Author Archives: Kamil

Written by Kamil

Published on Mar 23, 2023
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Email signature branding

Email signature branding – the thing that gets your company emails to send the message you want them to send. Couldn’t care less? Read on to learn why you should care a lot, especially if you have anything to do with marketing.

What is email signature branding?

Email signature branding is about using your email communication in such a way that each of your messages shows that you care. After all, building and boosting your brand is all about sending a certain message. It’s a part of your marketing strategy you should care about – despite multiple prophecies, email communication is still widely used. Each time one of those millions of emails reaches your recipients, you leave some kind of impression. Each time an email is stamped with a nice, well-formatted signature, a client thinks a bit higher of you. And when there is a problem with email formatting, you send outdated contact info, or a poorly-crafted hand-made signature, your brand takes a hit.

Penguin Hit Head GIFfrom Penguin GIFs

Death of a brand isn’t spectacular or sudden – it’s sad and quiet, and painfully slow.

This one tiny element on the very end of your email you might think everyone ignores, a signature, often decides whether your emails build customer trust or cause a heavy cringe.

REMEMBER: Thinking of email signature branding as a panacea for all possible brand problems is not the way to go. For a brand to truly succeed, you need to ensure professionalism in all business aspects. Email signature branding is incredibly interesting because, on the one hand, it can be extremely easy to manage. On the other hand, there’re a lot of ways where it can go wrong.

Good email signature branding example

Before we get into the list of possible signature troubles, here’s an example of a well-branded email signature.

Email signature branding - good examples

Clean layout, nice colors, all the information a client might need. You get the idea.

Get more ideas and email signature branding guidelines

Most popular email signature problems

No email signature

Theoretically, it’s no big deal – you don’t really gain anything, but at least it’s not a broken email signature.

The problem is, without a signature, your emails are generic, rarely leave any lasting impression and give the feeling of talking to a bot. Each email sent is an opportunity you lose. You need to decide whether you can afford losing marketing opportunities every single day.

Broken email signature

You might not realize this but breaking an email signature design is very easy.

Most noteworthy email signatures are built in HTML. The problem is email clients are not the same as browsers – some add their own formatting to all elements, others interpret code in their own unique way. Some still don’t support HTML, so they simply ignore all images and formatting.

Email signature branding - broken examples

The effects can take your breath away.

Unprofessional elements

Leaving email signature branding to end-users often results in some interesting elements reaching your customers. Examples:

“Hasta la vista baby” as a favorite quote under each email.
Señor Party Pooper or another “hilarious” job title.
Links to various websites. It’s bad even when it’s not NSFW content.
Disclaimers parodies. (Like “If you read this email, I own you and everything you have”. Yup, I’ve seen those.)

I’m all about a good sense of humor but not in professional communication. It might be funny to someone the first time they see it, but the second time you’ll get more cringes than smirks. And when it comes to disclaimers, they are still required in some cases, so it’s risky to replace them with some funny stuff.

Believe me, it’s better to leave email signature branding to your Marketing Team.

Everyone sends whatever they want

Branding is about trust. If you contact a company and every time you get a different experience, both when it comes to quality and visual experience, something feels wrong. No self-respecting brand wants that.

Email signature branding - different examples

Email signature branding - different signatures

Ways to handle email signature branding

No management

The saddest option. A must-have for companies that think of email signatures as those annoying thingies nobody ever looks at. Or for pure B2C companies who think that email is passe.

Pros

Less things to worry about.
Could work if you have employees who care. A lot.
Makes a lot of sense if you’re not using email. We’ve heard about such mythic creatures.

Cons

Honestly? It. doesn’t. work. It’s leaving an important company asset in the hands of a deity of your choice.

Email signature branding policy

The policy method means that you write down what you expect of users in terms of email signatures. This option is a great unknown. It all depends on how you execute the policy, whether it contains all required information, how it’s written, what email clients are used and so on. It also depends heavily on whether employees care and have the skill to do everything you tell them to.

