Email footers as a marketing tool

Email footers are a popular branding tool. Companies usually add email footers with logo and company's or employees' contact details. Additionally, we can quite often see the little lines of text at the bottom of messages. These are legal notes or warnings - email disclaimers. Apart from that, email footer can be used as a promotional banner linking to website or it can include message supporting a whole marketing campaign.

The advanced email template editors also enable user to place header or stamp side-banners.

See below some examples of using footers by companies for their marketing purposes:

Add a Christmas flavour to your email signature.

Start from finding a proper email signature editor that allows you to easily upload pictures unless you are content with a default one which is natively build into your email client.

A signature which I'm going to present here is a very simple example of adding 'Christmas touch' to your standard e-mail signature. This element will be used only temporarily - till the end of Christmas time obviously!

So let's begin.

First we have to decide what information will be included in our signature. I've decided to use only the blog title and the web address. This information will be normally typed into Template Editor in my program. I also need two nice graphics - a cute snowman and a stylizes writing with Christmas wishes (we remember that fonts offered by our signature editors are usually limited, so we have to use an image if we want some fancy font in our design). If you wonder where you can get such elements from, don't worry - there's plenty of free images in the Web. Just make sure you read its licence of use - if they are free for private or commercial use.

Now we have a quick job to do in our signature editor. For me personally, the easiest way to create signature is to start from inserting a simple two-cells table. In the first cell I insert my picture. I can browse it from my computer just using the "Picture" > "Insert the picture" option. You should have a similar function in your editor.

I can work a bit with the look of my basic information (name and web address), so I set up Berlin Sans FB font and 14pt size.

As a result, my Christmas emails will be signed like that:

I hope you like it!

Christmas madness in your mail inbox

And so the Christmas time is spreading its shiny glass balls and smiling Santas all around again! We immediately start receiving the whole bunch of  colourful commercial e-mails and newsletters, full of snowflakes and Christmas gifts along with special winter promotions.

It's also not hard to find in your inbox elegant Christmas greetings from familiar companies, clubs and societies - it's just a symbolic expression of their delight to have you as a loyal customer or a trusted member.

And finally it happens to you to get funny e-mail Christmas cards sent from your friends either with a genuine and good intention or just by their accidental consent for a spamm to do its job. By the way, it's really a good time to see how smart your spamm filter is!

And how about you? Do you feel ready to join the Christmas enthusiasts and think it's a great occasion to add a little personal festive accent to your every-day messages? After all, subtle image and short but frank wishes just next to your standard e-mail signature could look nice. Nowadays, email signature editors give quite a lot of options to twist your email footer a little bit, so don't be afraid to be creative. See the little collection of the exemplary email Christmas cards and signatures browsed from the Web. Obviously, they are under copyrights of the companies that created them, so please treat them only as an inspiration and don't copy them for your own use.

The golden rules of email signatures: no 1

When creating your email signatures, remember that there are certain rules to be followed if you want to make them working and looking fine.

 

First of all, include in your signature the basic information: your name, company, title or position and how to get in touch with you. The first three elements are quite obvious. The thing complicates a bit when it comes to the contact details. 

 

Rule no1:
You don't have to present in your email signature all ways of contacting you, but the one, which is preferred by you.

You need to decide if you want to give your land phone number, your mobile or e-mail. It's quite popular now to include Twitter, Facebook or Skype details, but be careful with them to not overload your signature. If you find it necessary to include these details, it's probably worth to insert nice icons (many of them is available for free on the Internet), linking to your social network accounts.

It's quite essential to make your company name a hyper-link, directing to the official website. Other details, like company number, address of registration or VAT number may be required by the law and fined in case of not including them in your electronic signature. So be sure of doing some research in that matter to know exactly what regulations apply to your country.

Basic tips for your email signature in HTML

Let's start from the beginning: How to create a nice email signature in HTML? Why HTML? Because it gives you more options to play around with your design. Remember, all details matter - type, letter spacing, position colours, logo size etc. Simple text editors may occur to be too limiting.

I'd point out a few things:


1. Get some user-friendly HTML email signature generator or just use a build-in editor in your email client. Just forget about Microsoft Word - you won't generate a proper HTML code with a word processor.


2. Inserting pictures use image alt tags to describe them. Remember to use a 72 DPI resolution for your graphics to have a small file size. You can also use URL path to images that you host on your Web.


3.Think of the composition of your emails signature elements. Make it neat and informative. Adding your company logo is a good idea. Decide what is the best location for text - on right, left, top or bottom side of the logo? Then adjust the colour tones - it looks nice if they are similar to the colours of your graphic. Then you format text to emphasise your company name and afterwards you include details that you want a recipient to see first of all. See example below:

4. Also remember to not use scripting in your code (Visual Basic, Java Script etc.) - it's not accepted by the email clients, so your message may be filtered or blocked.

That's a very general instruction. There will be some more detailed tutorials with a ready HTML code for you published soon on this blog. So get ready to make your email branding a powerful marketing tool!

See also:
Exchange email security
Active Directory software

Email signatures in your business

We live in times of electronic communication. Probably many of you would agree that it's faster, safer, more efficient, and... ecological. No wonder then, that every successful marketer is well trained in all email marketing powerful strategies. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing as it targets our potential clients directly. It's based on delivering commercial messages to customers. These messages aim to attract the clients' attention to advertised services or products. There are many ways to do that, for instance, by sending email newsletters or some special discounts for customers rewarded for their loyalty to company (we don't want loose them!).

So, the marketers ask the question: How to make these messages attractive enough to at least get a few seconds of clients' attention, instead of get kicked from their inboxes as a hated spam?

Well, there is a whole education on that topic and that surely can be confirmed by Marketing, Business or Public Relations students, but on this blog we will rather focus on a particular issue from this area: email branding creation with use of company signatures and disclaimers.

To get a better idea of what we're writing here about, see the screen-shot below. It presents the first results of Google search among images on phrase: email signature.

Maybe for some people, adding a nice footer to email seems to be banality, since we are offered so many user-friendly tools to design and create our own digital signatures. In this case, those sharp-witted folks are most welcome to take part in our ranking for the top 10 company emails signatures. Obviously, the top email signatures are supposed to be professional, informative and original at the same time. For those folks, who still search for some practical tips and guidelines, we hope to make this blog the best source of inspiration and useful tutorials!

Enjoy and share your ideas!

More:
Email signatures Exchange 2010
Exchange 2007 email footer