Email signature examples & best practices for 2021
Learn how to create the best email signature from professional email signature examples and designed templates
What is an email signature?
An email signature is a powerful way to convey your professionalism to your readers and give them the information they need to contact you. An email signature is placed at the bottom of each mail, which helps leave a great impression and makes you stand out from your peers.
Signature examples by profession:
- CEO & executive signatures
- Realtor email signatures
- Lawyer email signatures
- Doctor email signatures
- Teacher email signatures
- Student email signatures
- Blogger & writer signatures
- Graphic designer signatures
- Artist email signature
- Consultant email signature
- Marketing & Sales Signatures
- Photographer email signatures
- Assistant email signatures
- Personal email signature
Signature examples by feature:
Find the best email signature examples by profession or feature
- Take a look at the content in the left side menu to find quick access to some of our most popular laser focused email signature examples and tips, arranged by professionals and features.
WiseStamp has been around since 2009. That’s a lot of time to expand and perfect our selection of email signatures. So, if you have a specific need in mind, you should be able to find specific examples and guidelines for that here.
- You may need a certain feature.
- You may want to know how to create the best email signature for your specific profession or job title.
- You may need an email signature that works perfectly in Gmail, Outlook, Mac Mail or another email platform.
- You may be looking for a certain signature style or design.
Whichever your case is, we have the answers for you (or no one does).
How to create a professional email signature that makes an impression
Your email signature is a great opportunity to present yourself and what you do in a beautiful and professional way. If you do it right you’ll build trust and connect with your clients more significantly with each mail you send.
This article is intended to show you exactly how it’s done, so stay tuned. We’ll go over how to make the best use of each moving part in your signature block.
We will not cover email signature design best practices, and if that’s your focus ,click the link for our comprehensive article about that, plus lots of cool email signature design examples.
3 things that make a professional email signature:
- It creates trust
- It is visually pleasing, and
- It provided unique value
All good email signatures do these 3 things. You had better do the same if you care to make a professional impression, gain your readers’ attention, and earn your readers’ engagement.
Follow this article to learn how it’s done.
NOTE: a personal email signature is used in a slightly different way than a business email signature for professionals. If you intend to use your signature for your private email, I advise that you read our page tailored for making a personal email signature.
5 components that make up any good email signature
There are 5 must have elements that make up any good email footer template. These elements complement each other to create an effective professional email signature format. In order to create an impact for you and your organization you want to do it correctly and get the small details right.
By the end of this section you’ll learn how to create a good looking formal email signature that will make a good impact on your peers and leave a lasting impression.
A good email signature has 5 major components (and some extras). We’ll dedicate the rest of the article to showing you how to nail each component.
What a professional email signature should include
- Personal and business details
- Contact information
- Personal photo / company logo
- Call-to-Action (CTA)
- Social media icons
- Animations (optional)
- Add-ons for specific professions (optional)
Let’s look into each element separately, to see how it’s used best.
1. How to present your personal and business details
It may feel right to cover everything you do in your work email signature, especially when you start using advanced features and add-ons like buttons and banners. But in order to be effective it’s a good idea to be concise. Because of the very limited signature format, if it’s not strictly essential, it’s noise.
So, what to do?
- Use short but clear wording. You don’t need to say Chief Executive Officer – just write CEO, and definitely don’t use Wizard of Light Bulb Moments for Marketing Director (true story).
- Avoid vague or misleading titles. So, it’s a no-go on Communications Ambassador or Under Secretary to the Sub-Committee.
- Don’t forget to include any of these basic building blocks:
- Your full name
- Business name
- Job title
- Contact phone
- Official website
- Address – in case of local store / service
2. How to present your contact information
The point of adding your contact details is, unsurprisingly, to help people contact you. The more options you add the less clear it becomes what the best way to contact you really is. This makes it less likely that anyone will follow through.
So, what to do?
- Leave out unnecessary information. There is no need to add your email address to your email signature (the reply button will do) and there is no need to give 3 phone numbers if they all lead to you.
- Only add links to content people will want to see. Put a hyperlink to your website, portfolio or social media only if it’s something your prospect would consider valuable (ask a friend for her opinion, if you don’t trust yourself to be unbiased, yea?)
