Author Archives: Kamil

What is an email signature? A complete definition

Written by Kamil

Published on Aug 07, 2023
Comments | Leave a reply

What is an email signature? A complete definition

What is an email signature?

After a decade of writing articles on how to best handle email signatures, we realized we haven’t answered the obvious question: “What is an email signature?”. The time has come to provide the email signature definition and gather all the best practices and email signature problems (with their solutions) in one place.

What is an email signature?

An email signature is the part of an email which informs recipients who nags them. Duh. It’s placed directly below an email sign off (ending) and above a disclaimer. While it evolved quite naturally from the signature people have added to snail mail for millennia (rough approximation), the electronic version serves more than a single purpose. Snail mail signature was mainly used for authentication and showing off the years of polishing handwriting skills. There’s a lot of reasons for using an email signature, and I discuss them in detail later in this article.

Here’s the email structure and the space where the email signature goes:

Email signature definition - list of email elements
  1. Subject
  2. Greeting
  3. Body
  4. Sign off (ending)
  5. Signature
  6. Disclaimer

As a bonus, a combination of email signature and disclaimer is often referred to as an email footer.

Now, let’s see what an email signature is made of.

Email signature elements

Email signature example

Some people consider whole email signature as being optional. However, let’s put the personal opinions aside and focus on things like “business standards” and “best practices”. Below, I’m listing the most common email signature elements, in semi-random order. Depending on the context, some might be boring but necessary (like company address) while other are fancy and useful but require some work to be effective (like CSAT surveys)

  • Name – the only element that’s always there.
  • Title – to give some context to the name.
  • Contact information – up-to-date information on how to best reach you.
  • Pronouns – information on how the sender identifies themselves. Learn more…
  • Credentials – certifications and other achievements that give you bragging rights.
  • Company logo – the primary email signature branding element.
  • Company data – some company information is legally required for business emails.
  • Awards & achievements – again, all the things that earn you bragging rights and potentially increase trust.
  • Social media icons – links to your company or personal profiles. It’s an easy way to show if you’re recognizable, active or simply alive.
  • Marketing banners – email signature campaigns usually link to your best promotional offers.
  • Photo (a.k.a. headshot) – a nice sender’s photo adds a personal touch to emails and makes them look less like mass-mailing.
  • Name pronunciation – not required for most names, while for some – quite useful. Learn more…
  • Scheduling links – this is a great way to make appointments the right way.
  • CSAT surveys – adding customer satisfaction surveys to email signatures lets you gather invaluable feedback on your products and services.

Email signature types

Samples of various email signature types

Just as not all email communication is the same, not all email signatures are made equal. Below, I’m listing the most common email signature types and some of their distinctive features.

Corporate (business) email signatures

Business email signatures are the ones most commonly seen. Most companies begin and end their day in an email inbox, so it’s only natural that email signatures play a huge role in business communication.

Corporate email signatures not only inform people who is on the other end. They are an asset – every email with appropriate signature is an opportunity to promote a brand, upsell a product or funnel customers to another contact channel. This means companies want to get the most out of their email signatures.

What’s more, corporate email is, at least in some cases, standardized. There are regulations which require companies to include their address information or an unsubscribe link in every outgoing email. Those elements are easily integrated into an email signature, so it’s only natural that companies treat signatures as a must-have.

In short, corporate email signatures might include all elements I listed earlier. Though it’s better if they don’t include all of them at once. Overdoing it doesn’t work well for email branding. Or anything else.

Take a look at our guide on achieving perfect email signature branding

External email signatures

All emails sent outside the company get a special treatment. Outdated contact info, broken formatting and unprofessional elements might directly affect your customers and their likeliness to continue doing business with you. External email signatures are usually loaded with a lot of information and optional elements (see email signature elements above).

Just remember that even the best-formatted and full-blown signature won’t look good when repeated in a long thread. That’s why it’s best to have one email signature for the first email in a conversation and another, simplified one, for next emails. This way, you can sign your emails without destroying conversations with extensive email marketing efforts.

