What to include in an email signature, with examples

The essentials

An email signature does two jobs: it tells the reader who you are, and it gives them a way to reach you other than replying. Everything in it should serve one of those jobs.

Your email address is optional: the reader already has it, but it helps when the email is printed or forwarded. In Email Signature, phone numbers and your email can be tapped on a phone, so a reader can call you in one go.

Nice to have

• A photo or logo: a friendly face for client-facing work, a logo for a company. Keep it small. If you don’t have one, your initials in your colour work well.
• Pronouns, if you’d like people to know them; they sit beside your name.
• A mobile and a desk number, if people really use both. Otherwise pick one.
• Social icons: two to four profiles you keep up to date, such as LinkedIn for most professionals or Instagram for a visual business.
• An address, if people visit you: a shop, a practice, a studio.
• One call to action, such as “Book a call” or “See our menu”, as a button. One, not three.

Examples for different jobs

Notice what they have in common: a name, a role, two ways to reach the person, and nothing that would need scrolling. The replies you send a dozen times a day can use an even shorter version: Email Signature’s Compact design is two short lines, made for replies.

Company details and disclaimers

Some businesses must put certain details in their emails. In the UK, a limited company’s business emails are expected to show its registered name, its company number, the part of the UK where it’s registered and its registered office address, as its letters and website do. Other countries have their own rules, so check what applies to your business; this isn’t legal advice.

A confidentiality disclaimer (“This email is intended only for…”) is common in law, finance and healthcare, but it’s a courtesy rather than a shield: keep it short, and only add it if your organisation asks for it. Email Signature has an optional note at the bottom for exactly these lines, in smaller text so it doesn’t crowd your details.

What to leave out

• Inspirational quotes. They age badly and say nothing about how to reach you.
• Every social profile you have. Pick the ones you’d be happy for a client to see.
• Large pictures and animated GIFs. They’re often blocked or shown as attachments, and they make every reply heavier.
• Your whole signature as one picture. Nobody can copy your number from it, screen readers can’t read it, and it disappears when pictures are turned off.
• “Sent from my phone” under a professional signature. Turn it off, or use a short phone signature.
• Several fonts and colours. One font and one accent colour look intentional.

Design that survives the inbox

Email programs are fussy. Some strip styles, some draw messages with a word processor’s engine, and many block pictures that aren’t hosted on the web. A signature that looks lovely in one program can fall apart in another. A few rules keep it intact:

• Use web-safe fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Georgia or Times. Email Signature offers six of them.
• Host pictures on the web. A photo or logo is added by its https link, because Gmail blocks pictures pasted into a signature as data.
• Build with tables and inline styles, the way email programs need. Email Signature does this for you.
• Keep a plain-text version for programs and help desks that don’t show formatting.

Once your signature is ready, here’s how to add it in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and on an iPhone.