How to Optimize Your Email Signature in Gmail

Leaving a lasting impression is as important as creating the first impression. Today, most of our professional communication predominantly takes place via emails, and as much as ‘Thanks & Regards’ works, there’s a lot more than an optimized email signature at Gmail signature editor can offer.

What is an email signature?

An email signature is a block of text that is added at the closing of an email. By adding Gmail signatures defaults, you include your name, contact number, company logo along with the web links, social media icons and details of the brand you represent at the signature box.

Cutting to the chase, and optimized professional signature offers essential contact information of the email sender in an easily accessible format for the email recipient to look up or contact.

Now that the textbook definition is covered, we come to an all-important question. Should your emails have an email signature or not? Let’s settle that once and for all.

An email signature is an overlooked marketing opportunity. Email is still a very relevant channel of marketing primarily used for customer acquisition, retention, and in some cases even revival.

An average person in the US receives around 120 emails each day.

So what does this piece of stat mean? A properly optimized email signature in the email can help you in many ways. It can direct your prospects or leads to:

1. Look you up and discover you on social media channels
2. Visit your website and verify your credibility
3. Note your contact number in case they are impressed and want to work with you
4. Observe your portfolio and assess your skills

With deep insights, detailed groundwork, and an optimized email signature, you minimize the friction and make it easy for your leads to contact you. So it’s definitely a YAY! You can have a look at the email signature guide.

Adding an email signature in Gmail step by step guide

Gmail’s simple interface makes it easy to create an email signature in seconds. Here’s how:

1. Open Gmail mobile app
2. From inside your Gmail inbox, click the gear icon on the top-right corner.
3. Choose the See all settings button.
4. You will find a Signature section, click the Create New button, and add a signature.
5. You will be prompted to name your signature after which you can set it up.
6. Gmail lets you add more than one signature which is pretty handy when you have multiple aliases linked to your name. More about that later.
7. When everything is good to go, click the Save Changes button to confirm changes.

Gmail lets you add links, images, and a whole lot of formatting options to create the best email signature out there. And the maximum character limit? Try 10,000 characters.

It doesn’t really end there…

Thought you are good to go with just that? We’re just getting started! Let’s take a look at the ways you can optimize your email signature in Gmail to extract the best response rate for your business emails.

Elementary rules for an optimized email signature

So how do you figure out what goes into an optimized email signature for your Gmail inbox? Let’s cut straight to the chase.

1. What’s in a name?

So why does the name really matter? If you are pitching a sales email to a prospect, having a different name on the sender’s information and email signature is basically a faux pas you do not want to make.

Ensure the Sender’s name and the name in the signature match.

2. Should I add my photo in an email signature?

Yes. By including your headshot in your email signature, you give your email a personal touch, a visual affirmation that the email was sent by a human and not a bot. If adding a headshot is something your team is not comfortable with, choose to include an image of your brand.

At the end of the day, if you are Darth Vader, a chief member of the Galactic Empire, a headshot or your logo makes your email much more impactful.

Ground Rules:

A professional headshot, please! And don’t forget to pick one where you smile If you don’t want a headshot, go for your Brand’s logo Go for 300-400 pixels in width and 70–100 pixels in height Choose a size that’s not more than 15 kb Ensure it’s a publicly accessible photo and do not send as an attachment

3. Give readers more ways to contact you

Another reason why an email signature is important is that it offers your recipients more ways to contact you. Emails without an email signature just give your leads an email address that they can reply back.

But why give more ways to contact?

According to a study by OptinMonster, people generally engage with marketing emails on Fridays and respond back on Saturdays. Having more immediate ways to connect with you ensures that emails from your leads don’t sit in your inbox over the weekend.

Leads who don’t hear back from you within 48 hours are more likely to go with other choices who do. Adding a phone number or an alternate email address gives people more ways to interact with you.

Ensure that your alternate email address is tagged with the mail to HTML link. To turn your phone number into callable links, use this syntax.