Pros

A low-cost solution, especially if you don’t count time as cost.

Cons

Writing down a good policy requires a lot of work.
Executing the policy requires even more work.
Lots of variables.

Manual email signature management

This one is interesting. In short, manual email signature management means that you get someone to set email signatures up for everyone. The politically correct term is delegation. In the old days, when people believed that IT only sits in the basement and watches as those LED lights blink, companies thought it’s a great idea to send the IT squad to set up email signatures for everyone. Nowadays, some of it can be done remotely, after getting IT and users to decide on a meeting time, or by breaking into users’ accounts.

It’s a bit like you’ve heard the word “management” but didn’t quite get what it means.

Pros

It’s “free” and gives IT something to do.
You can count on IT to set it up right.
If the company doesn’t hire new employees, IT prays hard enough, and Marketing sleeps long enough, it will work and won’t require IT to repeat the process too often.

Cons

Those printers will probably need to fix themselves.
Nothing stops employees from removing or changing the signature the second IT leaves the room.
High IT turnover rate.

“I can do it meself” management

There are some DIY methods that let you manage email signatures for everyone without having to move as much as with the manual email signature management I mentioned above.

For example, there are scripts that set up email signatures for everyone in some email clients. Or there are ways to add an email signature automatically after an email is sent (e.g. Set up company-wide email signatures in Microsoft 365). Those methods ensure that each email is stamped with the signature template you set up, but are not limitation-free.

Pros

They usually work.
Require less time to configure.

Cons

Each environment requires a different method.
Needs an expert and IT-Marketing cooperation to set up and maintain.

True email signature management

Finally, there are tools that let you manage email signature branding the right way.

Signature managers usually let you control branding for all email communication from one place. The most popular approach works like that:

IT sets up the technical stuff (permissions, connectors, all the other technical whatnots).
Marketing sets up a signature design in a manner of minutes – could be one for the whole company.
Everyone magically gets email signatures with their own contact details. They don’t even have to do anything – it’s all automatic and works with all email clients and devices.

Pros

Central management of email signature branding – from one place, for the whole company.
Easy email signature marketing – promoting your offers with each email sent.
Additional features (depending on the exact solution).
Huge savings in time and resources.

Cons

Cost (remember not to count the time you save and leads you earn).

Best email signature branding tools

Free email signature generator

One of the easiest ways to create a professional email signature design for a single person. You follow a few easy steps to create your own branded email signature and apply it manually in any email client. Makes it much easier to get a well-formatted, professional HTML email signature design.

It’s not a tool that offers email signature management, but it makes email signature branding a lot easier.

CodeTwo Email Signatures 365

Perfect solution for organizations using Microsoft 365. Here’s what it can do:

After initial setup, IT is out of the picture – Marketing can go wild on creating email signature designs.
Automatically add signatures to all emails – regardless of which email client people send emails with.
Ensure professional email signature branding for every team.
Link to your social media profiles or landing pages from every external email.
Get email signature marketing campaigns running in a manner of minutes.

Look at the video below to see why it’s a good idea to manage email signatures with CodeTwo.

Still not convinced? 9 out of 10 marketers* guarantee that when faced with good branding, clients behave something like this:

*And one of those 10 marketers recently got fired.

Written by Kamil

Published on Mar 10, 2023
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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

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Written by Kamil

Published on Feb 24, 2023
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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.

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Written by Kamil

Published on Oct 31, 2022
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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

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Written by Kamil

Published on Aug 03, 2022
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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.

Basic contact details, such as your name, job title, branch, company, phone number, email, location, etc.,
Your professional photo,
A logo of your company,
Links to websites, blogs, profiles, etc.,
Social media buttons.

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.

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.

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:

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)
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.

Select Microsoft 365 as your email platform

Signature generator - Microsoft 365 email signature

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

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

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

Written by Kamil

Published on Dec 07, 2021
Comments | Leave a reply

Email signature etiquette – how to keep your emails classy

Have you ever seen an email signature you hated? An entity so cringe-inducing that you wanted to end a discussion with it’s owner right away?