Internal email signatures

Sending emails that include marketing banners inside your company isn’t the smartest thing to do – your employees usually aren’t the target audience for your marketing campaigns. That doesn’t mean you should ignore internal email signatures. They are the perfect way to share important company announcements or show off some remarkable achievements to your colleagues (like the “Employee of the Month title”).

A quick guide on internal company email signatures

Personal email signatures

Personal email signatures are reserved for those who use email after they leave their workplace. These signatures don’t require any fancy banners. They can even tolerate a slow dosage of mottos and movie quotes. And while nobody makes you set them up, they are an effective way to make your emails stand out. A great email signature makes a lasting impression.

Learn more about personal email signatures

Freelancer email signatures

Freelancer email signatures are a special case. On the one hand – they should be highly professional; on the other hand – there’s nothing corporate about them. Just like personal email signatures, they’re all about you. The difference is that it would be a great waste if you didn’t use them to show off your achievements. Any awards or certifications you worked your socks off to get? A portfolio you’ve built for years? Or maybe a professional blog that is so good that even you read it after publishing a new article? Those are the elements that should be in the spotlight.

How to design an email signature for a freelancer

Reasons for using an email signature

Why use a fancy email signature? While the world won’t end if you use just your initials to end an email, using a well-formatted, professional email signature has its benefits:

  • Increasing brand trust. When you see that a company adds a great-looking email signature to each and every email, you find it easier to believe they will be as much detail-oriented in other areas.
  • WOW effect for getting attention.
  • Easy way to learn about the sender and their company.
  • You send emails anyway and usually to potential or existing customers and not total strangers. It’s a marketing channel where opportunities simply convert.

Best email signature practices

I’ve already shared a few pointers on how to best handle email signatures. There’s one general rule that you should follow when designing and sending out your footers:

Don’t use email signatures you wouldn’t like to get.

And yeah, you can be against email signatures on principle. You may think them a waste of space and resources. But even then, you probably find it easier to accept a short and concise, tweet-like design, rather than an atrocious attempt at getting links to all social media channels, 20 separate company subsites and promo offers into a single signature block, right? See the article below to learn how not to overdo it with email signatures.

A quick guide to keeping your email signatures classy

Email signature ideas & inspirations

Email signature inspirations & ideas

One way to get inspired is to scan your inbox. It’s a good place to find examples of signatures ranging from “what were they thinking?!” to “simply WOW”. While not every nice design works with every logo and general branding guidelines, you can get an idea on what leaves a positive impact.

Another way to get email signature ideas and inspirations is to browse through a signature template library. This way, not only can you start your creative juices flowing, but you also get access to a field-tested HTML code that can handle the pressure of complex design.

Most common email signature problems

There are different kinds of email signature problems. Some of them are caused by the differences between email clients. Others are a fallout from some HTML or device limitations.

However, most email signature problems stem from a bad HTML code underneath. It’s not easy to get your formatting right in most email signature editors. And even when you do – it can break the moment it appears in someone else’s inbox.

Most common email signature problems and their solutions – learn what to do when you find your images missing or you get double email signatures.

The easiest way to build your own email signature

Best free email signature generator

Not to brag, but if you’re looking for the easiest way to build your own email signature, our free email signature generator is the answer.

This email signature builder lets you create each type of email signature and set it up in any email client. No matter if you need a personal or a business email signature – you’ll find both simple and complex designs that work well for all your email signature needs.

Best email endings – the perfect way to sign off an email

Written by Kamil

Published on Jun 28, 2023
Comments | Leave a reply

Best email endings – the perfect way to sign off an email

[Update]: This article was first published on August 05, 2021.

Email sign-offs or email endings usually consist of a single word. Theoretically, after spending a lot of time on composing a perfect email, ending it should be a piece of cake. You might think everyone else comes up with their email ending phrases without thinking. Well, if you struggle to find your perfect email sign-off, you’re not the only one. Happily, this article will let you find the best email ending for every occasion. See some guidelines and sign-off examples, so that you’re never again blocked by the shortest and, in theory, easiest part of an email.

Best email sign-offs

What is an email sign-off?

