If you send out emails a lot and write to a lot of friends and family, then you may be aware of the power of your email signature. Many businesspeople use their email signature to display their contact information, which saves them the effort of including all of it in every email and of signing every single email. Some business owners also use their email signature to post information about their offerings, or to advertise big discounts or sales that their customers might want to hear about or be updated on.
Even writers need an email signature in order to post their favorite quotes or even their favorite passages from their own works.
An email signature serves as an identifier, and when used well, it can be a great way for you to share information about yourself and attract many visitors to your blog. However, you can also overestimate the power of this email signature. If you do not craft it carefully, with your audience in mind, no one will visit your blog. If you are interested in promoting your blog with a great email signature, here are a few tips to keep in mind when deciding what not to do.
– Be considerate of people who have to work with slow Internet connections: avoid placing multimedia files in your email signature.
Some email clients allow you to add photos and videos to your email signature. If you are working with people with fast Internet connections, these files can load quickly and properly. But if you are working with people who are still using dial-up Internet, then you may put their computers in a whole lot of trouble. Save them this trouble by keeping your email signature to a text-only format.
– Don’t overload on the text, either. You may be tempted to put in paragraphs and paragraphs of text, with smilies and other emoticons that you think will make your signature look “cute.”
The thing is, such a signature stops being cute when someone is forced to read through it. Think of how tired your eyes would be if you were made to read through a sea of words; now, transfer that to an email signature, and think of what your email reader would think if you had to post information on your blog using a thousand words!
– Don’t just hyperlink: put your blog address down. Some blog owners will often put the words “click here” and hyperlink it to the blog. This may not show up when email readers select a “text only” option when reading their emails, and clicking on a hyperlink while the browser is not open can tax on a computer’s resources. Keep your blog address readable.
– Avoid putting colors in your text: the simpler, the better. You don’t have to overload your email signature with text formatting to make it look nice and appealing. Stick with the staid, simple black, and avoid changing colors or needing to color in or format words. Again, if you have email readers with the “text only” option enabled, all your colors and formatting will be gone.
– Stay with three lines of text, and avoid going for more than this. Think of the succinct compactness of a dog tag: dog’s name on one line, owner’s name on the next, and then contact information on the last line.