- Don’t add details you do not want people to use. If you don’t intend to answer people that call you on your mobile phone, don’t add a mobile number. Promising and not delivering is worse than no promise at all.
- Don’t add contact details that you’re not in control of (like a third party calling service). What other people choose to do there, may unknowingly hurt your reputation.
3. Making a professional email signature with personal image and logo
Your email signature block may be the last thing people see in your mail but that also means that’s the impression they will take with them.
Your image and logo are the most memorable elements in your email signature. Yet there are more bad examples out there than good ones for how images are used. Why are so many people content with having such bad design as their lasting impression? Well… because adding a nice, responsive, well designed signature to your mail is not so simple.
You may think that making an email signature with logo is just drag-and-drop, but if you’ve ever tried to do it yourself you know that this is not the case. Even if you use an email signature editor, that really doesn’t solve the problem. You still have to install the code manually into the email client’s HTML file.
It doesn’t really matter which email provider you’re using, the WiseStamp generator can auto-installs your email signature in your email (with just one click). You can check out how it works specifically for Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, or Yahoo.
But even using a generator, there is still room for things to go wrong. There’re ways to ensure your image will look great no matter what.
How to make your signature image and corporate logo really attractive
Your image and logo are literally your face when it comes to email communication – so make them attractive. Attractiveness creates trust, makes you more memorable and increases compliance. Doing this wrong can also hurt your reputation and your brand.
I) It’s always better to smile
Smiling faces have been shown to increase engagement and positively influence people’s willingness to do business with you. But, this is a fine art. Make your smile natural and friendly and confident, not smug, not condescending, not shy and definitely not fake.
II) Use only high quality images
A low quality image is by now standard for dodgy and spammy content on the web. Any low quality images you use may associate you with this type of distrusted content. So use only high quality pictures.
III) Make sure your images isn’t trimmed
Our email signature generator (and most others) use a square or a circle frame to present your image. So, your safe bet would be to use a 1×1 picture size (around 250x250px is good). Otherwise, pieces you like about yourself may be left out 🙂
IV) Give your image a clean background
You don’t want to drown your nice smile against a noisy background (like in the right pic). Instead give yourself a clean and contrasting background that makes your face bright and clear.
Tip: Use both photo and business logo with an animated GIF
A GIF email signature can be the most efficient use of your limited signature space. Using a GIF like the one below will permit you to showcase both you and your company in a way that is esthetically pleasing and not too overwhelming. You can get
It will also make your email signature eye catching and increase exposure.
There are loads of other animation options that we talk about in the bonus section below.
4. Use a Call to action (CTA) to turn your email signature into a marketing channel
What is a Call-to-Action? Well, it’s more or less what it sounds like – it’s an invitation for your prospects to take you up on an offer.
In practice CTAs take the following forms:
- a button
- a banner
- text or image links
- social icons
- a video
An effective CTA should be polite yet assertive, and above all, easy to understand and easy to follow through. So, how do you do that?
How to successfully use a call-to-action
In a nutshell? Think of a typical person your message is meant for, then think what you can provide that they really need. Offer them that in words they understand and relate to, and present it in a way that visually sticks-out (easier said than done?
We have an entire post about CTA email signatures, but in order to keep us on course let’s break it down here.
I) Decide on just 1 action - that will give you (and your users) the most benefit
The main challenge here is giving up on secondary options you’d want people to get onboard with. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too (turns out your mom knew a thing or two about email signature marketing ha…?) – sometimes “less is more”.
So, decide on 1 CTA:
- Add banners with one clear message
- encourage your readers to call you with a clickable phone number
- Add a “Sale” offer with a clickable link
- Add a brick and mortar address with a Google maps link
- Invite your readers to meet by using a scheduler addon
- Pull people to engage with you on social media with social buttons or a Youtube thumbnail
II) Make it easy to take action
Now that you have just 1 request from your audience make sure that you’re not asking for too much.
Asking someone to marry you is just 1 request right? But it’s certainly not a small or an easy decision to make. Be modest with what you ask. Use low commitment words like “see” or “let’s talk” instead of “buy” or “enroll”.
All you need to do is convince people to take the first step, not go the whole way. Once they take that step they have slightly committed and you can try to convince them to go further.
