Professional Email Signature: Structure, Tips, and Top 10 Examples
Posted by Christin on August 10, 2020

Ending a business email with a signature isn’t just a formality. It aids in communication, establishing your brand image, and creating a long-lasting impression. A professional email signature is yet another tool for marketing your company or yourself.
Simply put, a good email signature is a crucial part of any business email.
In this article, you’ll find tips for creating a good email signature, visual examples of some of the best free email signatures, and brief instructions on adding an auto-signature so you don’t need to save a template or type it in every time you email. It will be especially useful to those who are actively building new contacts and communicate through email a lot.
What’s the Science Behind Professional Email Signatures?
Hello Reader, If you clicked this email, you might be interested in our magic books and potions. Let me know if you want more information about our offers. Best regards, John C. |
The sender most likely lost the reader at the second sentence, and this can be backed by science. A study done by Sigstr and EyeQuant that used eye-tracking technology to build perception and attention maps and define hot spots researched how people read emails. Here’s what they’ve found.
An email with a standard signature like the one above will draw most of the attention to the body text and only some acknowledgment of the signature. It’s a good sign in the case of internal communication when you need co-workers to actually pay attention to what’s written in the message. But the email above is clearly offering a product — yet it doesn’t spur any inclination to reply.
Further findings of the study show that a branded signature will draw more attention than a non-branded one, but only on certain conditions. Look at these two examples of attention maps:
1.
2.
The second example has so much attention drawn to the banner. If you didn’t inspect the first example, you probably missed the CTA link.
What these findings tell us is that a business email signature can be used as a marketing tool. According to NewOldStamp’s survey of 750 marketers, 41% are on board with using good email signatures for branding. There’s even a term for it — email signature marketing. The same survey also highlights what metrics professionals use, the leading ones being: clicks (79% of respondents), emails sent (40%), impressions (32%), and website traffic (30%).
How to Sign a Business Email: Contents and Structure
Back from 2011 to 2013, WriteThat.name processed over 700 million emails that went through their contact management system and found that only 52% of them had a signature. Those that did included the sender’s name, position, company, email address, and sometimes a postal address.
Since then, email technology has changed quite a bit. For example, you can safely add an image to your signature without it coming through as an attachment.
Professional Email Signature Elements
Building rapport with someone without seeing a face is difficult, but adding more elements to a business email signature can help the matter, including:
- Either your position in the company or your professional job title
- Affiliate company or organization
- Contact information: phone number with a prefix if you work internationally, company or personal website, office address, social media links (but only what coincides with your professional goals)
- Photo of you or the company’s logo
- Other elements: a call to action, social proof
Whether or not you should add social media links is arguable, yet Unilever has increased their social media following by almost 500% just by adding a link to their email signatures.
You can have a signature for email that combines all the elements or only some of them. Depending on your professional interests, however, your proper email signature might need some essentials.
For marketing purposes:
- Social media icons
- A link to your latest content
- A link to your blog subscription
For sales:
- A banner with the latest deal or offer
- Seasonal promotions
- Holiday greetings with a link to a promo page
For client relationships:
- A link to a landing page with your mission and services
- A link to a video presentation of your services
- Customer reviews or testimonials
10 Steps to Make an Impressive Email Signature + Examples
In just ten steps or less, you can create a professional email signature and add it to the auto-sign feature in your email settings. This section also contains a selection of the best email signature examples.
Tip: Keep a notepad open so you can practice each step right away. You can also use an email signature template or free email signature generator — it may be easier to choose the layout and add certain elements, and they are all around good for email signature ideas. You can copy the text afterward and paste it in your account settings. |
1. Keep It Simple
Not everyone needs an elaborate email signature format to accompany their communications. Sometimes, simple and elegant will do the trick. You can include justan email address and a couple of other important things, without any designs.
The key elements of a professional email signature include your name, job title, company, and phone number. You may also include an address and your company’s website. But don’t include your email address—that’s redundant and unnecessary.
Here’s one of the best email signatures examples:
2. Use Color
To add visual interest, even to a basic email signature, try using one or two colors drawn from your brand, logo, or any graphical elements you might use. More often than not, more than two colors start to clash and become distracting, so unless you have a particularly good eye for design, stick with one or two brand colors.
3. Limit Information
We’ve all seen those good email signatures that include the whole kitchen sink and tell someone’s entire life story. You know, like these?
This is clearly one of the bad email signature examples. When it comes to deciding what information you should include, remember less is more. The best email signatures are about five lines of text, give or take.
4. Add a Photo
With the right tech know-how or a useful email signature generator, you can easily add a photo to give your email signature more impact, personality, and memorability. Plus, the imagery will draw attention and add visual interest.
Here’s a cool email signature that uses a headshot to put a face to the name:
5. Include Your Logo
Another option instead of a photo would be to include your company’s logo. While it is possible to use both a photo and a logo, most of the time this makes your signature too busy and confusing. It’s best to choose just one.
Your email signature format will depend on the size and orientation of your logo. Landscape logos work best in a stacked email signature, whereas circular, square, or portrait logos can be placed to the right or left of the text, if desired.
6. Balance Your Content
The best email signatures use hierarchy of design to balance content, type, and imagery. Use dividers or white space where needed to separate different elements of the email signature and direct the reader’s eyes. Also, bold, capped, and colored type attracts the eye first, so weight the most important information in one of these ways.
