Are You Using Your Email Signature Effectively?

What’s in your email signature? Do you have an email signature or is it one of those things on the list that you just haven’t gotten around to yet?

I’ll admit, I’ve been a slacker in getting a good email signature in place until about a month ago (insert gasp! here).  I use GMail for my email and there wasn’t an easy way to make a pretty signature.  Enter WiseStamp.  Check out what my email siggy looks like now:

Let’s dissect!

First, I’ve got my name (yeah, that’s important, right?) and photo there.  Using a photo is totally optional, but it’s a nice way to remind people that there’s a real “you” behind the emails.  You could also use your company logo or another image.  Most email programs do display basic HTML and images now, unless the user has chosen to block them.

Next, I have my chosen title, The Small Business Muse, which links to my website.

Below that I’ve got two promo links for my website hosting company and my website design company.

Then comes the “Connect with me” line of social networking logos to make it easy for anyone to connect with me on the sites I use.  WiseStamp makes these super easy to add – you just choose the service and put in your profile’s URL, and it does the coding work to make the icons links.

Finally, WiseStamp is using my blog’s RSS feed to pull in the most recent post on my blog.  I love this option since it makes it easy to get people checking out what I’ve posted about recently when a title grabs their interest.

More important than just looking all spiffy and cool, it’s increasing traffic to my blog and introducing my contacts to services they didn’t realize I could provide for them. Awesome.

I started to notice a day or two after I installed WiseStamp that my WordPress referrer stats were showing a bunch of email reader links.  Normally I see those on Tuesdays when I send out my newsletter so I was slightly puzzled until the light bulb came on and I realized people were clicking the links in my email siggy to check out my blog posts.

And, I’m getting compliments and questions about it.  Yay!  Opportunities to be helpful!  People will remember you when you help them do something they need or want to do, so any opportunity to connect someone to a service they’ll find helpful is great. 

So, are you ready to rock your email signature?

• Download and Install WiseStamp for your browser if you use webmail like GMail, or pull out the guide to your email program and figure out how to set up a signature.
• Add in your name and title.
• Consider whether you want to add your photo, company logo, or other small graphic (notice, I said small – don’t assault people with a gigantic flashing banner ad).
• Add links to whatever websites or services you’re offering.
• Add in your social profile links.
• Setup an RSS feed for your blog, or just link to your blog if you’re not using WiseStamp.

You might also consider adding a note and link to any freebies you offer for newsletter subscribers, Facebook fans, or other cool things you’re giving away.

Ready?  Go!  It only takes a few minutes and once it’s done it’ll be out there promoting your website and products/services in every email you send out.