Your email signature is more than just signing off your name at the end of an email. Adding a signature to your emails can be a great marketing tool, if done correctly. Your signature can be a low-cost way to reach a lot of people and have a high return on investment. Email signatures can be used as a marketing tool to help advertise your business. By adding a signature to each email you send, you can turn a regular interaction into a potential lead.
Email signature marketing is a valuable tool because it allows you to directly promote your products or services to a large audience. Setting up email signature marketing is easy, and there are a few best practices to follow to ensure success.
What is email signature marketing?
ESM, or email signature advertising, is the practice of using your email signature to promote your product or service, rather than just as your name. You can use your email signature block to make a business offer by adding a CTA, like a button, a banner, or a text link. By adding a CTA to your email signature, you can promote your business and encourage customers to take action. Here are some examples of what a CTA can be used for: promoting a sale, job offer, scheduling a demo, initiating a video call, signing up to a newsletter, following you on social media, and running email signature marketing ads.
What are email signature marketing ads?
The ads are a CTA (call-to-action) that is added to your business email signature block. ESM ads are most commonly found in email signature banners. You can advertise your offers without increasing your cost per acquisition by running these ads. ESM ads provide more exposure to your marketing promotions. The tool can be used to create leads and make prospects more likely to convert when offered the same thing through other marketing channels.
Why should I use email signature marketing?
The quick answer is that it’s profitable. Setting up this marketing channel barely costs anything and it acts as a never-ending campaign that takes advantage of the activity you’re already doing. This makes email marketing a low-cost high potential marketing channel that indirectly helps you sell with every email you send.
You may be worried that you have spread your marketing campaign too thin by using too many platforms. Adding marketing features to your email signature is a worthwhile endeavor. Absolutely.
A survey showed that 62% of businesses use email signature marketing. If you want to stay ahead of your competition, now is a good time to start.
As I’ve said, it doesn’t take many resources to set up your ESM and create an email signature with marketing features, so it can be a high-reward, low-risk, and low-cost effort on your part.
ESM can be used to generate leads by sending out campaigns and measuring the responses. Here are a few ways you can use what you just learned in your own emails.
A survey we sent to our B2B clients showed that ESM campaigns had positive consequences for businesses. Our clients saw on average a 22% increase in clicks, 32% more email replies, 10% growth in their social media reach, and 15% more leads.
Email signature marketing metrics KPIs
Email signature marketing is when you use your signature block as an ad placement for your company. You would want to measure the performance of your ad or campaign. You should use the appropriate tracking and send information to your analytics platform for measurement and analysis.
Main Email signature marketing metrics:
- Email signature impressions
- Email signature clicks
- Email signature click-through rate
You can create your own metrics to measure your email signature campaign contribution based on your business needs. The things you can measure by looking at your email signature analytics include Purchases, Demo signups, and Pageviews.
10 Professional Email Signature Ideas to Support Your Marketing Campaigns
1. Your Homepage
Your email signature should at the very least promote your company’s website. This tactic will only be efficient if your homepage acts like a landing page.
In other words, it directs the visitor’s attention to the activity you want them to take. For example, HubSpot’s homepage has a button that allows you to sign up for a free product demonstration. An email signature with a hyperlinked website homepage helps promote brand awareness. Here’s an example (with help from our friend, Harry Potter):
2. Social Media
When it comes to using social media in email signatures, you can either include links to your profiles or not. You can include links to your personal or your company’s social media accounts. Both are good options. Check out how HubSpot’s Principal Marketing Manager Pam Vaughan promotes her social channels in the example below:
3. Your Blog
Including your blog in your email signature is a smart move because it provides value to your readers and gets updated regularly. It is more engaging to have fresh content on your blog than a static homepage. The content is more likely to retain the attention of the visitor for longer.
Include calls-to-action in your posts to encourage readers to take the next step and become a lead. With our email signature tool, you can add a hyperlink to your blog so that email recipients can click directly into your blog. Check out the signature from my colleague, Carly Stec, made using HubSpot’s Email Signature Generator:
4. Book
Have you written a book? Has your manager or CEO written one? Don’t be shy about it. Include a link to your work in your email signature. If you want to be seen as an authority figure and be more credible, you should communicate effectively.
5. Conferences & Events
Is there a company trade show coming up soon? Or maybe you are speaking at a conference? Change your email signature to reflect that. Email signatures can help to promote an event by spreading the word to a target audience. Here’s an event promotion signature from my colleague, Elijah Clark Ginsberg:
The INBOUND event is coming up soon, and if you’re interested in marketing and sales, you should definitely register to attend. You’ll get to see some of the top professionals in the field and learn a lot from them.