7. Include Social Media Icons
Do you or your company have well-managed social media profiles? Why not use your email signature as another way to drive traffic to these platforms? Link to your social media channels using icons representing each site’s logo (rather than a boring hyperlinked URL).
8. Add a Call-to-Action
Beyond social media icons, a formal email signature can be used to drive other engagements from your email recipients. For example, you could link to your latest blog post or encourage sign-ups to your email newsletter.
Some companies like to use their email signatures as an opportunity to share announcements, such as awards or designations won. You can also list or include badges for certifications received or courses completed. Showing your expertise in your email signature emanates professionalism.
10. Design for Mobile
And finally, when choosing your email signature format, keep in mind that most people check their email on their phones. Pick a design and graphic elements ideal for mobile. If your logo has small text, consider only using the parts that translate well onto small screens. If you’re including links or icons, ensure they’re spaced out enough for people to click with their fingers.
Email Signature Management in Mailbird
Now that you have the layout and contents of your signature, you can add it to auto-sign so it will automatically be added to your emails.
Here are step-by-step instructions on how to create a professional email signature in Mailbird:
- Open the Identities tab in Settings and choose the account to which you want to add an automatic signature.
- Add and customize your email signature in the new window that pops up when you choose an Identity. It contains a text field and formatting tools.
- Add an image, such as your portrait photo, company logo, or a banner. With the new Mailbird updates, you can now add it straight from your computer or by pasting a URL of the image — no need to upload it to an image-hosting website.
- Save changes and test the signature by sending an email to yourself.
If you used a signature template or a free email signature generator to create yours, simply copy the HTML code and paste it in the Edit Identity window.
Signature Is Essential in Business Email
Well-crafted business email signatures are not just a communication device — they can also aid marketing, sales, and client relationships. Seize this opportunity to make a good and long-lasting image of yourself or your company, even if it comes in the form of an email signature.
Opt for minimalism, add only the most relevant information about yourself, and add a professional portrait or company logo so there is a visual aspect to associate with you.
P.S. Bonus
Our friends at NEWOLDSTAMP can help you create great email signatures super easily. Just follow the link and choose the template you feel fits your needs most. NEWOLDSTAMP has been tested and confirmed to work seamlessly with Mailbird.
We are super happy to confirm that you can now also use ZippySig with Mailbird.
ZippySig is an easy-to-use email signature generator that allows you to create email signatures for your whole team. With plenty of customizable email signature templates, you can create some pretty good-looking email signatures. ZippySig has been extensively tested to make sure it is compatible with Mailbird and offers a seven-day free trial with full access to all of the features.
You can also give Formswift a try, which you can enable from within Mailbird. Formswift offers three layouts for you to choose from.
Also, with an email signature generator, designers and agencies can create beautiful, custom email signatures. Start with a template, change colors, fonts, spacing, add any amount of fields and rearrange them. You can also select from the available email signature templates. Individuals can build a personal signature for free.
Please feel free to reach out to our support team should you have any questions!
FAQs about Professional Email Signatures
You should add your name, job title, company name, social links, and logo to your professional email signature.
To add your degree in your business email signature, you need to add your name first. After adding your name, add the degree name. For example, if you want to add an “MBA” degree in your email signature, add it after your name like this: “John Green, MBA.”
The best font for an email signature is Times New Roman. Other popular fonts are Tahoma, Trebuchet, and Verdana.
An email signature is very important for your business because it includes all the necessary information and links about you and your business. It makes it easier for the recipient to get the necessary details. You can also edit the links anytime you want.
Love all of these tips! It really shows a lot of GREAT examples of fabulous email signatures.Thank you for bonus. I’ve tried Newoldstamp. It’s pretty easy to use. I’ve created 3 perfect email signatures for myself and my friends.
Thanks for your feedback Adam, we are happy it helped. Have a great day and please let us know should you have any questions.
Many thanks for the great advice! I tried Mailbird and loved it. As for the signatures, I had a hard time trying to find a no frills tool that would let me easily create modern signature and release this free tool : https://airsign.io/ (requires no account or subscription or whatsoever). I also implemented a few templates from this blog post, an example below:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c0b2c8e93a8f08c89803e8c28959177f7581d929475afdf10a7716ff2d66356.png
Hope it might be useful to some of your users as well!
Thanks for adding that Flo we appreciate it as we want our readers to find the perfect option for them to create their signature. 🙂
Hi Christin!
You are welcome and great work for mailbird btw, it really rocks 🙂
Cheers
Flo
Benefits of an Email Signature
* An email signature is also a social networking tool, like a business card.
* An email signature with the relevant information is your short biography.
https://www.fiverr.com/nahidas/create-html-email-signature
If you’re looking to use dynamic email signature campaigns or apply signatures to everyone in your company in a few clicks, check out https://www.sigstr.com – There’s even analytics on views/clicks for your email signatures.
If you want, you can also take a look at Bybrand (https://www.bybrand.io/en)
“Bybrand has come to facilitate the creation and management of email signatures for your company, or professional use. (There is no form to fill out, the editor is free hand.)”
i am looking sales and technical job in a company so how can i use both name in a email signature
I believe it is fair to simply put Sales & Technical – look up roles you have and to put both in the signature is fine.
How do you create the large blue vertical line next to the bird logo, that separates the logo and the text?
Hello Jerome, can you please submit us a request at support@getmailbird.com?
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all of these examples are graphical signature but it very nice if u can share the “text signature” examples
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