An email sign-off (in other words, an email ending or email closing) is a short phrase that you add at the end of an email, right above your email signature. The closing phrase shows where your message ends and is one of the primary elements of netiquette (the etiquette for the Internet). It is an indicator of your manners and can clearly highlight your expectations. Without email endings, your messages might be seen as unfinished. In short, it’s important.

Best practices for ending emails

  1. Keep your sign-off consistent with your email style – writing a formal email and ending it with “Bye!” would be confusing to say the least. Similarly, sending an informal email with the ending phrase “Your sincerely” is simply off.
  2. When in doubt, imitate – using the same sign-off as the person who emails you is the safe option. There’s nothing wrong with playing it safe. Unless the sender chooses something really strange or offensive as their closing phrase and it would be awkward to re-use it.
  3. Drop a sign-off in a thread – as long as you don’t take three business days to answer each email, not every single reply requires a sign-off. While email wasn’t meant for instant messaging, it is often used this way. There is no need to add beginning and ending to every reply in quick-exchange conversations.
  4. Add a personal touch – you probably don’t have time to think about how to make each email unique. That’s why in most cases you might be using plain, boring sign-offs that suit every situation. However, from time to time, you can add a personal touch, for example, by writing “Thank you for (insert the specific reason)” or “Have a nice trip” when you know someone is about to take one. It’s worth it, since such healthy interactions help build stronger relationships.

5 bad practices (or which email endings NOT to use)

It doesn’t matter if you write a formal email to a professor or an informal email to your friend, there are email sign-offs that are generally a bad idea.

  1. Sent from my iPhone – a truly cringeworthy sign-off. It’s been made fun of; organizations look for ways to automatically get rid of it, but still it persists. In general, for the recipient, it doesn’t make any difference if you are emailing from an iPhone, Android, toaster, or a flying saucer, as long as they get the message.
  2. “Always look on the bright side of life” – or any other quote, motto, or a joke. If the recipient likes the quote, they might enjoy the first time they see it. Later on, it becomes just an unnecessary and annoying space filler, no matter how great “The Life of Brian” (or any other quote source) was.
  3. Thank you in advanced – this, together with a lot of other permanently misspelled sign-offs might trigger your recipient. It’s like reading about “updatations”.
  4. ASAP – if you’re in a hurry, need a lightning-fast response and, in general, a lot depends on a quick reaction, there’s nothing wrong with letting your recipients know about that. But even when the issue’s priority is high, ending an email with a clean ASAP is a bit too much.
  5. Waiting for a positive response – the phrase itself might be considered OK in the right context. The problem is, it is usually preceded with an offer that can and, in most cases, will be refused. This email ending itself definitely doesn’t improve chances of an actual positive response.

Universal email sign-offs

The ending phrases from the list below should work in most scenarios:

  1. Best/All best/All the best/Best wishes – one of the most neutral options for ending an email.
  2. Thank you in advance – it’s a nice option if your email contains a request. Apart from showing good manners, it might be super helpful if your recipient misses the point of you needing something from them.
  3. Let me know if you need anything else – a bit wordy but still a great way to finish off a conversation in which you provided some assistance.
  4. Hope it helps/Let me know if it helped – it’s a great option right after you give someone instructions on how to fix something.
  5. Much appreciated/Thank you for your time – if someone helped you, it is far better to thank them than to end with a generic “Best regards”.
  6. Thanks – simple but works in almost any situation.
  7. Have a great weekend/vacation/etc. – you won’t always be able to use it, but this level of personalization proves that you care and listen to others. Just don’t use ”Have a great life”.
  8. Stay tuned – suitable for both formal and informal emails if you want others to expect follow-ups or some big news coming.
  9. You’re the best! – this and any other variation, like “You’re awesome” are good substitutes to standard “Thanks”. They work very nice, especially when someone goes the extra mile to help you.
Best email endings – universal sign-off

Formal phrases to end an email

Formal email closings are the ones you should use when you contact someone for the first time, don’t know them in person, or you’re not quite sure about what to use. Remember, you don’t necessarily need to use formal options in business emails – again, context is everything.

