In the age of smartphones and handheld tablets, why are we still cluttering our email signatures with copyright notices and multiple logo attachments?
It's a Wednesday afternoon, you're out the office, and an email arrives into your smart phone. This email is the one you have been waiting for, the one containing that vital bit of information for your next meeting. The email has been forwarded to you from a helpful colleague, with the words “Please see below for information…” After reading their one-liner, you start to scroll down the email in search of that vital piece of info. You scroll down... past their signature...past their attached company logo... past the social feed icons, the array of previously won awards, the copyright information and “think of the environment notice” and there...below ALL this, is the forwarded email you wanted to read!
Now, I know it's good to expose people to your brand as often as possible. I get that, but attaching all your logos and your life achievements to every email is now not good practice, in fact it's annoying!
There are many ways of sending emails with your logo embedded, but that is not the point I’m trying to make. With the introduction of small screens, our email should be taken up only by the content we want to read.
I get a lot of emails, and I mean a lot. So searching them is a key part of my work day-to-day. I often search by name, then by attachment, as we are generally looking for the content for that particular brochure or website. If the user includes their logo as an attachment this really doesn’t help our cause as we have to check every email sent by them, then filter out the attachments.
Now let's take a look at that legal statement you thought you should include, as another company sent you an email stating theirs. Are you really sending information out that is that confidential that it requires you to include it? and if you are, should you not just be more careful who you are sending the email out to in the first place, rather than trying to cover your back when it goes wrong? Informing the recipient to delete this email or they will be sued if they are not the intended recipient, isn’t the greatest way to communicate with your clients!
I’m not saying remove your email signature, this is a great way for people to contact you quickly, but don’t litter it, and think about what the intended reader will want. So in short, keep it simple…
Need some ground rules to start you off?
Try by first limiting yourself to a maximum of three lines. Include your name and one URL. No dividers and no logos. Keep it simple = efficient.