6. New Marketing Offer
If your offer is converting traffic into leads effectively, great job! You can tell which of your website’s landing pages are converting the most visitors into submissions by looking at the visitor-to-submission rate in your marketing analytics. You should try to identify the offers that work best for you and then promote them more. You can use your email signature to promote an ebook or webinar by sharing a link to it. Try using the offer from your current campaign in your signature. Here’s an example of my own signature promoting this guide:
7. Industry Research
Data is an important aspect of marketing and should not be underestimated. Facts and figures can have a big impact on marketing campaigns. People on the web are looking for specific information because they are overwhelmed with information. If you publish an industry report based on proprietary research, as Mimi An does over at HubSpot Research, consider including a link to it in your email signature:
8. Case Studies
Salespeople love this one. When you are talking to potential customers, it is better to share stories of successful ones. This will help to persuade them that your product or service is good.
Mentioning how your product or service increased the ROI of customer XYZ is one example of how you can use your customer base to boost your company’s credibility. Another way is to quote a customer in your email signature.
9. Free Tool
If your company happens to have a free tool that can be used for ROI calculations, educational games, or blog topic generation, make sure to market it effectively. Free online tools are a great way to engage with customers and get them interested in your product or service. Eric Peters is promoting HubSpot’s free email signature generator.
10. Demonstration of Your Product / Free Consultation
When you’re struggling to make sales, try adding an email signature that offers a free consultation or demonstration of your product. Increasing traffic to these middle-of-the-funnel marketing offers will help your sales organization by taking advantage of every possible opportunity.
Best Practices for Email Signature Marketing
There are some key things to keep in mind if you want to make the most of your email signature as a marketing tool. We need to cover some basic information before we get into how to optimize your signature for marketing.
What should an email signature for marketing include?
- Employee name
- Employee title
- Company name
- Company logo
- Company website address
- Employee email address
- Social media icons (linking to company social media pages)
- CTA
1) Optimize your email signature CTA:
Your company will be ahead of most others if you even include a CTA in your email signature. There is still more work to be done after telling the recipient what action to take.
How to optimize email signature CTA?
- Track your CTR using UTMs
- Make sure you’re message is clear and concise
- Segment your CTA message and goal according to the employee job post (Sales – “Book a demo”, HR – “We’re hiring! Apply now”, Support – “Contact us 24/7”, etc.)
- Use Voice of Customer in your micro-copy
- Experiment with different types of CTA (button, text link, banner, video, image gallery, video conference button, etc.), to see which generates more clicks
- Experiment with CTA variations (copy, look, placement, etc.) to see which brings the most clicks
2) Stay true to your brand:
Your brand’s signature should reflect your brand’s minimalist design and specific color scheme. You should always tailor any additions to your brand so that they fit the scenario. A huge, flashing, colorful banner might look out of place.
3) Keep it simple:
There is no need to go overboard with marketing in your email signature. Stick to a few effective techniques and you will be fine. Keep your design clean and uncluttered so as not to overwhelm your reader, and focus on what is most important.
4) Ensure your signature is responsive:
You want your email signature to look good and function well on all screens. Before sending your message, run some tests just to be sure.
5) A/B test your signature:
Why not test your signature as well as your A/B test subjects and messages? Try different approaches and see what gets the best response from your audience. You may need to customize some signatures for different groups of people to get the best results.
6) Update your signature regularly:
You should keep your signature fresh for seasonal sales, special events, and announcements. It’s a good idea to change your door decoration occasionally to keep things fresh, but you don’t want to do it too often or it will start to look disorderly.
7) Use these techniques internally too!
The following email signature marketing ideas can be used when emailing clients or coworkers. You can add reminders about company events, targets, or updates to your signature to keep everyone informed.
8) Segment your email signature marketing campaigns
You can create as many signatures as you have departments. ESM campaigns that are tailored to the specific goals and KPIs of each department in your company would be beneficial for each department. Although it may require more effort, it will be worth it in the end.
If you’re using WIseStamp to manage your company email signatures, you can save time and reduce your workload by assigning admin permission to team leaders or department heads. This way, they can edit and manage their department signatures on their own.
Top email signature marketing software
All of the ideas for links, icons, or banners for your email signature might seem great to you. But how do you actually put them into practice?
You can design your own images, banners, color schemes, and designs. This text is saying that unless you are a professional graphic designer, creating your own designs will take a long time and probably won’t look as good as if a professional did it.
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