4. Improve credibility with your website

A website is ideal for your personal branding. In addition to a short bio of who you are and your skills, your website can be fine-tuned to showcase your work and double up as your online resume and portfolio.

Adding the website URL of your professional website to your Gmail email signature gives your audience a way to verify your skills, authority and decide if they’d like to interact with you. If you don’t have a website, you can add a link to your blog or your online portfolio.

Best Practice: Use persuasive anchor text and hyperlink your website URL to avoid overwhelming your email signature with too much text.

Example:

Instead of listing the URL, use CTA like “Visit Website” and link your website URL to it.

5. Add some social proof

Like it or not, social media is a predominant mode of networking. Think of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They’ve redefined ways by which people connect with each other and even brands. When your brands have a strong social media presence, it is important that you optimize your email signature in Gmail to reflect the same.

This establishes your brand’s credibility and the authenticity of your email, driving more click-throughs and impacting your conversions. It also gives your readers a genuine opportunity to interact and engage with your brand on these platforms before committing to the services/products that you offer.

If you are using a no-reply address to send your emails, ensure you add your business’ social media profiles to the email signature to provide a route to interact.

Optimize for smaller screens too

Mobile devices are extremely important – so much so that Google relies on mobile-based indexing to evaluate and rank web pages. That being said, most of our emails are viewed and read on mobile devices. Hence every email signature that you create should be optimized for mobile devices too.

Your Optimized email signature should:

1. Have a mobile-friendly template

A mobile-friendly email signature ensures that your email signature scales perfectly and fits the mobile screens on which it is viewed. This guarantees a good UI experience and delivers a positive marketing experience to your readers.

2. Image sizing and resolution

Ensure that you optimize your email signature by choosing a good spot to feature your image so that it doesn’t appear enlarged on the mobile screen on which it is viewed. A good hi-res image ensures that the headshot/logo isn’t distorted when viewed from a smaller screen which most likely has a hi-res display.

3. Use anchor Text

We simply can’t stress much about how this one is a save! Got long email addresses to add? Use appropriate anchor text to save a lot of space and add responsive functionalities to your email signature.

The Gmail app for Android and iOS devices lets you add an email signature for emails composed and sent via the mobile app. Since this is a text-only signature, ensure that you override this feature so that the email signature you configured on the web app is included instead.

Switch it right

Gmail enables you to create multiple email signatures that can be used for different aliases or can be included when you compose and send different types of emails. Ensure that you have optimized your Gmail settings to ensure that the right email signature is added to the right email address.

Reply to Signatures

When you create an email signature in Gmail, it allows you to specify if the signature is for your reply to and forwarded emails. While reply emails necessitate a simpler design, ensure that you have optimized your email signature to display relevant information that the recipient may need in case they want to proceed further and contact you.

These emails are probably sent when the lead or prospect has chosen to interact with you. In such cases, the goal you’ve set for the initial email has been accomplished, leaving behind a compelling reason to minimize the content you display on your email signature.

The goal of your reply to signature is to display relevant contact information without subjugating the email itself.

Play it safe

Although we are spoiled for choices while picking a font of our choice, it is important to note that if the recipient’s email client doesn’t support a font, your email signature will display special characters.

By choosing a web-safe font, you ensure that both your email and the email signature remain intact when viewed on different devices.

Optimize your email signature with one of these recommended web-safe fonts:

Arial Calibri Courier New Verdana Georgia Trebuchet Helvetica

Like it or not, a well-optimized email signature is a great marketing opportunity. It can drive leads and prospects to you right through a compelling email.

Optimizing an email signature in Gmail is no simple task, it may require several trials to verify if all the components are in the right place, if they render well on the recipient’s device. But if you do not have the time or skill to create a perfect email signature, it’s best to turn to the expert.

Sloovi’s email signature gives you well-optimized email signature templates that can be customized to match your business’ branding. Personalize and create stunning email signatures for FREE in minutes with absolutely no coding involved. Quite a deal isn’t it? Create your very own email signature right here!