5 Most Popular Ways to Create an Email Signature

Did you know that one of the biggest mistakes on signatures is inconsistency across the organization because each employee used their own templates and tools?

By creating a consistent and correctly branded email signature for each member of your team, you build brand recognition among your company's contacts. That is why you should use the same or similar template across your company to ensure that every signature matches the style and format you've approved.

Moreover, an email signature helps achieve the company's goals by running a successful email signature campaign.

• Design development

Some believe that the best way to create an email signature is to create it in Photoshop or directly in their email program. Others prefer using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, then copy it from there, and voila, the email signature is ready to go. Nope, it doesn't work like that.

An email signature reflects your brand identity, and you should think carefully about what colors, layout, or marketing elements you are going to incorporate into your digital business card.

The help of a an email signature software is essential at this stage.

• Coding

Go to the coding if you are good at HTML or have a team member who knows how to make an HTML email signature.

• Testing

Once you have decided to create it yourself, be prepared to do a lot of testing. Not to annoy your customers with an improperly displayed email footer, you need to know how it'll look on various devices and email clients like Outlook, Apple Mail, or Gmail.

• Distribution across all team members
  

As we mentioned before, a well-branded email footer is a tiny yet powerful detail that promotes your business with every message sent by your employees. Consequently, when the email signature layout is ready, and the testing is completed, you will have to distribute the sign-offs to every department and team member.

To automate the distribution process, some email signature management companies provide you with a central management feature for all signatures and users in your organization.

• Installation control

You are lucky if you have a small team and employees cooperative in adopting their email signatures. But what if there are dozens or hundreds of mailboxes in the company? How do you control if each of your employees has installed the signature? No worries, some email signature services can even do that for you. From the dashboard, an administrator can see what signatures have been installed and what haven't.

Below you will find the five best ways to create an email signature. Pay attention to the pros and cons of each method, and choose the most suitable option.

1. Use an email signature generator

Nowadays, there are various online email signature creators that can make a signature for you, your business, and every member of your team in an effortless way. 

When it comes to creating the HTML email signature, you should consider the pros and cons, which will help you make up your mind. Let's start with the pros.

Pros

• Full control over your signature template

If you or your developer have a good command of HTML, you have no limits and can implement any idea.

• Your signature can be edited at any time

Often, email signature services offer various subscription plans allowing to create one, two, ten, and more signatures during a year. But if you want to modify your signature at any time for free, you should use HTML. Once you created your footer for email, you won't have to pay anyone but will be able to edit it at any time. However, bear in mind that you will need to go through a somewhat large piece of code every time you want to change even a small bit of your signature, which brings us to the disadvantages of using HTML.

Cons

• You need to learn HTML

Learning something new is always good, but sometimes you don't have enough time. Moreover, you may need something very urgently.

• Hire a developer

So if you’re a busy individual and have no time to learn HTML or improve your coding skills, you need to start looking for people capable of doing your project. In case you have no previous experience in hiring a web developer, it may also be a very time-consuming task to find a knowledgeable one.

• Spend time on research

While one recipient may see your signature as the way you designed it, another one may receive it as a plain text message or just all messed up. Why? You should understand that different email clients have different tech requirements for signatures.

• Spend time on testing

Bear in mind that you will need to test your signature in all email clients and how it will look after being sent.

• Preview issues at different devices

It's hard to imagine our life without smartphones. That is why we can assume that someone may be reading our emails using a smartphone or tablet device. By the way, more than half of all mobile phones in the United States are now smartphones. Many business people prefer using mobile for their business correspondence, so it is in your best interest to ensure that your email signature displays correctly on all types of devices.

There are many email signature tutorials on the web on how to create it in Photoshop. But are those worth trying? Let's find out!

Pros

• The sky's the limit to your creativity

If you're a Photoshop guru, this option is the very first choice for you. A wide range of image-editing functions allows you to get not just a signature, a work of art! But don't overdo it, all right?

• Full control over your signature template

You can customize your email footer's contact text, labels, icons, fonts colors and styles, margin widths, images, banner, and more.

• Your signature can be edited at any time

Just as with HTML discussed above, you won't have to pay again and again every time you want to change anything.

Cons

• Learn Photoshop or hire a designer

For non-Photoshop people among us, creating an email signature in this editor can be quite hard. You have two options: you either need to improve your graphic design skills or hire a pro who can do the work for you.

• Problems with signature visibility in email

When you create Photoshop email signature, remember that the image can go to attachments and won't be displayed automatically. To see your signature, the recipient must click a "download images" button. Also, you risk that some recipients won't be able to see it at all because they have disabled images in their email client.