  1. Regards/Best regards/Kind regards – all those options are pretty much universal for email sign-offs. Formal, but not too formal, you can pretty much use them in any email.
  2. Sincerely/Your Sincerely/Sincerely Yours – much higher in the official ranking. In most situations, it might be considered as too official, archaic, or reserved for snail mail.
  3. Respectfully – the super formal email closing variant.
  4. Looking forward to hearing from you – that’s a nice way of saying you can’t wait to get a reply.
  5. Awaiting your response – the colder variant of the sign-off above. You will usually see it in follow-ups.
Best email endings – formal sign-off

Informal email endings

Like mentioned before, informal email endings might appear in business correspondence. Usually, there’s nothing wrong with keeping conversation casual, especially if your recipient is not a complete stranger and, preferably, is around your age.

  1. 😁, ;] – some people 💗 to end their 📧 with an 😊, 😅, 🤗 or other emoji. It’s quite 👍 for informal messages. Just remember that some people simply prefer words. Too many emoticons might make them go (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
  2. Cheers – one of the most common informal email endings. It doesn’t get simpler than this.
  3. Take care – usually reserved for the end of a conversation, when you know that all you meant to discuss on a particular subject has been discussed.
  4. Warm regards/Warmest/etc. – the raised temperature makes this sign-off less formal than simple “Regards”. Warm seems to make this ending more emotionally charged.
  5. WDYT? (what do you think?) – for your recipient, it’s a clear indicator that their opinion is expected. Without it, some emails are likely to be read, archived, and forgotten. The abbreviated version is more suitable for colleagues than business contacts.
Best email endings – informal sign-off

Private correspondence sign-offs

This section is different from the one on the informal email endings above as the suggestions below won’t work for business emails.

  1. Love/Hugs/Lots of love/XOXO – there are a lot more variations; all of these emotionally charged closings are nice when you’re emailing someone very close to you.
  2. Thx – expressing gratitude and appreciation is a good practice. However, to use this option, you need to know the recipient pretty well.
  3. Let’s kick some ass! – such references to a… healthy competition might inspire and boost morale. This one, however, might be considered as a bit too informal or straight offensive. Make sure to read the room before you send such a sign-off to anyone.
Best email endings – private sign-off

Professional email endings

Like I’ve already mentioned, it’s not the formal or informal style which makes a sign-off suitable for professional business correspondence. Depending on the context, you can use any sign-off from the Universal, Formal, and Informal groups. That’s why I’ve saved this part for alternative ways to use the ending phrase in your email.

  1. If you want to schedule a meeting with me, click the Book now button in my email signature – a modern email signature has evolved from a simple line with your name in it to something much more useful. One of the ways in which it can be used is making scheduling meetings easy. Mentioning this fact in your sign-off shows your recipient that the button is the preferred way to contact you.
  2. You can find more helpful articles on my blog (check the link in my signature) – your email signature can contain a direct link to any external source. Pointing it out might be helpful when someone is not expecting such information in an email signature.

There are lots of different ways in which email signatures might be used. Be careful, though. If you add a complete email signature with marketing banners, social media buttons, customer satisfaction surveys and so on to each email, the actual content of the conversation might become overflowed with signatures. A good way to prevent this is to use different signatures for the first and consecutive messages.

Best email endings – professional sign-off

Unique email sign-offs

“Unique email endings” are the phrases that you probably won’t see very often. I’ll list these less popular sign-offs together with the most probable explanation for why they haven’t taken over the world of email.