III) Be as clear and descriptive as you can (in 2-5 words)
Let’s say you’re a Marketing Director and you want to send people to your sales landing page. A button text saying “Visit my sales page” is clear on what you want people to do, but it doesn’t really describe what you offer your prospects in terms of benefit. Instead try something like “Stay 2 nights get the third for FREE”.
IV) Make your call-to-action visually stand-out
This one is kind of straightforward, no? If you don’t see the CTA you’re not going to click it. Simple.
Give your button and/or banner some “pop” with a solid splash of color, just make sure that the button is a different color than it’s background and that the text is easy to read.
V) Verify that all links work and lead to the right place
Imagine you go through all the trouble of making a nice email signature (it’s actually really easy with our generator) and even make a great call to action, only to lead people to broken or missing links. Not ideal, right?
So after you’ve completed your signature, go over all the buttons, social icons and other details and see that everything is correct and working properly.
Throughout this article I’ve been telling you to keep what you offer to a minimum, well… when it comes to social media buttons you can let loose.
The small and compact nature of social icons means that you can go all-in and use them all, and it will refreshingly look better and more complete (unlike before, this time “More is more”).
Add to your email signature any of your social media assets that’s live and kicking, so long as it’s relevant to your professional goals.
What you shouldn’t do is add stale, unkept or dead social channels that will make you look more bad than good.
As a matter of fact, you have lots of cool ways to present your social media assets beyond icons, such as full fledged buttons and videos. Check out our page on social media icons and buttons for email signatures that drive clicks, you’ll find some cool examples in there.
6. Animate your email signature
It’s a good option to use elegant animations in your email signature. Animation is a great eye catcher, and you should use it to bring attention to your otherwise unnoticed email footer.
Best animations you could use:
- Picture/logo GIFs
- Animated handwritten sign-off
- Animated banners
- Animated buttons
You should try our animated signature GIF maker see some examples for how it’s done, and make your own animated email signature.
Animated signature Do’s and Don’ts
The important thing in animation is not to go overboard. Getting too freaky can be counterproductive.
Don’t overdo it - too much movement can be distracting
If there’s too much movement in your signature it can get very hard to focus on actually reading. The motion will compete against the information to which you wanted to pull people’s attention in the first place. And it can be seriously annoying.
Do make sure your animation adds value
Let’s go over what that means…
Making use of your limited real-estate, grabbing attention or just plain being a cool feature is well and good but they’re not true value in and of themselves.
To really add value they must compliment you or your brand in a meaningful way.
For example, you can use an image strip add-on to add GIFs that show you or your product in action, or you could add a special handwritten animated sign-off to give a personal feel to your signature. Another thing that does the trick is adding your business slogan in addition to your photo and logo like dynamic typing effect.
7. Gear-up with add-ons for specific industries and professions
We’ve been working with lots of people from a great many of professions through the years and we got enough requests to build dedicated add-ons to answer specific industry needs:
- Stay on the safe side with legal disclaimers
- with an image gallery
- Tell a deeper story with a video
- Express your values with a green email footer or beautiful quotes
If you’re a lawyer, an artist , a travel agent, an eco activist or even an astronaut, you’ll likely find what you need here or in our full list of featured add-ons.
I) Apply legal and GDPR disclaimers
It’s really easy to set up. Once you’ve finished putting in your details in our signature generator, just go over to the add-ons section > choose the one with the hammer called “Disclaimer” > Then choose one of our pre-made disclaimers or customize one on your own > click “add” and you’re done.
Visit our post on about email disclaimers to learn more about important details that go into making them and how to use them correctly.
II) Add an Image/GIF gallery to show off your social media, product or service
Pictures speak louder than words (is that the saying?) so let them drive your message home. If you have a cool, creative and good looking product – make a show of it and pull people in with strong visuals. Images and videos are known to have high click rates.
BTW, there’s a WiseStamp Instagram gallery add-on that makes adding Instagram images and links to your email signature no hassle at all.
III) Add a video to load your signature with more content than plain text allows
If you get people interested enough to click your video you’ll be able to tell the full story about what you do or what you offer. There is no other way to tell a story right out of your email signature. So, make the best of your signature real-estate and add your latest sales video to your signature block. You can set up a thumbnail that’s auto-generated directly from Youtube with our video signature add-on.
