The Evolution of Email Signatures

It can be all too easy to take your email signature for granted. It’s there. It serves a purpose.

However, with so many potential benefits, including brand profile, marketing growth, customer satisfaction, and improved internal comms, there is a lot more to business email signatures than meets the eye.

Discover how email signatures have evolved in recent years as we take a trip down memory lane. Plus, find out how you can ensure you can make the most of yours for maximum impact.

The basic email signature

The original purpose of a professional business signature was simply to provide recipients with the sender’s name and some basic information about them and their company. This included their job title, phone number, and company website.

Although some people added additional information, in most cases, emails were ended with a simple “yours sincerely” or “best regards”.

The inclusion of an image

The next development in email signatures was the addition of an image. Typically this involved a small profile image to go alongside the text part of the signature. This added a personal touch and allowed new clients to get to know the sender better. Unfortunately, at this time, poor-quality images were commonplace, as were unprofessional, personal photographs.

It was also common for images to be ‘referenced’ (ie. the email contained links to the images hosted on a webpage) which, by default, most email programs, such as Outlook or Gmail do not display. This resulted in images appearing as a red corner ‘X’ and requiring to be downloaded separately. To avoid this, Rocketseed embeds images by default so they display automatically on every device.

The evolution into digital business cards

Over time, professional email signatures turned into digital business cards, and companies started to add these signature blocks to the messages of all their employees. This often relied on individual employees following installation and design guidelines or IT departments setting them up individually. This was time-consuming and left the signatures open to tampering by individual employees. Rocketseed eliminated this issue completely by giving IT and marketers central control over their company signatures and making them tamper-proof to ensure brand consistency.

These electronic business cards often included a company logo and further contact details of the company, such as its address and telephone numbers. They even looked just like business cards.

The idea behind this type of email signature was to create a sense of brand unity and to improve brand recognition.

The power of marketing in email signatures

As we come closer to the present day, modern email signatures changed both in appearance and their purpose. Most notably, the electronic business card design went out the window, and more stylish, contemporary-looking email signatures started to appear.

These new and improved business email signatures became a marketing channel in themselves.

Let’s say, for example, you have an event coming up. By including an invitation to this event in your email signature, you can reach hundreds of new potential guests and even allow them to confirm their attendance.

Or maybe you want to schedule a meeting with a new client. Rather than email back and forth, you can simply include a link in your email signature for them to book a meeting. Let them access a calendar with time slots and available dates and pick the most convenient time and day for them.

Other elements you may want to include in your email signature are:

• A link to your blog or latest industry article
• Links to your social media pages in the form of social media icons
• A link to sign up to your newsletter
• Information about any awards or accreditations your business has
• A link to a new product or service

Rocketseed increased email signature marketing potential further with the opportunity to feature eye-catching banners, either below the signature or at the top of every email. These banners offer a full marketing campaign channel, with the ability to be targeted, tracked and automated. This ensures that the most relevant banners are applied and reach the right recipients at the right time. What’s more, they are hugely versatile in terms of what they can achieve, from raising brand awareness and driving sales to measuring customer satisfaction and requesting reviews. These 33 great email signature banner examples show you the full range of what you can achieve with them, both externally and internally.

The golden rule to make the most out of your email signature as a means of marketing your business is to always include a clear, concise and clickable call to action (CTA). This will show your recipients what steps they need to take next and will maximise your chance of converting.

The emergence of email signature software

While rare, you do still see some companies allowing their employees to get creative and design their own personal email signatures. Unfortunately, this is not a good idea.

Email signatures are an important part of a brand, and therefore, they need to be uniform in their design. However, they also need to be updated on a regular basis if you want to make the most out of them as a marketing channel. This is why the popularity of using professional email signatures software started to grow.

Essentially outsourcing the creation of your corporate email signatures to a third party, email signatures software can save you time, cut your costs, and enable you to make the most out of your company’s email signatures. There are, however, a number of things to consider when choosing email signature software for your business, and they’re highlighted in our Email Signature Software Checklist.

Make the most of your business email signatures

Long gone are the days when a professional email signature only included your name, job title, and basic contact information. Today, brands are taking advantage of professional email signatures as a highly engaging marketing channel and using them to promote their companies as much as possible.

Whether you are launching a new product, organising a big event, or you simply want to engage more with your customers, the right business email signature can transform the way in which you communicate.

Businesses are also increasing workplace inclusivity and strengthening company culture by including employees’ preferred pronouns and name pronunciation in their email signatures.

If you are struggling to create and manage all of your employee’s email signatures, then professional email signatures software is exactly what you need.

Here at Rocketseed, we have a wealth of experience in helping businesses to brand every employee’s email across every device. Offering professional design, consistent branding, marketing campaigns, and industry-leading reporting & analytics, you can rest safe in the knowledge that every aspect of your business email signatures are taken care of.

Contact us for more information or sign up to our monthly newsletters for the latest email signature news, best practices and case studies.

Janine Ferenčak  |  MD, RocketDev

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