firm rock that?” Don’t be so impressed, I get over 1000 emails a day, so the average is not that high. But YES your firm can! Especially if you are a FirmWise client, because we have a nifty email signature tool that allows you to manage the signatures for your entire firm (professional staff included). Why would we build a tool when you can just make this in Outlook^TM, you may ask? I’m glad you did, because before we built the tool, we tried to do this manually. Even for a small agency like ours we learned that:

• Trying to make sure each one is consistent is near impossible.
• Making edits to existing signature blocks within Outlook^TM is a nightmare.
• Oh, the attorneys decided they want their support staff info included.
• Having to change 50 cards when an address changes? No thanks.
• You can forget getting signature blocks to look right outside of Outlook^TM (like on a phone).
• Some people are just lazy or simply refuse to install it.
• You can’t add marketing messages “on the fly” which is a critical feature.

So, now that you’re convinced that you need our tool, let’s figure out what to put on your signature block. Well, even if you don’t need our tool, let’s think this through…

 

THE BASICS: Obviously, you want your name and title along with your phone numbers, but how you display them is critically important. I’ve seen signature blocks that look like they were created after a night of drinking homemade moonshine. The key is to keep the information neat, and distanced enough so that each block is easy to find. Of utmost importance are the links back to your website and bio. Did you know that adding links to your signature blocks can boost your website traffic by as much as 10%? We’ve seen it go higher in some cases.

 

THE BRANDING: How you incorporate your logo and style/identity is even more important. The key here is to make your logo BIG. Make it stand out. Be loud and be proud. Supplement it with a tagline that identifies your expertise. And for heaven’s sake use the darn graphic that your designer sent. Don’t try to substitute it with that colored ‘close enough’ text. This isn’t an exercise in SEO, it’s an opportunity to permanently ingrain your logo into the reader’s head. That’s why they call it branding. Tssssssss

[Note: we store your images on a CDN so they’re always available. Some people prefer to embed the images so they can be seen offline, but our research shows people read email offline less than 1% of the time.]

 

THE BIDDING of ADIEU: Some folks like to say “sincerely” or “regards” while their friends across the pond say “cheers” or “godspeed”. It’s all good, but if you work for a law firm, some people get testy when you say “peace out” or “drops mic”. So we actually try to incorporate either a standard valediction or a random one selected from a safe list into the automatically generated signature block. We started this practice when one marketer actually sent us an email saying “I don’t know how to tell him nicely, but [name excluded to protect the guilty] keeps signing his emails with ‘may the lord be with you’ and the partners think it is too much for our LGBT clients.” So although it can be edited each time an email is written, it’s a pain to do so, and just think of all the time you are saving your whole firm by not having to make them think about it too. To you and you and you.

[Typically, we randomize between 5-10 hygienic complimentary closing phrases but can also allow individuals to specify their own preferred phrase].

 

THE BIO: Let’s face it, we all like communicating with people better when we know what they look like. I mean, what’s the first thing you do when you get an email from someone you don’t know? Yeah, me too! And what’s the first thing you do when you get to their LinkedIn profile? Same! I also click on the photo to see them better. So do your corresponding counterpart a favor and show them your punim (that’s face in Yiddish). For a little extra flavor, add a fun fact about yourself. It will make them feel like they are communicating with a real person; not that autoresponder you set to pretend like you are out of the office.

[The FirmWise signature block tool can grab photos directly from your website bios to include in the block]

 

THE BLAST: Ever say to yourself “gosh I wish we had some way of blasting everyone we know with an invitation to our next event… ooh, or to announce our new website… ooh, or to let them know we are celebrating our 100^th anniversary”? If so, you have ADD. But what marketer doesn’t? So what better way to do so than to send a simple “Hey bro, I love your latest blog post <3” message followed by your email signature with your announcement on full blast? Some firms use it simply to ask for support of a worthy cause, or to mourn a lost member. But imagine the power of being able to control this message for an entire law firm! Mooohahaha.  >8-<↝

[FirmWise clients get to customize this message from their web console, and can even integrate dynamic data from the website such as the next upcoming event(s). They can change the message as often as they like.]

 

THE BRIDGE: (You didn’t think I could keep it up did you? Me neither.) After all the good stuff you packed in that signature block suitcase of yours, don’t forget to include your social media and contact links (or a link to your vCard). And please don’t take that literally and type out the ACTUAL LINKS! I mean icons. Simple, clean, pretty ones. Want to come off as super-nerdy? I do. Add a QR code like mine. Beyond the flavorful aroma, these codes allow someone to easily text you (or call/email/whatevz) without having to actually re-type your number in on that miniscule on-screen keyboard with their fat fumbling fingers. Can you tell I’ve texted the wrong people dozens a handful of times?

 

THE BLUES: Not all email clients will support HTML, so you need to “degrade gracefully” as we call it in tech. That means having “plain text” and “rich text” alternatives to your nifty signature.

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. With marketing automation tools flooding the interwebs, pretty soon everyone will have custom links that allow you to track their every move online. But that is a topic for another day. For now, you can just pimp your firm’s signature blocks, or if you need assistance, I’ve got a guy!

I’d love to see what you all come up with, so please post in the comments, and I’ll put the best ones up in a future post.