  1. V/R (“Very Respectfully”) – although I’ve seen someone trying to use it as “Virtual Regards”. This case is quite strange as it’s a very formal ending, made vastly informal by abbreviating it. Also, the simple fact that most people need an explanation of what it means makes it unlikely to become a go-to email sign-off.
  2. Rgds – the lazy version of Regards. Theoretically, everyone should understand what it means. Unfortunately, recipients might wonder how much time is saved by typing three letters less.
  3. Your faithfully – an extremely rare sighting in emails. In standard letters, it is the sign-off reserved for formal letters when you don’t know the recipient’s name. There’s nothing wrong with using it in an email if the context is right.
  4. To infinity and beyond! – OK, I’ve never seen this one in real life, and it would fall under the quotes category, but I’m (unsuccessfully) trying to convince myself that it could work for an occasional informal email.
  5. MfG (Mit freundlichen Grüßen) – it’s actually a very popular email ending, but not for emails written in English. What I especially like about it is that 90% of emails I’ve received in German have this exact closing phrase. Still, I admit it may be a statistical anomaly because I haven’t received that many emails in this language…
  6. If I don’t make any sense, blame the autocorrect – I find it (and all the other tributes to autocorrect or fat fingers) a better alternative than “Sent from my iPhone”, but still, if you have time to be this verbose, you should also be able to scan the whole email for typos and autocorrect fails.
Best email endings – unique sign-off

Email sign-offs vs email signatures

An email sign-off is not the same as an email signature or a disclaimer. Although they usually come together, they serve different purposes.

  1. Email sign-offs still count as the middle of an email body. Netiquette aside, they make the email content whole. Often, without an email closing, a message looks incomplete, and the recipient might wonder if the email was actually finished.
  2. Email signatures serve other important purposes, the most important ones being to identify the sender and give some extra information about them. But they also carry the branding value, make emails compliant with corporate identity, can be used for various marketing activities, include scheduling/meeting links, or collect customer feedback. If you want to create your own professional email signature, you can use our free email signature generator.
  3. Email disclaimers are the “legal mumbo-jumbo thingies” at the bottom of an email. While their legal effectiveness has been put in doubt on numerous occasions, there are situations in which they are required for business communication. Still, nothing can excuse a disclaimer being a two-page long essay, especially when added to a three-word long email. See some good email disclaimer examples

Automatic email sign-offs

If you don’t want to worry about the email closing each time you compose your message, you can add one of the neutral examples to your automatic email signature, just above the signature itself.

This way, you can focus on your email body and speed up communication. It might not seem as much, but trust me, if you stop worrying about all the possible ways to end an email, you save a lot of time to worry about other things.

Now, a real game-changer is when you manage your email sign-offs together with email signatures for the whole organization. In other words, when the whole company magically gets email sign-offs and email signatures under all their emails. Watch the short video to see what I’m talking about:

Read more

How to create an HTML email signature in Outlook for iOS

Written by Kamil

Published on Mar 10, 2023
Comments | Leave a reply

How to create an HTML email signature in Outlook for iOS

This article was first published on September 8, 2016. It’s been updated as the steps to set up a signature have changed.

Outlook for iOS is a mobile email client which does its job well. 4.7 rating in App Store proves that users like Outlook for iOS quite a lot. Unfortunately, the default “Sent from Outlook for iOS” signature is almost as cringy as the “Sent from my iPhone” text. Read on to see how to change that “Sent from Outlook for iOS” strapline into a professional HTML email signature.

How to set up email signature in Outlook for iOS

Continue reading →

Direct link to a hosted image in email signatures

Written by Kamil

Published on Feb 24, 2023
Comments | Leave a reply

Direct link to a hosted image in email signatures

This article was first published on February 25, 2019. It’s been updated to reflect the current steps required to get direct links in the listed image and file hosting services.

You might wonder how direct image links or direct URLs are related to email signatures. If you can use an embedded image, you do not have to worry about any links. However, linked images have some upsides: for example, they don’t increase the email size. What is more, there are situations in which linked images are the only available option. To add a linked image, you need a direct URL to it.

How to get a direct image link

Continue reading →

Halloween email signatures – scary inspirations & ideas

Written by Kamil

Published on Oct 31, 2022
Comments | Leave a reply

Halloween email signatures – scary inspirations & ideas

[Update]: This article was first published on October 23, 2019. It was updated with examples of modern email signature templates.

Dedicated Halloween email signatures – who would do that, right? That’s the first thing that comes to mind for most people. The thing is, those Halloween-themed signatures work so well in email marketing that it’s scary. If you want to boost your sales and make the most of the Halloween season, read on for spooky email signature inspirations and ideas.

