Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Email Signatures for Idiots
I know that I am a very cranky person, but the number of people who fail at the most basic level of internet communication sincerely boggles the mind. I’m not talking about people who can’t write, can’t spell, or try to paste PowerPoint slides into their emails. I’m talking about people who do not have the basic courtesy to include an email signature at the bottom of every email.
Honest to God, I have better things to do than spend my life looking up your contact details on your website every time I need to get in touch with you. And if I have to go back through 162 emails to find the one where you actually gave me your mobile number, I’m going to be swallowing a metric tonne of irritation by the time I manage to get ahold of you.
Everyone communicating from a company, even as a sole trader, needs an email signature, and needs to include it on every email by default. Ideally, the signature should follow an intelligent plain text format: everything I need to get in touch with you should be visible, even to those of us who do not have HTML turned on in emails.
Here’s mine:
Sabrina Dent
Web Design, Marketing & Communications
http://www.sabrinadent.com
sabrina@sabrinadent.com
P: 021 234 9938
M: 085 702 8212
Arguably, if you’re getting email from me, you probably don’t need my email address. I include this to make it easy for people to pass on my complete contact details to other folks with a simple cut and paste. It adds one line and I think it’s a good idea.
Obviously, a lot of people include the country code for their numbers in their email footer. This is good practice for international globetrotters, but I am not one. I prefer to work mostly in Ireland with Irish clients, and fucking up the aesthetics of my email signature annoys me at least as much as working with clients in LA.
Here are some things that are not in my email footer and drive me crazy in other people’s:
- The sender’s name rendered as anything other than the plainest possible text. I understand that you’re incredibly creative and that being a corporate drone sucks, but this is not the medium to demonstrate your personal design flair.
- An embedded logo graphic. I’m communicating with a person, not a brand. If I can’t remember what company you’re with, you have bigger issues than the tragedy that is your email signature.
- A great big green P and a note to please consider the environment before printing this email. Do I look like an idiot? I haven’t printed an email that isn’t a plane ticket since 1997, so please piss off and mind your own carbon footprint.
To recap: Email is a communication medium. Your email signature should make it easy for me to communicate with you, first by existing and secondly by containing the stripped down essentials I need in order to, you know, communicate with you.
And if you make me turn on HTML to do that, I will hate you forever.
11 Mar 2009
| In: Crankypants + Technology | Tags:basics, email
I don’t like them. They reveal too much.
11.03.2009, 9:55 amHear hear!
So well said and so relevant. I also find myself constantly amazed at just how poor and unprofessional so many people I deal with are when it comes to email communication.
There are the clients who only ever write one line, no matter how many questions you had asked in the previous email. There are those that don’t have the decency to write “Hello, Hi, Hey, Dear,” or address me in any way. There is of course atrocious spelling, incredibly bad grammatical errors, and, the thing that annoys me most of all, appalling structure – both of sentences and the overall email.
Emails with no subject, no text, just an attachment. That bugs the hell out of me as well.
Yeah, does my nut in.
Off topic now – any chance you’d add the subscribe to comments plugin for WordPress to your blog?
11.03.2009, 10:16 amClients always ask for images in their email footers, which then does not display in all email clients the reason for which has to be explained by a forlorn web designer who recommended against it in the first place.
I have experience of this and am grateful for this little box that I can use to complain to like minded people :)
11.03.2009, 10:48 amI have a regular client who irregularly (quite rarely in fact) includes his signature on his emails to me. What is with that? Like when does he decide to add the signature? ‘hmmm, i feel like being contacted today, maybe I’ll add my signature on to the bottom this one email’ (but not the next one). Why on earth would you ever even think about inserting your signature? It should just BE THERE. All. The. Time.
And while we are on the topic, I really have to insist that there is a way to fail in basic internet communication even earlier than the omission of a signature. The subject line. Please include a relevant subject line! Don’t start emailing me about some changes you want done to your website in a reply to the invoice I just emailed you! How am I ever going to find these emails again?!
Sabrina, you are not alone in your cranky impatience with incompetent email users.
11.03.2009, 11:12 amEmily I share your pain – the number of emails I get saying
RE: Website
is just depressing – of course it’s about a website – I make websites!
Sabrina make them stop!
