Do Me A Favor And Change Your Email Signature

107.81 billion emails are sent every day and while 10% of it is spam other 90% serious communication is sometimes converted to spammy looking email due to certain bad practices.
A few days ago we received an email from one of our team member Leo and his signature was awful. It was way bigger than the email text itself which made him our running gag for the day. Before that, I got a cold email in which I was CC along with 30 other senior management people from different companies.
Emails like these leave a bad reputation and negatively impact communication with the senders and this article will try to address one such disastrous problem of poor email signatures.
Let's look at some of the annoying practices of email signature and if you do it too, maybe try to tone it down a bit -
Listing Out All Your Contact Details
The main aim of a signature is to let others know who you're and how to get in touch with you apart from email. This does not mean you list out every single contact detail and slap it at the end. Don't be this guy,

Using An Image As a Signature
Granted that you can customize your signatures in every possible way with an image, it doesn't mean you should. Most of the email servers do not render images in the first go and always require the receiver's permission. This is why you would often see a message like this when you open an email
Using Large Images in Signature
Remember the email signature which was even bigger than the email text? One of the reasons - the sender added a big logo of her company in the signature. Though her intention might have been to get her brand noticed, it ruined my experience. And I honestly confess, I didn't reply to her with full enthusiasm as I generally do. Placing a small logo of your company would probably be the best but make sure it is accommodated in a way that doesn't attract too much attention. And sadly even 'alt' text won't work well here because when an image is absent it might show - 'CompanyName Logo' or simply 'CompanyName'.Using Mobile Friendly Signatures
Did you know - In 2014, 48% of total email opens occur from mobile phones or tablets. Depending on your target audience, your product, etc. the email opens from mobile varies from 15-48%. This is enough of a reason to optimize your email signature for small screens. There are various possibilities of how you achieve this,- By using only text and no images.
- By using small CSS icons.
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By using tiny images which doesn't increase the size of the email and doesn't look bad even if they are not rendered. Example:
andrea-signature
Adding Irrelevant Information At The End
So you chose to add random inspirational quotes at the end of your signature. This is what you suppose others to say?


Too Much Content In The Signature That Causes Unpredictable Wrapping
Adding too much content to a single line in your signature might end up being wrapped in an unexpected way. To avoid this try to accommodate less than 72 characters in one line of your signature. According to email standards, a single line containing more than 72 characters is wrapped on to the next line. To avoid unsightly wrapping, try to accommodate less than 72 characters and add info in multiple lines.Don't Use Tiny URLs or Shortened Links
Marketers use third party link shortening tools to track link clicks, be it from ads or any other place. Some of the famous tools like bit.ly, tinyurl.com, ow.ly, etc. have been around for years but using them in emails (like signatures) can seriously affect your email deliverability. This is due to the fact that link shorteners mask the original URL and is used by spammers as well. A better way to track link clicks is by adding UTM parameters to the original URL which is then tracked within your analytics system like Google Analytics."Sent from my iphone"
It was a brilliant idea by Apple to put that as a default signature but it doesn't mean you should leave it as is. You don't add 'Sent from my Dell Vostro' while sending an email from your laptop then why not change it in iPhone/iPad. On a lighter note,