Inspirations for Halloween email signatures
Continue reading →
Email signatures for marketing & branding purposes

Written by Kamil

Published on Aug 03, 2022
Comments | Leave a reply

Email signatures for marketing & branding purposes

[Update]: This article was first published on September 15, 2015. It was completely rewritten to reflect current trends and changes in email signature branding best practices.

Email signatures for branding marketing blog

We’ve seen how professional, visual-identity-compatible email signatures have evolved from a new trend to marketing and branding basics. Now, only the most conservative companies stick to the old ways and insist on including only first and last name in their email signatures. Most companies have recognized the potential of email signatures for marketing and branding purposes. I’ll show you how best to realize this potential.

The cost of unprofessional email signatures

Email signatures have become more than just a regular, tiny detail of corporate identity. They’re included in every single email every employee sends. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a tech company or not – as long as you send emails, people will judge you based on what your company’s email signatures look like. It shows how much attention the company pays to communication with prospects and partners.

In other words, if your email signature includes, for example:

  • broken links,
  • social media buttons linking to dead profiles or platforms (G+, anyone?),
  • outdated contact info,
  • broken images,
  • movie quotes,
  • just your name,
  • broken layout,

recipients will automatically assume that this aspect is out of your company’s control. And it’s quite natural to take assumptions a step further and think that it may not be the only thing beyond control. You lose trust and valuable marketing opportunities. But let’s not focus on what you can lose – let’s see what you can gain.

Advantages of professional email signatures

For ‘not convinced’ ones, let’s see what kind of information you may disclose when you send an email with your optimized signature.

Sample email signature for branding & marketing

The above-mentioned options stand for who you are, who you are working for and what you do. But that’s hardly all you can do with email signatures. You can also include:

  • banners and logos for your marketing campaigns,
  • adverts of key products and services,
  • information about upcoming events,
  • social media content,
  • information on business partners and projects,
  • logos of gained certificates and awards, commercial videos,
  • other significant information about your company,
  • customer-satisfaction surveys,
  • quick meeting/scheduling links.

While adding all of those elements into one signature at the same time is not the best plan, the above list should give you an idea on how much you can do with each email your employees send. The elements you add to signature should go with what you want to focus on and who is the final recipient of your message. Keep in mind that a potential customer will use the signature to gain insight about you (as a company). This might be a point where they decide to engage or withdraw from further interaction.

An example of how to handle email signature marketing

Enhance your company’s visual identity

In general, visual identity is a base on which you build your brand trust. It’s the message you want to send to everyone who interacts with your company. If you want to boost your branding, the signature needs to communicate the same message and comply with your business identity.

Marketing strategies

Marketers have come to a point in which effective brand promotion is harder than ever. Your target audience often turns a blind eye to advertisements as a rule, use ad blockers, or the campaign simply doesn’t reach them. And there’s no point in great promotional offers if nobody knows about them. Fortunately, email signature marketing lets you bypass those limitations. Most of your recipients are not random people – you know which campaigns can be of their interest. And if you set up the email signature right, marketing banners will always be noticed.

As for the specific elements, your choice will depend on what you want to achieve. Social media links, article links or feeds could show your audience that you provide valuable content on a regular basis (hope you do!). This less direct way of promoting your services or products tends to be effective, since recipients aren’t feeling they are forced to click on your links.

Email signature marketing in action

Where to start with email signature branding?

Every journey starts with a single step. In case of email signature marketing, you need to design the signature before doing anything else. There are quite a few difficulties you might face at this point.

After reading the first part, you probably have some ideas on what to include in this branding-friendly and visually optimized email signature of yours. You have the visual identity sorted out and all the needed images are sitting there, ready to shine. Now comes the specific layout of the signature – how to arrange all this data, so that it looks good? And then, you need to convert this signature into HTML, making sure it won’t break in various email clients.

For most people that’s a bit too much. That’s why we’ve brought to you a completely free email signature generator. It lets you easily create professional HTML email signatures, even if you don’t know what HTML code is. And if you just need some inspiration, our signature template gallery lets you download pre-made templates and re-design them however you see fit.