IV) Convey your values with a green email signature footer or quotes
Show any one you write a little bit more about who you are and what you care about using a green signature footer or some nice email signature quotes.
If you care about the environment, then that’s easy, just go to our email signature editor > add your personal and contact details > then add the green footer add-on from our add-ons section > choose a pre-made version you like, and voila!
For a bit of self expression you can add a signature quote from our pre-made list (funny, motivational, business and more) or insert one of your own. Go and grab it from the add-n section.
Key takeaways (tl;dr)
- Trust is your strongest asset when it comes to online communication
- Design simple and clean with visual hierarchy and your brand style in mind
- Beautiful design and images are essential for a professional impression
- Include only the minimal details people must know in your signature
- Use calls-to-action, social icons, videos and images to engage people
- Use animation to catch people’s eye (but don’t make it distracting)
- Look for add-ons for your special business needs – our editor has lots
- After generating your signature check links and images to see they work well
Professional email signature templates
Over 1.3 million professionals use their WiseStamp signature to stand out professionally.
Choose your best fit from 100s of email signature design templates for all major email clients, including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Mac Mail, and more.
Company & corporate email signature examples
Company & corporate email signature examples
FAQs
How to make a professional email signature?
- Fill In your contact details
- Add a professional high quality signature image or logo
- Add social media icons
- Add an email disclaimer to your signature
- Add a CTA (Banner, button, video)
- Personalize your email signature with a hand signature, a quote or badges
How do you add WiseStamp to Gmail?
If you’re a Gmail user Wisestamp auto-installs your signature in Gmail with no need for you to do anything more than sign-in with your Gmail account like you would normally do on the web. This saves you the time and frustration involved in copying and pasting your signature into Gmail Settings (like all other generators do).
How many design layouts does the WiseStamp email signature template generator Includes?
- WiseStamp’s Free Email Signature Generator offers 16 free signature templates
- WiseStamp Pro Includes 14 of the best mail signature templates & ability to export any signature to HTML
How do I add a signature in Outlook?
You have 2 different ways to do this:
- Use the Wisestamp Outlook signature generator to create a signature in Outlook. This is the easiest way since Wisestamp installs your signature in Outlook with no manual action required from you.
- Manually edit your signature directly in Outlook settings. This is harder to pull off and end up with a good looking signature. To do this read our guide on how to add a signature in Outlook.
What size should an email signature be?
The recommended dimensions for an email signature are a Width of up to 650 pixels. The optimal Height is normally anything from 80 to 150 pixels, go with what looks best, for you. All templates in WiseStamp are designed to fit emails perfectly, so we got you covered.
How to create an email signature?
- Open the Wisestamp Email Signature Generator
- Fill In your Signature details
- Click OK, I’m done
- Choose Your Email Client & Continue
- Sign up Using Gmail or your Email
- Add The WiseStamp Chrome Extension (optional)
- Done. Your signature has been automatically updated
How to design an email signature?
- The easiest way to design email signatures is by using WiseStamp
- Choose your Signature template
- Select font size
- Select social icon size
- Add your photo or logo
- Select your template color
How to create an HTML email signature?
- Create Your HTML Email Signature Using WiseStamp
- Click manage Email Clients
- Choose your preferred HTML signature client (Thunderbird)
- Click grab signature
How do you add a signature footer in Gmail?
You have 2 main options in order to do this:
- Use a Gmail signature generator to create your Gmail signature then export and paste the code into Gmail (This is not needed with Wisestamp since our tool automatically installs your signature in Gmail)
- Manually add a signature in Gmail using it’s embedded editor. Click the link to see how it’s done.
How to write an email signature?
- Write your name, position & company
- Include social icons (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
- Include your contact number, address & website
- Write a call-to-action (subscribe here)
- Write a disclaimer (optional)
More signature examples by profession:
- CEO & executive signatures
- Realtor email signatures
- Lawyer email signatures
- Doctor email signatures
- Teacher email signatures
- Student email signatures
- Blogger & writer signatures
- Graphic designer signatures
- Artist email signature
- Consultant email signature
- Marketing & Sales Signatures
- Photographer email signatures
- Assistant email signatures
5. Add social media icons to expose more people to more of what you do