The E-Mail Signature: Waste Of Space?

I send and receive quite a few e-mails. Years ago I used to have quite a hefty e-mail sig on every one of my e-mails that looked something like this:

[First Name Last Name here]
E-Mail: [e-mail address here]
AIM: [AIM screen name here]
Phone: [phone number here]
Web Site: [web address here]

This original sig was 5 lines long. And to the best of my knowledge it never assisted me in keeping communications with anyone.

Starting in late 2007 I came up with new signature, that being no signature at all. I eliminated it completely. Any e-mail I send now has absolutely no information at the tail were the sig would go.

The end result: People who communicate with me regularly – including new people – don’t have any problems keeping the information flow going. So it would appear (at least as far as I can tell) that the e-mail sig truly is a waste of space that serves to be nothing but e-mail clutter.

If you’re the type that absolutely must use an e-mail sig and don’t want to let it go, here are my suggestions:

1. Don’t use custom formatting and/or fonts.

Sooner or later you’re going to end up e-mailing someone using a Mac or a PC with Linux – and they’re not going to be able to see your Windows fonts at all. Stick to unformatted text. No bold/italic/underlined stuff. No custom fonts.

2. Don’t put an image of yourself in your sig.

If you do this, every e-mail you send has an image file attachment. And that means some (if not a whole bunch) of the e-mail you send will be flagged as SPAM. There are tons of people – including yours truly – that don’t open attachments at all. So don’t do it.

3. Do only input things in your signature that matter.

You only want to have information in the e-mail signature that people could actually use.

For example, having your name, instant messaging screen name and web site is fine.

Having your e-mail address in the sig is not okay because they already have it the moment it arrives in the recipient’s inbox.

Having "taglnes" with funny quotes is not okay because this is nothing but clutter. Have you ever received an e-mail where the signature with tagline is longer than the actual e-mail itself? I bet you have. I have and I can’t stand it.

General rule of thumb: If your e-mail sig is longer than the actual e-mail content, your sig is too frickin’ long. Shorten it or get rid of it.

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Jason Faulkner
I posted a tip about this quite some time ago:
http://www.pcmech.com/article/signature-courtesy/
The only thing I would add to your list is to remove “Scanned By AV Program…” at the bottom. Nobody cares and they probably have their own AV program anyway.
Good post.
http://www.perkster.net perkster
The reason people put their email addresses in their signatures is that when someone forwards your email to a friend or colleague it will likely show whatever name they have you in their address book as and not the actual email address so it allows people to then add you to their contacts who didn’t have it and weren’t an addressee of your original email. Granted that’s a rare occurrence but still, that’s why companies do it.
Drew
I have a signature on my Live mail through the Live Mail client but I only use it if sending out professional emails of some importance.
Other than that, I have one for work that has my name, title & store number, direct contact phone number, email address.
That way, whether I’m sending an email to someone within my store or to friends I used to work with at the same company in Canada, it has my other contact information – not just my email address.
I don’t believe it’s a waste of space unless you make it a waste of space. It’s not a necessary requirement for personal emails but for business related emails, it’s an extremely useful tool for up to date contact information.
As far as putting the email address in the signature, it IS necessary as it’s much easier to find a signature if you have ever had an email go from person to person, redirected, forwarded on etc. all to try and find information for something or to get something done that many people are involved in. For any that have worked for a company of more than 1000 employees, you’ll no doubt agree it makes life much easier.
http://www.charljoubert.co.za Charl Joubert
Is it not also a waste of data to transmit? I mean in the case of long, unnecessary sigs. Yes I know we’re talking a few kbytes (I might be wrong) of info per sig here. But put it this way, in the case of Drew’s 1000+ employee company, if each employee sent a mail a day, thats about a meg or two per day of crap. which leads to about 60 megs of useless stuff per company per month. Which is about 720 megs a year. And how many companies are out there like that wasting a gig a year?
Yes its a small amount but I’m sure the less the net has to deal with the better for everyone out there

Drew
True, it is kind of a waste. But a 1000+ employee company has the $ to pay for the servers so I don’t care about that part
But if you are talking about wasted data/bandwidth, think about the amount of useless crap on YouTube that thousands of people watch. That adds up a lot quicker than a couple of hundred or even thousand email signature.
Add those videos up over the course of a year and around 720Mb’s is a minuscule amount.

http://brandandmarket.com Chris Brown
One thing I really like is when people put their phone number in their email signature. Why? Because when I’m out of the office and I read their email and have to give them a quick call, I’m stuck looking up their phone number. I use a motorola Q for my email reader/cell phone when I’m traveling to a clients or going to some meeting. Just being able to click on their phone number is really handy.
Just a thought.
Chris Brown
Rob
? No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced
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