8 common mistakes with email signatures.

How often does an email signature of one of your employees irritate you? Once a week? Once a day? More often? Be it a spelling mistake, a missing phone number or a logo that is too small, in a bad quality or missing altogether. And did they not read we asked to link to our new product’s landing page in the signature? You can always find something. 
In our experience, you are missing out on business opportunities if you neglect the importance of professional and brand consistent email signatures in your company. CEOs, business owners, and marketers usually understand this but feel helpless to change it. It’s too much hassle to run after everybody. 
It doesn’t have to be like that, though. Let’s first review 8 of the most common employee mistakes and then see how you can easily get rid of them.

1. No email signature at all

The main function of the signature is to provide the best way for contacting the sender and your company. Thus, the first and most serious mistake is simply – no signature at all. It is like handing out a business card without contact details.  

Signatures provide an opportunity to deliver a snippet of helpful information exactly where it’s needed. And to make an a more memorable impression with your corporate colors, logo, and other brand attributes. This brings us to the second common mistake.

2. Missing (crucial) information

Supposing that most of your employees do manage to sign their emails, crucial points might still be missing. Besides the phone number, employees mostly fail to provide the right information about the company. Your company.

Most commonly, the company logo, website or a link to a new product you just launched and that the recipient might find handy is missing. In the fast digital world, missing links are missed opportunities. Don’t expect recipients to google you and your company – provide them with exactly what they need when they need it and with one click.

3. Long colorful stories

A longer signature is not necessarily a better one, though. And neither a more colorful one.  If you need to go through ten lines just to find the phone number or website… it’s all wrong. And it certainly does not ensure more interaction or deals, quite the opposite.

Terrible email signature

4. Lack of call-to-action

A call to action will change a passive email signature into an active support of your communication aimed towards generating new business opportunities.

email signature with call to action
When done right, email signatures can engage customers in an elegant and unobtrusive way. Include actionable items like event invitations, seasonal sales or promotions of newly launched products. Getting your message out this way doesn’t cost you much effort and every email interaction will have a potential of generating new leads regardless of the subject of the email exchange. How many emails per day does your company send in total? That’s a lot of opportunities.

5. Inconsistent branding


elementera
Most employees underestimate the value of brand consistency in their communication. If you are reading this article, chances are that you don’t. Every interaction with a customer has an impact on the brand you worked so hard to build – it either strengthens or weakens it.
The truth is, though, people are slow adopters of any change and corporate identity manuals and company directives make hardly the difference management hopes for. Employees rarely adjust their email signatures pro-actively by themselves. Not that they don’t want, but it’s too much hassle, they don’t know how or just don’t find it important enough in their busy schedule.

6. More than two primary images

Keep the primary images you use in your email signature to a maximum of two, this may include something like a business logo and a personal profile image. Keep the images small and neat, we'd suggest a maximum height and width of about 250px. Use more than two primary images in your signature and your customers may start charging you for the data it costs them to download all those images every single time you send them an email.

7. Promotional attachments

Don't attach PDFs, Word Documents or any other kind of attachment along with every email you send. Instead include a link to the attachment for your customers to download it from your website if they choose to. Forcing customers to download attachments every time you email them can instill anger in even the most calmest of people.

8. Using just an image as your signature

Not only is this a flag for most spam filters as the text:image ratio is too low, it probably does more harm than good, when a customer goes to click your Facebook page link and they are taken to your website because your signature is just an image with only one clickable area. Get your signature professionally coded so that all items are clickable separately and take your customers to the correct information they are after.
How to avoid all of the above mistakes?
But what if you could take the pain out of creating a great signature for them? Up-to-date with all the right information and a call to action? 
We are at Finetech Consultancy  lets you provide everybody in your company your boss, co-workers or employees of an overseas subsidiary with the right, pro-looking signature without all the hassle and threats. It will automatically and seamlessly connect with your G Suite (Google Apps for Work), import your employees’ contact data and organizational structure and fill the signature templates automatically. You’ll have all the tools necessary to avoid and correct the mistakes mentioned above   and never worry about email signatures in your company again.




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