Professional Email Signature: Structure, Tips, and Top 10 Examples

Ending a professional 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%).

It’s no surprise clicks are the leading metric we measure our campaigns by, after all, clicks usually translate into revenue. “Usually” being the keyword here, things can get pretty murky in attribution for your campaign unless you’re using campaign management tools that track conversions and sources of clicks. 

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.

9. Share Company Information

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 Examples from Business Experts

We asked a few executive level experts to show Mailbird their professional email signatures and share their tips. Here’s what they said: 

Jenny Winstead – LA Tutors

The Essentials

“We knew there were a few factors we needed in our email signature, including basic contact information (name, title, phone number) as well as our standard confidentiality notice. “

Have a Stylish Signature

“We also wanted to include our logo, 5-star Yelp ratings, a link to our customer success stories, a professional headshot, and links to our blog and social media. We worked with a freelance designer who was able to add these elements into a sleek and compact email signature for us that matches our branding across all platforms.”

Jason Parks – The Media Captain 

The Essentials

“At the bottom of my email, above my signature, I will often link out to a blog post or a podcast in the following manner:

PS – I think you’ll really like my most recent podcast, you should check it out [listen now]”

Give a Little Extra

Since I’m sending out 30+ emails per day, this really helped increase the referral traffic to my blog and podcast. I felt like the PS message was vague yet intriguing and enticed people to click into it. You’ll see it looks a part of the email but in reality, it’s a part of the signature. Your email signature is such a great way for people to find your content and is greatly underutilized.”

Paige Arnof-Fenn – Mavens & Moguls

The Essentials

“I started a global branding and digital marketing firm 19 years ago so I understand the importance of creating a strong brand that stands out. My signature below is simple, clean, professional and also personal.” 

Add Your Personal Touch

“I think it sends a powerful message to my clients and prospects that we know what we are doing in an understated way.  It gets noticed often and half  the battle in professional services is finding ways to be remembered so they think of you first when they need your help.”

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:

1. Open the Identities tab in Settings and choose the account to which you want to add an automatic signature.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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