After you’re done, you get a well-designed template for email signature branding purposes. The thing with visual identity and branding is that it doesn’t apply to a single employee only – for the good changes to take an actual effect, they need to be company-wide. So, the final thing is to get a personalized version of this email signature for everyone in the company.

How to set up email signatures for the whole organization?

When setting up signatures for an entire company, you might face some challenges, as the video below shows:

Now you can see, it’s not as simple as it sounds. So, if you need to manage email signatures for all employees, you might need to use a dedicated tool. This way, you could, for example:

  • ensure unified company-wide branding with no end-user interaction required,
  • deploy email signatures for all email clients and mobile devices with a few clicks (no HTML knowledge needed),
  • make sure your branding and marketing content always gets through, thanks to embedded images,
  • customize signature rules, so that different departments can have different signature elements (while following your visual identity guidelines),
  • make instant updates to all email signatures at once.

It might be the right time to take your email signature branding to the next level with award-winning solutions.

See also

How to set up organization-wide Outlook 365 (OWA) signature with PowerShell

Written by Kamil

Published on Mar 16, 2022
Comments | Leave a reply

How to set up organization-wide Outlook 365 (OWA) signature with PowerShell

Company-wide email signatures in OWA with PowerShell

If your company uses Microsoft 365, you can use PowerShell to add a unified email signature for everyone in your organization. I’ll show you a script which adds a unified personalized email signature to every mailbox. This way, everyone who uses Outlook on the web will have an email signature automatically added to their mailbox settings.

Reasons for unifying email signatures

Email signatures are tricky. They can be a single line with your name only or a compact design with the most important contact info. They can also be a cringe-worthy “Sent from my <insert_device_name>” or a monstrosity with multiple banners, a two-page disclaimer and broken layout, to top it all.

The fact is, an email signature is added (and usually expected) in every single email. A signature (or a footer) is a message in itself. It tells, among other things, whether:

  • you care about details,
  • you treat your job seriously,
  • the company cares about its image,
  • the company wants to be reached.

Every single employee is a brand ambassador. Tendency to generalize is in human nature – when an employee lacks professionalism in a conversation, recipients will often think it’s not only this single person. That’s why, with every bad signature, your brand gets a punch in its face.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the world ends as soon as a bad signature is sent. It’s usually a much slower and sadder process when the brand and the company gradually lose trust. You can either unify email signatures and send a strong message that helps the brand, promotes your offers and supports you, or get a hit with every message sent. I’m only showing one of the methods to unify email signatures.

How it works

Before you run the script, it is crucial to understand how it works.

The script gets user information from Azure Active Directory (AAD) and adds an HTML code of a signature (with those details included) to mailbox settings. At the moment, only Outlook on the web (OWA) can benefit from that. It means that when a user sends an email from Outlook for Mac, Outlook for Windows, or any client apart from Outlook on the web – the signature you set up using this method will not show up.

Also, if your Azure AD information is not updated, or is incomplete, the final result will not be attractive or helpful.

There are other methods of unifying email signatures in a company which will work for all email clients. See the video below to learn more:

Required permissions

Using PowerShell to set up Outlook on the web email signatures is possible in every Microsoft 365 organization. However, to execute the script that sets up those signatures, you need to be an admin and have at least some basic grasp of how PowerShell works.

There are a few permissions that you need to have to successfully run the PowerShell script:

  1. Your account needs to be PowerShell-enabled. It means that a global admin might use a simple cmdlet to grant access to a certain user (Set-User -Identity <certain user> -RemotePowerShellEnabled $true)
  2. You need to have User Options and Mail Recipients admin roles assigned.

Get HTML email signature template

Before running the script, you need the HTML code of the email signature template you’ll be using.

The best way to do this is to use the free email signature generator.