• Your email signature won't be interactive

But even if they haven't, they still won’t be able to click on your links, social icons, banner, call to action. Now imagine your customer clicking your Facebook page link or expecting to subscribe to your monthly newsletter. Instead of getting what they want, they are taken to the place where you located the signature because it is just a picture with only one clickable area. You'd be frustrated too, wouldn't you?

• Code it to make elements clickable

As you can see, you need to know a lot about the details to get it to work (including how to create html email signature in photoshop). When creating a signature with Adobe, create HTML email signature elements that will be clickable.
Also, keep in mind that some mail software is not particularly good at interpreting HTML.

• Long time for uploading in email

Please pay attention; when creating an email signature Adobe Photoshop always saves it as an image. Sometimes images are taking an insanely long time to upload.

• Spam issues

Your message may never arrive if your signature is just an image because it can be caught as spam.

Another popular way of designing a professional signature for emails is by using a Microsoft Word template. So, how to make a signature in Word? You probably heard of Word Rendering Engine by Microsoft for creating the HTML code. The produced code looks the same across almost all Microsoft products like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

For instance, if you copy your Word email signature template and paste it directly into a message in Outlook, it will be appropriately displayed in most versions of Outlook.Although this method is free, some specific things will go wrong if you choose to follow this approach.

The issues include:

• Problems with formatting

Because other email clients like Gmail, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail can't read the "HTML email signature code" produced by the Word Rendering Engine, the recipients using these email applications will see extra spacing, gaps, and wrong fonts in your email signature.

• Problems with visibility in email clients

Your beautifully formatted email signature Word template will most likely look okay in Outlook and terrible and unformatted in all other major email clients. Moreover, your signature may even be somehow not available to the recipient.

Unless you know that all your recipients are using Outlook, it is not recommended to create an email signature in Microsoft Word.

• Problems with images

Your logo and other images can go to attachments.

• Signatures are not mobile-friendly

If you have insufficient knowledge of HTML, it's obvious that to create email signature templates Word shouldn't be used. The email signature will most likely look awful on mobile devices.

Fiverr is a freelance platform for people who want to sell or buy services starting from five bucks. There is a variety of categories available on Fiverr to choose from. The most popular are graphic design, web development, copywriting and translation, video creation, digital marketing, and many more.

Pros

• Can be cheap

If you choose to create an email signature using Fiverr, you can find someone who will do that for you at a very cheap rate.

• Can be lucky to have a custom email signature template

Besides, you can find a person who will be able to bring all your ideas to life rather than take a ready-to-use template.

• Save your time

Since you don't need to learn how to create an HTML email signature or using Photoshop, you'll save a lot of time focusing on more important things on your plate.

Cons

• Your vendor can be not reliable

Although you can see the ratings of freelancers who provide services, you can never be sure that you'll be 100% satisfied with the result, the freelancer’s way of working, and adherence to deadlines.

• The vendor has control over your email signature

Keep in mind that each time you'll want to correct your email signature (e.g., change any design details), you'll need to contact your vendor for updates.

• Your vendor can use an email signature generator

Why not take it out for a spin?

You have just installed your brand new virtual business card and sent your first email. Now you may face various issues. So let’s take a closer look at some of them.

• Signature corrupts after being forwarded

Unfortunately, it's impossible to control what email signatures look like after the recipient replies to your emails. You need to understand that the user may have settings to reply only in plain text.

• Pictures don’t show up in my email signature

You can either see a blank square with a red "X" or your images can go to attachments. This is probably happening because you copied and pasted the image into your email signature. To resolve this issue, host the pictures you will be using in your email signature online.

For this purpose, you can use your web server or image hosting sites like Imgur, Tinypic, and Photobucket. However, be aware that some email clients can automatically block any externally hosted pictures for security reasons.

• Email signature doesn't look good on my phone

To create a signature that will look good on mobile devices, remember that the phone screen is usually much smaller, and the space is pretty limited. Therefore, the objects must be larger, while the number of them smaller.

Because a typical smartphone screen is vertical, be sure to align your email signature elements vertically too. You should also remember that social icons must be big enough to be clickable. We usually recommend limiting their number to three.

• Email Signature appears in an attachment

First of all, make sure your signature isn't a single image.

Conclusion

Email signature marketing plays a vital role in your brand's success. Also, a carefully composed and professional signature can distinguish your business from the rest. While it may seem that the best way to create an email signature is to make it by yourself, it may be pretty hard to get the email signature to display fine across various email clients.

Because you're dealing with a signature, not a document, and not an image, you shouldn’t use Microsoft Word or Photoshop. Our best recommendation would be to use email signature generators that offer various templates created by professional designers and good technical support. And the most important advantage of the generator is a complete email signature compatibility with all email clients.