Yup, email signatures can do that. However, when set up correctly, they have quite an opposite effect. A neat, professional email signature can either have a WOW effect or simply make you feel like everything is just right. And, as an added value, a good signature lets you e.g. promote your offers or helps gather customer feedback.

So what makes a difference between a lovable and not-so-lovable signature? There is more than one factor and to make sure you get it right, you need to follow the email signature etiquette.

What is email signature etiquette?

Email signature etiquette is a set of rules and best practices that help others not hate your signatures.

Below, I’ve prepared a list of the worst crimes against email signature etiquette and how to avoid or fix them.

Two-page disclaimers for two-letter emails

Email signature etiquette - bad disclaimers

Don’t get me wrong. Disclaimers can be required to comply with laws and regulations. However, some people mistake disclaimers for legal documents and overdo it. Not only are disclaimers too long way too often, but also they tend to be added to each reply and forward. That’s a very effective method of making your recipients angry.

How to fix this?

Ask your legal team or whoever who came up with the two-page monster, if the disclaimer really must include all this information in three different languages. And if you have no idea how to start, here are some professional email disclaimer examples.

It might also be a good idea to append a disclaimer only once per email thread.

10 MB jpeg graphics

Images are quite all right in email signatures. They can make your correspondence stand out and if a signature is well-composed, they do promote your branding and encourage recipients to see offers linked to the banners. However, graphics can be your undoing as well. Using extremely large files presents more than one problem:

Large files will take much longer to load, and a signature should never cause emails to lag.
While a single 10 MB shouldn’t be too much of a burden on email systems, adding large files to email signatures makes the delivery of each your message longer. And when you send emails to more than one recipient, you will clutter your and others’ mailboxes.
Spam filters may count large images as a threat.
Ironically, high-resolution images may end up being blurry due to scaling issues.

How to fix it?

In most cases, the ideal image resolution is twice as much as its target placeholder. In other words, if your email signature design reserves 300x100px for a banner, you should use a 600x200px graphic file which will scale down nicely. Also, it’s worth exporting your images to PNG and JPG to see which format ‘weighs’ less.

Outdated details

The time and energy you put into making sure the signature looks and works well results in an increase of trust from your recipient. Attention to details is a must if you want to make sure your brand is always associated with quality. So if an element you send with each email is out of date, don’t expect others to think highly of you.

That’s why promoting an event which already took place or an offer which ended long time ago is hurtful. But promotion is not the only purpose of an email signature. A signature is also there to, for example, redirect your recipients to another contact channel. And if your contact details are no longer valid, you can be sure that those who can’t reach you will get angry.

How to prevent this issue?

If you set up your own email signature, make sure you check on it from time to time. And if your company manages email signatures centrally, it’s best to use a solution which syncs with your users’ database in real time and has a scheduler feature, like our tools.

Full-composition signatures for replies & forwards

Full-composition email signatures give you the most space to include your branding, promote your offers and, in general, present yourself in the best way possible.

However, including such a complete signature in each and every email reply or in internal messages can make even the most patient of email users furious. Bombarding your recipients with banners will not increase the number of intentional clicks and makes the whole conversation hard to follow.

How to avoid it?

The best practice is to reserve your complete email signature for the first email in a thread and use its simple variant in subsequent messages.

Treating emails as websites

The next way to break the email signature etiquette is far from being obvious but it happens a lot. Consider this:

Email signatures are made of HTML. Websites are made of HTML. Since both use the same language, you should be able to create email signatures the same way you construct a website, right? While there is certain logic behind this, it is far from truth for more than one reason.

Nowadays, most Internet browsers display HTML code in fairly similar fashion. Things weren’t always like that. Before Internet Explorer (IE) was discontinued, it was the web developers’ nemesis. Things that worked everywhere else, failed to work on IE, and you needed a special kind of patience to find out why and how to fix it without breaking websites on all other browsers… Now think that almost every email client has a different way of understanding HTML. Almost every email client is like IE, one way or another.

