Email is long from dead. In fact, it's thriving. Recent research shows that 61% of customers prefer brands to contact them via email. That means if you're not embracing email marketing, you're leaving revenue on the table.
Optimizing your email signature can give you a massive boost in conversions. But you need to do it with the right tactics and strategies. In this article, we'll show you how to create an email signature that converts more clients and ultimately helps your business grow.
Why Email Signatures Matter
If you don't have an email signature already, you should. There are various upsides and no downsides to including a signature. And it only takes a few minutes to add. To start, email signature marketing can provide the following benefits:
- Credibility / Professionalism - Everything you do will make an impression on your clients. That includes your email signature (or lack thereof). When you have a professional email signature, it provides more credibility and trust.
- Extra space to sell or add value - If you're not utilizing the space for your email signature, you're losing potential opportunities to educate, inform, and sell. There are no limits to the varieties of information you can provide.
- Clarification - Avoid confusion about who's sending the email with a straightforward email signature. People have tons of emails coming in every day. It's often difficult to remember the name of a company, let alone the person who is sending you an email.
The reasons for including a business email signature are vast and expand beyond the scope of this article. But the three reasons above should be more than enough to encourage any professional or company to start including them, if they aren't already.
Include Contact Information
Don't assume that just because you are emailing someone that they want to continue the conversation in a follow up email. In fact, you may even prefer another channel of communication yourself, or your company might prefer its own methods for meeting request emails.
You want your clients to be able to contact you in every manner possible. That way, you have more potential channels to answer questions, overcome concerns, and close more deals. Your clients will also be grateful that they can reach out to you on their own terms.
You should include all of your contact information in your email signature. This includes:
- Phone number - (or a virtual phone number if you use a VoIP app)
- Email address
- Physical office address
- Skype or video call username / link (make it super easy to book meetings)
Anyone in a client-facing role should have these contact methods available. By taking a few moments to include them in your email signature, you can avoid missing out on important client conversations.
Include Social Handles & Your Podcast
Social media is hugely important today. Not only does linking to your social media help increase your brand's visibility, but also makes clients take you more seriously. Make sure that the right people know about your newest podcast episodes. Every email is another chance to make them a frequent listener.
And as an added note, use hyperlinks and buttons instead of full URLs — they're easier to consume. You want to remove any barriers between you and your clients.
Optimize it for Mobile
3 out of 4 customers say they use mobile phones most often when checking emails. That means mobile optimization of your emails and email signatures is not a luxury — it's a must.
To do this, have your in-house designer create HTML emails that are mobile-friendly. Otherwise, there are plenty of software options to automatically achieve this for you.
Ensure your emails are responsive, which means they adapt to the customer's screen size. That way, your email signature will appear exactly like it should on all smartphones, tablets, and computers.
Make the Email Signature Stand Out
You need to make your email signature prominent. People are on information overload these days, and that means they are trained to skim everything on the web and ignore most of it.
Luckily, eye-tracking studies found that when your email signature is unique from the rest of the email content, more people pay attention to it. Here are some ways to do that:
- Different colors - Make your email signature stand out by giving it different colors than the rest of your email body copy.
- Use bold type - Try to reserve bold font for your email signature so it draws the eye more effectively.
- Use a branded image or banner - Imagery, logos, and other visual branding assets are great to include in your email signature. They not only help generate attention, but do so in a way that is coherent with your brand.
Include a Company Video
8 out of 10 purchase decisions online now include watching a video beforehand. And videos’ meteoric rise in popularity certainly makes sense. It provides more ways to engage your clients with sound and images, in addition to text.
If you have a cool, informative video about your product or company, add it to the bottom of your signature. This can be a sales video, marketing video, short product demo, or anything that speaks to your market's needs.
Add Information About a Current Product or Offer
A lot of people view their email signature as a simple add-on that only includes a name and some contact information. But when you realize that every piece of "real estate" in your email has the ability to move a client through your funnel, you open up a world of opportunity.
An email signature is a chance to sell more by adding information about your products, offers, and services in the following ways:
- Mention Offer the Email Relates To - If your email exchange regards a particular purchase or offer, add some bonus information that could tip your client over the edge into booking more services or buying more products.
- Mention Upcoming Product or Launch - Have a new offer coming out? Even just a short mention and a hyperlink can drive traffic and awareness to it.
- Restate Benefits - Try to summarize the main points or benefits mentioned in the body of your email to make it easily digestible.
- Overcome Objections - What are a couple of the most common reasons that people don't buy? You can briefly address these objections and overcome them, or link to an FAQ that achieves the same thing.
If you're not at least providing something of value regarding your product, then you're missing out on that client interaction.
Use Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful persuasive tool, and will help boost your conversions immensely. It doesn't take much to boost social proof in your email signature. You can briefly mention any of the following or include a link to them:
- Testimonial from customers
- Case studies
- Certifications
- Awards
These social proof elements raise the buyer's confidence in purchasing from you, and should be used in every form of your marketing — especially emails.
Create Custom, Dynamic Signatures
Use software to create unique email signatures with the elements in the other headings above. Depending on what your software knows about the customer (their role, their company, their industry), it can rotate out different signatures.
This allows you to customize your signature and improve your conversions by "speaking the right language" of the client in question. And you can appeal to clients at different stages of awareness in your funnel. Try using an email signature generator to help create the perfect one.
Conclusion
The good news is that email marketing is still a powerful way to engage with clients and prospects. The downside is that if you don't have the right email elements — such as an optimized email signature — you can miss out on potential conversions. Luckily, by implementing the tips above, you will engage more clients and ultimately boost conversions going forward.
About The Author
Sam is part of the marketing team at Mailshake. Sam’s goal is to inspire people to not just “hang in there” but to thrive. When Sam's not publishing or promoting new content you can find him playing sports and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