11.03.2009, 12:10 pmAs I twitted earlier, I’ve users who add nothing to subject or signature and others who want every possible logo and coloured font.
At least those who want the extra stuff are thinking about how to explore the possible options, even if you have to push back with explanations of formats, browsers, mobiles ..etc.
The ones without subject, signature (or an attempt to spell-check business email) really don’t get it at all.
11.03.2009, 12:18 pmThe only other thing I add to my (work) mail sig is my conference call info, as I have about a half dozen meetings a week using it, and regardless of whether it’s in the meeting invite, I always get asked for it. So “It’s at the bottom of all my emails” is a very handy response.
And yes, it’s all in plain text.
11.03.2009, 12:58 pmHere here. This animal fell into my inbox yesterday, I almost wept. http://screencast.com/t/QXZjsloS
11.03.2009, 2:47 pm@sabrina – excellent rant, and thank you for the forum to continue the rant! People not including signatures in emails does drive me totally crazy too.
@stu you are so right about subjects. “re.website” kills me. Sometimes I get so fanatical about the best subject line it take me longer to think one up then the actual email… Is it possible to tag emails? Labels aren’t specific enough sometimes.
11.03.2009, 3:33 pmI totally agree that everyone should have a information-rich email signature, but let me tell you how few people seem to read them and use them when they are there! I have had people (web-savvy, nonetheless) ask me for my phone number, which is in my email sig! These are people with whom I have had several email exchanges and then they still say – “what’s your phone number?”
It seems that email signatures at the end of emails are often a bit like banner ads at the top of websites: people just ignore them in favor of reading the “real” content of the page.
I do, however, feel that it is okay to omit your signature if you are responding to an email and it is already in the previous email’s text.
But – argh – I sure wish people would RTFM (or signature, as it were). We add them for a reason!
12.03.2009, 1:03 amThe problem with corporate drones, is not people breaking out of their corporate mould but fitting in with it in many cases.
Here’s two email signatures from the same company (other name changed). Needless to say our creative team rebelled against the corporate monstrosity.
http://skitch.com/cobrophy/b84yh/email-sigs
Admittedly my text could be plainer but I like Helvetica, and it works fine if converted to plain text.
12.03.2009, 12:40 pm(you haven’t seen our IDs yet either)
[...] Here’s a fairly strident post from another of the business blog finalists with advice on use of Signature files in your business emails. [...]
12.03.2009, 5:35 pmGreat post Sabrina. Companies should think about global signatures for the employees emails, to make sure the necessary information is getting out there.
My biggest pet peeve — the colorful, illegible script signature line.
12.03.2009, 8:46 pmI would not recommend putting your email in the footer. If you send a lot of emails one of your emails will eventually end up being publish full on the internet; most likely on a site like markmail and you will forever be spammed for the rest of your days.
Maybe use some obsfucation:
13.03.2009, 3:35 pmemail: name (a-t) domain dot ext
I am a corporate drone who has to phone a lot of other corporate drones at early/late hours when there’s no receptionist around (or they’ve laid him/her off) – so putting your extension number in there is really frickin vital too. Getting lost in voicemail systems for two minutes at a time pressing pound and listening to messages is incredibly aggravating.
14.03.2009, 4:36 pmOh God, I love it when I get called “strident.” It’s like corporate-ese for “bitchy.”
There are some great tips in this conversation. As we said in kindergarten, “Thanks for sharing!”
@Denise Jacobs: I agree that omitting your signature in replies on a long exchange is acceptable; I also kill them if I’m replying to someone I know is on a Blackberry or iPhone.
PS: Seriously, what is up with people who don’t know what the subject line is for? My friend’s dad titles every email EMAIL, but he’s 79. People working in offices should surely know better these days, right?
I am always amazed at the number of people who either have no contact details in their email signature or insist on using those inane HTML things.
15.03.2009, 3:44 pmAs for subject lines .. best not to go there :)
With the volume of email I get on a weekly basis emails with no subject line or a badly formulated one tend to get overlooked
Definitely agree that simple is best. Mind you, I do think there is an argument for a small logo file as well, so long as it can be incorporated a) without being intrusive and b) doesn’t distract from contact information (particularly when it doesn’t load).