  1. Select Microsoft 365 as your email platform
Signature generator - Microsoft 365 email signature
  1. Choose a signature template. You can use the generator to change images and elements which will be the same for every user, like Company name, disclaimer and so on.
Pick email signature template for Outlook on the web
  1. Click Replace user data with Active Directory placeholders and Apply your signature. The first button replaces personal data with Azure AD placeholders normally used in mail flow rules to automatically personalize users’ data in signatures. Placeholders don’t work this way when setting up OWA signature with PowerShell. The script will change placeholders to Azure Active Directory data.
Signature generator - Replace user data with placeholders
  1. Generate the HTML signature, copy it and paste into a txt file. I’ve created it in C:\signature.txt for easy access. You can freely modify the HTML code, just remember it’s best to leave the %%AAD placeholders%% intact. The script relies on a certain format of those placeholders to enter relevant user information.
Signature generator - Generate and copy HTML

Set up an HTML email signature for everyone

The two key cmdlets we’ll be using are:

  • Get-AzureAdUser, which downloads user data from your directory and
  • Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration with -SignatureHTML parameter, which applies a personalized HTML email signature to user mailboxes.

To run those cmdlets, you need to use two different PowerShell modules – AzureAD and ExchangeOnline. If you’ve never used them before, the AzureAD module requires you to start with:

Install-Module -Name AzureAD, which will download and install the right module and

Connect-AzureAD – the cmdlet that lets you start using AzureAD-related commands.

To learn how to connect with Exchange Online, use Connect-ExchangeOnline. If there’s any problem, see this article to learn how to make it work.

You can copy & paste the rest of the script into your PowerShell console:

$users = (Get-AzureADUser | select GivenName, Surname, Title, TelephoneNumber, Mobile, Mail, CompanyName, StreetAddress, City, PostalCode, State, Country) <# Gets all users' data from Azure AD and saves it to an array. If you want to  #>

$HTMLsig = Get-Content "C:\signature.txt” <# Saves HTML code of a signature from the signature generator to a variable. Change the path to the location of your file. #>

foreach($user in $users){

$HTMLSigX = "”; <# temporary variable with HTML code of a personalized signature #>

$HTMLSigX = $HTMLsig.replace('%%FirstName%%', $user.GivenName).replace('%%LastName%%', $user.Surname).replace('%%Title%%', $user.Title).replace('%%PhoneNumber%%', $user.TelephoneNumber).replace('%%MobileNumber%%', $user.Mobile).replace('%%Email%%', $user.Mail).replace('%%Company%%', $user.CompanyName).replace('%%Street%%', $user.StreetAddress).replace('%%City%%', $user.City).replace('%%ZipCode%%', $user.PostalCode).replace('%%State%%', $user.State).replace('%%Country%%', $user.Country) <# Replacing AzureAD placeholders with personal user data #>

Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration $user.Mail -SignatureHTML $HTMLSigX -AutoAddSignature $true -AutoAddSignatureOnReply $true <# Saves the personalized email signature in mailbox settings. It should be available in Outlook on the web right away. The -AutoAddSignature parameter sets the signature as default for new messages and -AutoAddSignatureOnReply does the same for replies. #>
}

After running the script, all users should get their personalized email signature in their Outlook on the web settings:

Outlook on the web personalized email signature

Limitations

Although useful, the Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration cmdlet is not perfect for managing email signatures – here are some of the reasons why:

  • First and foremost, changing mailbox settings works only on Outlook on the web (OWA). You can use VBScript to handle Outlook for Windows, but this way you’ll need to use two different methods to handle each signature update. Furthermore, you’d still only have two out of all possible email clients handled.
  • You can’t use embedded images. Which means that in most cases, your recipients will need to click an option to see the graphics you so carefully designed for your email signature. Otherwise – images will be blocked.
  • It’s a bad idea if your Azure AD is outdated. There’s no way to let users update their AAD properties and to dynamically change signature if, for example, a certain personal information is missing.
  • Each change or update requires you to operate on HTML code, there’s no editor you can use to work on the template’s design.
  • There’s no easy way to schedule email signature campaigns or use different designs for different recipients.

If you want to be able to manage email signatures for an entire Microsoft 365 organization without those limitations, there’s an easier alternative. CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 lets you manage signatures for all users without any scripting. Signatures are added to emails sent from all email clients and devices. Try it out for free