Your Email Signature is All Wrong!

Posted on: 09/02/16

Written by: David Whitemyer, AIA

Topics: Business Development

Most professionals receive between 50 and 100 emails each day. In addition to making your subject line clear and your email body brief and to-the-point, your signature should look mature and not distracting. Here are a few tips on fixing your email signature.

Get Rid of the Image

Are you using a JPG or TIFF or some other type of image file in your signature, perhaps as your logo? Delete it and create a new signature with common font text. A number of email providers are set up to block images within emails. If you must include your logo, review your email settings and instructions on how to create an image within a signature, which may include also using “Alternative Text.”

Clean it Up

Your email signature should include your name, title, company, and primary contact info – which is probably your cell or desk phone number. It doesn’t need your street address, full web address, blog sites, or social media buttons. If anyone needs these, Google is just a click away. And for Pete’s sake, get rid of your fax number, advertisements, and any inspirational quotes.

Make it Work Everywhere

These days, professionals are using their smartphones and tablets to check email and surf the web more than on their computers. Make sure your signature isn’t so tiny that people can’t read it on an iPhone or Droid. San serif fonts are best for small screens. If your signature includes any links, test them on different devices, to make sure they work on phones, on PCs, on Macs, and on an iPad.

David Whitemyer, AIA, is a Contributing Editor at SMJ Resources, Inc., a licensed architect, and project manager at a Boston-area design firm. He can be reached at dwhitemyer@psmj.com.

In PSMJ's complimentary report, A/E Business Development Study: How Today’s Most Successful A/E Firms Keep Their Clients Happy and Win New Work, we asked a range of questions relating to firms’ business development efforts, including: If firms have a full-time business development staff and how it functions, and how they train their full-time business development staff. Then we overlaid that data against firms’ financial performance, proposal performance, and client satisfaction, i.e. their business development effectiveness.I