I’ve been recently thinking about optimizing my email signature. The problem is, I have too many things to include there and at the same time want to keep it simple and clean. Running a few experiments I came to important (yet evident) conclusions:
- email / digital signature is of great importance: it influences both the response rate and the conversion (in my case, that’s signing SEO consulting service agreement, but that can be anything from backlinks to growing your social community friendship).
- email / digital signature makes your business / brand look solid and trustworthy;
- email / digital signature should comply with your main purposes.
The last point is both obvious and unclear to me. What’s my purpose? I want people to respond (i.e. I want to get them interested); in some cases I want them to become my Facebook friends (or Twitter followers). Besides, I definitely want to provide them with as much information about myself as I can to cut off unnecessary back-and-forth messaging that takes time and lowers the chances of a positive result.
So what to include in my SEO consultant‘s digital signature:
- my DBA name;
- my area of expertise;
- my email address;
- my business-related website URL (at least one of them)…
Well, the above points seem necessary. What about the following ones?
Twitter profile URL or Facebook page URL? Or both? Or LinkedIn resume URL? Depending on where you are most active, it seems to make sense that you should link to your social media profile(s) to [first] let people know more about yourself and your community and [second] let them become your friends and thus grow your social media popularity and influence. What if I am active at numerous social media sites and many of them are important to me?
IM contacts and phone number: that seems also essential things to add as they foster further communication encouraging people to contact you using alternative ways.
Your business address (that both complies with common Internet marketing ethics and makes your business look solid);
Call-to-action (depending on what you want to achieve: encourage people to subscribe or to add you to friends or to buy your product or whatever);
Self-advertisement (never tried that and thus I am not sure about the impact but saw many people do that);
Direct link to your services page. If you (unlike me 🙂 ) have a well-optimized call-to-action somewhere on your site, it probably makes sense to refer people there.
Disclaimer or privacy policy (also makes your business look solid and secure)…
All the above things definitely make sense but doesn’t that look too much?
Please share your tactics!
Post image: lightkeeper’s signature
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I am Ann Smarty, owner of SEOsmarty.com. I've been in the SEO industry for two decades. I am the former Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal and a contributor to Mashable. These days I am running Viral Content Bee and writing for Moz, Buzzsumo, Wix and many others!
