Article Originally Published in Digital Agency Network.

Compromise is almost always the key to effective email signature design. Why? Because the medium is not standardized and varies widely in its ability to render the desired result. As an analogy, consider designing a print ad, but throw in a twist – your ad will be printed on:

Article Originally Published in Digital Agency Network.

A multitude of factors must be considered when designing an email signature program – things such as:

Article Originally Published in Digital Agency Network.

Introduction​

Anyone who's managed an email signature program on an ongoing basis has likely encountered "needy" users – those requesting special permutations to their signatures that either leave you saying "no" or else going back to the design / programming drawing board.

Article Originally Published in Digital Agency Network.

Introduction​

Email signatures often serve as the digital equivalent of printed business cards – a brand-forward means of sharing contact information. As such, they should be taken seriously.

Employees are never asked to create their own business cards, so they should never be left to create their own email signatures (and when they are, “create” is often the operative word – involving bright colors, script fonts, poorly inserted images and catchy motivational phrases).

Here’s what should be expected out of a properly executed email signature program:

• A professional first impression created by the visual appearance of the emails emanating from your client’s organization.
• Email messages adhering to brand-standards across all employees.
• Efficiencies when composing email in not having to spell out contact information each time.
• Efficiencies for email recipients in terms of calling the sender, visiting their website, or navigating to their physical location.
• Compliance with any legally mandated or recommended disclaimers.
• Inclusion of any legally mandated employee-specific license numbers.
• A method of widely sharing links to your social media.
• A platform for making time-sensitive announcements (trade show appearances, holiday hours, new products or services, etc.).

More importantly than these individual benefits, is the cumulative effect that begins immediately upon launch of a well-crafted professional email signature program. If your client launches their program at noon, the benefits begin accruing at 12:01 pm and never stop!

You work hard at establishing your client’s brands – don’t let them adversely affect your efforts when sending routine email messages. A bad email signature isn’t brand-neutral, it's brand-negative!

The In-House Approach, and its Drawbacks​

As a branding agency, it’s likely that you’re already providing your client with web development and graphic design services. You may, therefore, consider taking on their email signature project as well. However, there are a few drawbacks:

1. Finicky: Many things that are taken for granted in HTML programming simply don’t work when it comes to email signatures. Or worse yet, they don’t work well - they work just enough for you to believe that you’re providing a quality deliverable, but once it’s put into day-to-day use, problems can quickly surface.
2. Effort to Create at Scale: How do you go from one coded signature to 100, or 1000? Especially when individual users have nuanced requirements.
3. Deployment at Scale: Once you’ve got your 100, or 1000 signatures created, how do you get them installed in user’s email programs, so that they are functioning as desired? Some users will have Outlook desktop (Windows or Mac), some use Outlook Web, some the Outlook mobile app. What’s the plan for getting the signature correctly installed for each user on each device?
4. Require Continuing Support: Email is used on a massive scale. No matter what, there will be some failures / anomalies with the email signatures. While many users are oblivious, some will reach out for answers / solutions. Are you prepared to provide this level of service?
5. Ongoing Maintenance Expectations: Email signatures aren’t just static. There’s a "25 year" anniversary logo. Twitter becomes X. An office relocates, requiring an address change. The client wants to publicize a webinar or scheduled appearance at a trade show. Each change requires recreating the HTML code for every user and then redeploying the updated code to every user (on each device).

In conclusion, if your client is small and has cooperative support from their IT team, an in-house approach may be reasonable. Conversely, if they’re larger (50+ users) and/or have limited IT support available, you may find that by taking on this project you’ve bitten off more than you want to chew.

Outsource Approach #1 – Third-Party Email Signature Software​

Off-the-shelf email signature software is widely available and overcomes most of the drawbacks mentioned above. The market for this type of software is mature, so you have many options to choose from.

The enterprise-wide deployment of a well-branded email signature is an essential component of an overall branding strategy. The reach is wide and is directed primarily to what is likely your most important audience - those with whom you have established relationships. Unfortunately, in many organizations, email signatures are still treated more as an afterthought than as the powerful tool they can, and should, be.

Based on 18 years of experience, the following action steps are required to create, deploy, and maintain a great professional email signature program.

1. Problem Recognition
2. Valuing an Email Signature Investment
3. Selecting an Email Signature Vendor
4. Designing the Email Signature
5. Populating the Email Signatures
6. Deploying the Email Signatures
7. Keeping Your Email Signature Program Current
8. Leveraging Your Email Signature Program

In this article I will address each of these eight steps, providing a level of detail that should assist you in confidently moving through the process from start to finish.

Companion Article: Deriving Maximum Branding Benefit from an Email Signature Program.

There are three approaches typically taken to creating an email signature:

1. Create it in Microsoft Word, and then copy it from there.
2. Create it directly in your email program's signature editor.
3. Create it from scratch using HTML coding.

If you're looking for a full-featured email signature, it's only the third approach that's likely to yield a robust, standardized, and understandable result.

Having worked at this full-time for 16 years, I've got a good sense of the limitations, problems and solutions pertaining to HTML email signatures. There are four aspects to deploying an email signature program, all of which are of considerable importance - these are:

1. Design / layout.
2. The use of graphics and the HTML coding.
3. Installation of the signature and the configuration of your email program.
4. Educating end-users regarding the performance of the email signature.

Email signatures are the equivalent of your printed business cards - small, simple, but no-less essential to your brand and to your individual professional persona.

Using a poorly constructed email signature is like writing your name on a scrap of paper and handing it to a client or prospect - it accomplishes the task, but at what cost to professionalism?

We only get one default email signature, and it's this signature that we use time after time. As a result, it's almost always somewhat inappropriate - maybe too much or too little, too formal or too casual. If you're faced with the task of coming up with a "one size fits all" email signature design for your company, you may find it useful to look at the content on a constituency by constituency basis.

Anyone who has overseen the development and implementation of an organizational-wide email email signature has almost certainly been surprised by the complexity of the process and the inability to fully achieve the intended result. The frustration is magnified due to an email signature's:

• apparent simplicity;
• use by virtually everyone in the organization;
• front-and-center role played all day, every day.

Getting an email signature program right is as important as it is difficult. In this article I will explain the problems and then suggest a paradigm-shift that in one fell swoop provides an effective resolution.

Designers face some unique challenges when it comes to the creation of email signatures. In this article I share my experience over fourteen years and thousands of email signature designs. Following is my insight into how email signatures fail, and more importantly, how to push past their shortcomings to a successful design.