How to Make A Professional Email Signature

Today I want to talk about a simple marketing opportunity that many independent healthcare providers, and small business owners in general, overlook.

I’ll give you a hint. It’s hidden in what we use to communicate every single day.

I’m talking about email.

More specifically, I want to hone in on that short tagline that gets attached to the bottom of every message you send.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to make a professional email signature that will:

• Make your practice look established and trustworthy.
• Increase the value of your brand.
• And ultimately, bring in more patients.

Let’s jump right in.

Contents

• 10,000 marketing opportunities
• What does a professional email signature look like?
• How to make your own professional email signature
• Conclusion

10,000 marketing opportunities

I know what you’re thinking. Why should I care about my email signature?

And I don’t blame you.

After all, doctors and dentists usually have little to no direct email communication with their patients. It doesn’t seem necessary to worry about the content of your email signature in the same way as someone, say, who works in sales or marketing at the widget company down the street.

But here’s the deal. If you’re an independent healthcare provider, you do work in sales and marketing.

When you own your practice, you are responsible for every aspect of your business.

Even if you never send an email to a patient, I bet someone who works for you does.

Do you know what email signature is used by your office manager? How about the receptionist?

As the owner, it is your responsibility to pay attention to these details that affect the practice as a whole.

And your email signature is a surprisingly simple and effective way to build trust and establish credibility for your practice.

Think about it. The average office worker will send 40 emails per day. That’s >10,000 opportunities per year that a single employee might have to convey a consistent and well-branded message with the help of a simple email signature.

What does a professional email signature look like?

Don’t treat your organization’s email signature as an afterthought.

Just putting your name and a point or two of contact information is what I’d expect from a personal email address. But that doesn’t do much to market who you really are.

Instead, use your email signature as a vehicle for engaging your recipient with a consistent message that speaks to who you are and what you do.

The best way to do that is with consistent content and good design.

To get started, let’s look at some tips that will help you create an email signature that is both helpful and professional.

Use simple and consistent colors

Branding is all about being consistent. And that includes the colors you use in your email signature.

Color will help make your email signature stand out from the rest of the email.

But don’t overdo it. Keep your color palette simple and use accent colors that match your logo.

Example

In the following examples, I’ll use my own email signature to demonstrate how design can transform a dull email signature into a powerful branding tool.

Unformatted, my email signature looks pretty bad. There is nothing in the design – other than the default blue link – that commands your attention or highlights important information.

The long legal notice is necessary due to the nature of my work. But left as a big paragraph, it is nothing but distracting.

In the example below, I’ve only changed some of the colors to improve my email signature.

My name and the link to our website are now the blue that matches our company logo.

I also chose to make my title gray to separate it from the rest of my contact information.

And I lightened up the font of the legal disclaimer to make it less distracting.

Use contrast and spacing

Good design is all about being helpful to the user by presenting the information in a way that’s easy to read and understand.

You can make use of font size, weight, and spacing to direct the reader’s eyes to what they should be reading first.

Example

Your name is the most important. So use a larger font size and bold text to make it stand out.

Then use space and break elements to group similar information together.

For my email signature, my name and title are above the horizontal break line, while my contact information is grouped together underneath.

I also used a smaller font size to further deemphasize the legal notice.

Include your logo

Logos are used to communicate the value of our products or services to consumers.

A logo might represent trust, commitment to excellent service, or quality care.

However you’ve positioned your brand in the market, don’t miss an opportunity to reinforce that message every time you send an email by including your logo in your email signature.

Example

I decided to include the full banner image of our logo in this example. But you can play around with smaller logos as well.

Add social media icons

If you have an active social media account for your practice, including the links in your email signature is a convenient way to direct people to engage with your brand online.

Why should you use social media icons instead of text links? Because icons are more easily recognizable and they’ll save you a bunch of space.

Add a call to action button

Lastly, you should consider including a call to action button.

This is a link that invites your reader to do something related to your business.

If you’re a dentist, maybe that button should say, “Schedule an appointment”

If you’re a marketing recruiter, maybe it’s a link to watch a video about what makes their company culture great.

For the work we do, our clients frequently send us sensitive information. So we include a call to action that allows them to send us files securely.

How to make your own professional email signature

Now that you know what elements make up a professional email signature, it’s time to create your own.

Unfortunately, if you simply go into your email provider’s settings (e.g. Gmail or Outlook) and edit your email signature, you’ll find it pretty difficult to create a professional email signature like the one I just showed you.

In order to include logos, social media icons, and call to action buttons you’ll need to create an HTML email signature.

This leaves you with two options:

1. Code your own with HTML and CSS (difficult) OR
2. Use a free email signature generator tool online (recommended)

Option #2 is what I’m going to show you today.

Mail-Signatures.com

In preparation for this post, I experimented with many free email signature generators online. And mail-signatures.com was my favorite by far.

Once you visit their website, the steps to create your own professional email signature are pretty straightforward.

Step 1: Choose your email platform

Step 2: Choose your professional email signature template

Mail-signatures.com has over 50 professional email signature templates to choose from. So you’re almost guaranteed to find something that will work for you.

Step 3: Enter your email signature data

When you have entered all your information and the signature preview is looking the way you want it, then all you have to do is click “Apply your signature” and follow the onscreen instructions to copy and paste your new email signature into Gmail, Outlook, or another email provider.

Conclusion

I hope this post convinced you that a professional email signature is a simple way to improve your brand’s image.

It’s easy to do. So what are you waiting for?

How many more emails are you going to let your team send to your patients and other business colleagues that don’t reinforce the message of who you are and what you do?

Take 15 minutes and create a professional email signature for yourself. And then share it with your team.