Noting the relevant information is important, and varies from person to person. I travel all the time, so I tend to leave my phone number off because I’d either have a big list of numbers dependent on where I am in the world, or people would keep getting an answering service.
19.03.2009, 5:41 pmI laughed out loud through this post and all the comments. Then I wept in commiseration. I work for a large-secret-company which constantly e-mails me giant marketing campaign images to include in my signature, and I delightfully delete them immediately. Perhaps it’s fine for the salespeople, but most of my customers would delete my e-mails and blacklist me if I filled their inboxes with that.
However it does have the nasty side effect that my colleagues’ 6MB e-mails often clog my inbox so badly that I can’t respond to e-mail until I delete enough giant signature e-mails so that I can send mail again. Fun!
21.03.2009, 2:38 pmI totally agree with the logo and don’t print this message. I feel like responding, if you spent more time communicating clearly instead of worrying about me printing a page, we would both be doing the world some good!
If your email address contains your domain name, I would not include the http:///www.yourdomain.com.
22.03.2009, 4:44 pmFor over 10 years there has been a mechanism for exchanging contact information without messing up communication with a often redundant signature. It’s called vCard. It’s text, no images. Just because most people’s mail readers are too fucking brain dead to deal with them doesn’t mean that it’s not the best solution.
It’s stupid to let Outlook define how e-mail functions.
But until then, your recommendations are about as good as it gets.
22.03.2009, 5:06 pmIt would also kick ass if people kept it to 4-5 lines, instead of the 20 line monstrosity I get from anyone in finance or law. It’s like they get an extra $20 for each line over 10. Annoying!
22.03.2009, 5:10 pmWhat about those mile-long-legal-disclaimer-under-fear-of-death clauses that most companies (and even individuals) stick on to the end of each mail? Nothing annoys me more than that.
Considering the fact that they have no legal standing, I sometimes reply to those mails with my own disclaimers. In tiny print, #ccc or lighter, lots of big words, and with random clauses of my own. Like: If you don’t forward this to six of your friends within six hours, you will die six painful deaths.
I always add one very important clause that if they reply to my mail, all their terms stand void, and my rules apply henceforth. Only one firm stopped replying to my mails. The rest don’t bother reading these things either, I guess.
23.03.2009, 7:04 am[...] but very valid rant about people not including a signature file in every single email by Sabrina Dent.) I work at Newsweaver, Europe’s leading email newsletter specialist. If you are using email [...]
23.03.2009, 4:17 pmMy Contrast signature took a while to perfect:
26.03.2009, 1:09 pmhttp://skitch.com/eoghanmccabe/bgrey/skitched-20090226-171002
Simplicity is beauty. Signatures in huge font with irritating neon colors just hurt to look at. I agree with you on all of the above.
30.03.2009, 12:14 amHoly shit! It seems from a fuss of going back through 100 emails to find one‘s contacts your post revealed a problem of wayyy too long signatures. C‘mon guys, design is communication. Don‘t overspam. At least with your signature.
30.03.2009, 9:07 amlol oh so true and well said. What’s the deal with people who attach their signature in a hand written font?
06.04.2009, 7:04 pm[...] and wanted to talk about them. I could never really mesh it together into an article though. I love this from Sabrina Dent, she tells it like it is and makes some points worth thinking about when you look at your own email [...]
06.04.2009, 11:17 pmI use HTML for the typography plain text doesn’t support.
07.04.2009, 4:48 pmHmmm I never thought it would upset any one quite to this extent, but yes even I would prefer having all contact details available instantly.
08.04.2009, 4:51 amJust to extend this slightly how do you tend to sign off in an email to someone you don’t know…
Regards,
Best regards, (bgrds)
Kind regards, (krgds?)
Something else?
Definition of regards: a friendly term implying respect and affection.
Hmmm?
29.04.2009, 1:28 amYou had me up until you used the word ‘ahold’ – and then I couldn’t take you seriously. You need to watch out for nasty non-words. That’s a higher ring of hell than you’re describing.
01.05.2009, 12:28 pm[...] Dent has an excellent post here on e-mail [...]
01.05.2009, 12:30 pmMick, I sign off either “Cheers” or “Regards” – cheers if we’re friendly, regards if we’re not yet friendly.