How to make your email signature mobile-friendly

When you consider that up to 81% of your business emails are opened on mobile devices, it’s clear that a professional mobile email signature isn’t just a sign-off – it’s a business branding essential.

So if you don’t want to miss out on a huge number of engagement opportunities or damage your brand with a default “Sent from my mobile device”, then it’s time to create the best mobile email signature for your business.

In this blog post, I’ll show you:

• Why you need a branded, professional mobile email signature
• How your existing or default mobile email sign-off is damaging your brand
• What you should include in your mobile email signature
• Design tips to create mobile-friendly email signatures
• Some best mobile email signature examples

and

• How the right mobile email signature software can make it simpler

If you want a brand-building, business-boosting, mobile-friendly email signature, read on…

Why you need a branded professional mobile email signature

Every email from you and your colleagues that your customers and business contacts open on their smartphones is a business marketing opportunity, informing and encouraging recipients to engage with you and your brand in a number of ways.

What can a mobile email signature do?

• Introduce yourself and make the right first impression
• Make it easy for recipients to contact you
• Build awareness of your company brand
• Promote your products, services and latest offers
• Drive traffic to your website and social media profiles

How your existing or default mobile email sign-off is damaging your brand

When was the last time you checked how your email signature looked on a mobile device? It might look fine when your emails are opened on desktop but this counts for nothing if your finely crafted signature gets mangled – or disappears altogether – on mobile.

Missing images, unaligned text and buttons too small to touch accurately are all things which will instantly damage your brand and most likely end the chance of any recipient engagement. So it’s time to take a look and test on mobile. If it’s not looking good, it’s time to follow the mobile-specific design tips below or change your signature software provider.

Don’t use a default sign-off (unless you want to damage your brand)
Once upon a time a default “this email was sent from my mobile device” business signature might have meant something (or even impressed your business contacts), but today is a simple default “sent from my iphone” signature professional? In fact, it is more likely to be damaging your brand.

Here’s why…

It’s not branded, it’s simply default
By definition ‘default’ isn’t going to make you stand out from the crowd and you’ll miss out on all the engagement opportunities that an interactive branded email signature can generate.

It’s outdated
Nobody cares any more that your email has been sent from a mobile device let alone the brand of it. So you’ll need to explore up-to-date ‘sent from my iPhone’ alternatives.

It’s not an excuse
“Sent from my iPhone please excuse brevity and typos” – sure, mistakes happen when writing emails on smartphones but if professional branding is your aim, try and avoid making spelling and grammar errors. Your mobile email signature is there to engage, not make excuses!

I think the message is clear. Don’t use a default mobile email sign-off. It does nothing for your business and simply damages your brand.

What you should include in your mobile email signature

The best mobile email signatures make it easy for recipients to contact you and engage with your brand, by including:

• Your name and job title – to immediately introduce yourself
• Address – as long as it can be shown in a compact way (no long lines!)
• Your phone number – so it’s simple for recipients to tap to call you back
• Your email address – to make it easy for recipients to create a new message to you
• Your brand logo and company name – to create immediate impact and recognition
• Your company website URL – to drive traffic direct to your website
• Social media buttons – to increase engagement with your key social profiles
• A marketing banner – to promote your products and offers with a clear call-to-action
• A legal disclaimer – to ensure your email correspondence is legally compliant

And what can you leave out?

• Headshot – Whilst it’s always good to see who sent the email, if space is limited on mobile your headshot photo could end up simply too small – it’s up to you.
• Quotations – Unless it’s a tagline that’s vital to all your brand communications, we’d advise avoiding any quotations.

Design tips to create mobile-friendly email signatures

If it sounds as if there’s a lot to be included on a small screen space, then design is the key to creating a mobile-friendly email signature. Whilst many of the tips for designing best email signatures apply, there are mobile-specific factors to consider, most obviously the vertical screen and limited space. Here are some design tips to make your signature looks its best on mobile devices.

Keep it simple
This is true of email signatures in general but especially when smartphone screen space is limited, so keep information to the essentials and don’t crowd your signature with unnecessary images.

Use a mobile email signature template
A mobile-friendly signature template will help organize your signature elements in a layout suited to the smaller, vertical screen, preventing your signature from being horizontally crowded (or wrapping) and, instead, stacking information in a well-presented narrower, vertical layout.

Break up long lines
This especially applies to addresses. To keep your address looking neat, break it up over 2-4 separate lines using the address fields on the template.

Keep image size small
Whether it’s your logo, headshot or any another image, check the file size to make sure it is suitable for mobile networks.

Ensure font size is big enough to read
We recommend a mobile email signature font size of between 8pt (11px) and 20pt (26px) for easy readability when your signature is displayed on mobile devices.

Be careful with certain colours
Avoid colours like yellow that might be difficult to read clearly on mobile, especially in dark mode.

Stick to 3 social media buttons
Don’t make it difficult for recipients to tap the right social media button. Limit your signature to showing your 3 key actively-managed social media profiles so that the icons are a user-friendly size.

Use a professional solution
If design isn’t an in-house strength, don’t let your email signature suffer. If you want mobile-friendly on-brand email signatures across your business, you simply need to use a solution like Rocketseed.

Best mobile email signature examples

Need some iPhone signature ideas? Here are some iPhone email signature examples to help you design yours.

How the right mobile email signature software can make it simple

“Will our new email signatures display correctly on every device” is a key question to ask when choosing an email signature software provider. In fact, it’s question number 4 on our Ultimate Email Signature Software Checklist.

Apps such as Gmail on iPhone have very limited capability (letting you only set up a plaintext signature) so if you want a professional, branded signature on emails sent from, and opened on, mobile devices, it’s very hard to achieve that without Rocketseed.

With Rocketseed you create your signature using mobile-friendly email signature templates or simply brief our expert designers to create a bespoke signature to your brand requirements. All our email signature templates are mobile-optimized and have been tested across a range of devices.

Our software ensures that your signature will always render correctly across all devices and, by being created and managed centrally, you are also guaranteed company-wide brand consistency.

So if you want to build your brand, engage your audience and open new opportunities every time one of your business emails is opened on a mobile device, it’s time to ditch your default email sign-off and start branding all your emails with the best mobile-friendly email signatures.

Need some help? We’re full of great mobile signature ideas, so please get in touch.

Wade Willingale | Sales Director | Rocketseed EMEA
Connect with Wade on LinkedIn