I have written about signatures for both email and forums several times over the years, but today I would like to leave this post a little open ended and get some reader comments.
My thoughts on signatures (for business communication) are they should essentially be a shortcut for people to get in touch with you. Only relevant contact information about yourself and company should be included.
For example, my business signature reads:
Name
Company
Phone / Fax
Web Site
In my opinion, the following absolutely do not need to be in signature:
- A graphic of any kind (unless your logo is required).
- Sent from my [iPhone/Blackberry/etc.] – By this logic all my replies should say, “Sent from Outlook”… could you imagine seeing that at the end of every message?
- Message scanned by XXX virus scanner – This looks quite unprofessional… especially when it shows your virus database is 3 months out of date.
- Certifications – IT people seem to love to put a slew of acronyms (and many times the associated graphics) in their signature. Not only do people not know what these mean, does anyone really care?
- Legal jargon – Some companies have all their outgoing mail append 2 paragraphs which basically says, “if this message isn’t for you, please delete it”.
I realize some company policies require this or that to be in email signatures, but what are your thoughts? Do you even care?
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Some people over do it a bit. One person I know of adds their masters degree. It has eight lines of material.
Mine reads….
My name
Marine Operations Manager
The research lab I work at
The university I work for.
I don’t care for religious or spiritual quotes. Business email is not the forum to “spread the word”. Also made-up business titles, and graphics.
As much as Geeks may not need this, I have my email address in my signature. This makes life easy for lots of non-technical folks.
Can i post a gripe here too??? My outlook email signature has four imbedded logos in it (Facebook,Twitter,LinkedIn, and our company logo). I have found that if one’s OLK23 temporary internet file folder is full, one will see a box with a red X instead of my logos. The only solution I’ve found is to empty this folder. There has to be a way to create an email signature where I can be certain my customers will be able to see all that I intend them to see. Right?
I am not in charge of Policy so I can’t get all the crap about Classification and if it was sent from my Blackberry to not appear. I also agree with Gayle that all the Famous quotes and spiritual mumbo jumbo (especially when they are entire paragraph from the bible) need to be left off.
What really upsets me is when I get a forwarded e-mail and the originator signs his… NAME (only) and I have no way of looking up his information to call or e-mail him… ok, maybe I can e-mail him if his actual e-mail appears and not just his short cut. Bottom line if you want people to be able to contact you include a phone number at least.
I agree with most of what you wrote. The “sent from iPhone/BB” seems like annoying arrogance. I’m sure it’s probably the default signature but I really don’t care what device you have. Knowing that the email was sent from a mobile device is helpful to know that you probably won’t be swapping any long emails during that time. Otherwise it’s really not that useful. I’m told to have that legal jargon paragraph. I just have name and number.
Simply my name and work contact details, surely that is all anyone needs. Nothing else is needed as long as the recipient has the correct details from which they can link with you! Anything further is a complete waste of time, nobody cares. If you have a long signature, it most likely proves you had a slow day at work and filled in some time by extending your signature
I agree with pretty much everything here, with the addition of one thing. I can’t stand the use of gaudy fonts that I have to shift my brain into “old english” or “graffiti” mode to decipher. Just use plain, easily readable font people. We all have so many emails to get through anyway, why makes yours more annoying?
One bit of legal stuff that I appreciate being there is a mention of the Sunshine Law (I’m in Florida) about public records. Keeps me in the mindset of what I should and shouldn’t delete. This is especially helpful seeing as how, under the law, I as the individual employee am responsible for making any of my communications while conducting local county government business available for public records inquiries… not the IT dept.
I set my e-mail to not display HTML e-mail so I don’t get annoyed by werid fonts, graphics etc. I just want to read the text.
I once worked for an outfit that required signatures in a particular font and point size and went some thing like this:
Name
Company
Company Slogan
Address
Cell phone
e-mail
Quite a hunk of data!
your email address should bein your signature, you may think they know it already if they are emailing you. but when your email to someone gets forwarded on to someone new, you want them to know how to contact you direct via email.