On top of that, when sending emails, you need to remember about mechanisms that prevent spam from getting to inboxes.

OK, that’s a lot of theory. What exactly does it have to do with email signature etiquette?

If you try to design a perfect, responsive email signature which will look different for various screen dimensions, it probably won’t work. If you try to format a signature with JavaScript, it will probably end up in quarantine. Signatures need a very specific kind of HTML code if you want them to work well.

What to do?

Use well-designed email signature templates from the template library, or create your email signature with the free generator. And if you want to design it from scratch, check out the following article:

See some designer’s tips to creating good HTML code for email signatures

Finally, test your email signatures, before you set them up for good.

Image-only signature

In the light of previous point, you might be tempted to simply screenshot the signature once it looks OK and then paste the image into your email signature settings. An image should look identical regardless of an email client. True, but such an approach renders the signature almost completely useless at the same time. Here’s why:

Recipients won’t be able to copy your contact details or use links. While you could add one link to the whole image, most recipients will view it as a big red flag.
Screen readers won’t be able to read any part of the signature.
The image-only email signature usually weighs much more and looks worse than a correctly-coded HTML signature, especially when zoomed in.
Most image-only email signatures won’t be dark mode friendly.

How to fix it?

Just don’t do it. It’s worth to put an extra effort, especially when you can use some good email signature designs to help you get started.

Email signature etiquette within a company

Following those best practices requires some effort but, overall, is possible and well worth it. At least for a single person. But think in terms of a whole company.

Ensuring each and every email signature complies with the etiquette and has the same brand identity is an extremely time-consuming task which usually ends up with the IT setting signatures for everyone.

That’s why we’ve come up with tools that let you manage email signatures across the whole company. Thanks to them:

One person or team manages email signatures for everyone.
Every email client and every device benefits from the same, personalized, signature template.
You can apply company-wide changes in a matter of seconds.
It’s possible to apply various signatures for replies and forwards.
And many, many more.

Written by Kamil

Published on Nov 19, 2021
Comments | Leave a reply

Black Friday 2021: email signature inspirations

Black Friday 2021 free signature templates & inspirations

Black Friday shopping spree is coming! Everyone is saving up some extra money, checking advertising materials, and expecting the best deals to come. All around the world, spouses are being convinced that it’s the best moment to buy a big, expensive, 9+ Lego set for their still unborn child; or that this 36^th pair of shoes is an absolute must and is needed right here, right now. At the same time, teens are coming up with best negotiation tactics and hard data to show that this fantastic smartphone (or another gadget) will boost their school accomplishments tenfold. A lot is going on, no doubt.

It is also a busy season for the salespeople. All is revolving around marketing and promotion, and there are different ways to handle it. Of course, you can turn to all these common advertising channels as in previous years. But why forget about email signatures which are an effective and non-expensive marketing tool? Especially when your potential prospects’ mailboxes are probably already teeming with mostly unread newsletters. Instead, you can use email signatures as a less intrusive promotional method.

To help you in this respect, we have prepared 4 attractive signature templates with seasonal banners you can use for free in promoting your campaigns & deals.

Best Black Friday 2021 signature templates

Black Friday is all about selling. That’s why a perfect email signature for this occasion should include a special banner which tells all about your deals and encourages your customers to get at it. Let’s see what we have in store for you.

Make your offer stand out

Black Friday free email signature inspiration

Nice, eye-catching banner with bold typography and contrast colors is a perfect recipe for a successful promotion of a Black Friday campaign. The promotional aspect doesn’t make it any harder for your customers to locate the contact data. Don’t forget about including your logo to work on that brand awareness. We’ve also included a sample legal disclaimer, so feel free to adapt its content to your needs and stay compliant.

Download this Black-Friday-themed template or edit it in our email signature generator completely free of charge

Simple & effective design

Free Black Friday email signature template

This two-column signature template is a proof that simplicity can go hand in hand with effective communication. The big banner on the left will grab the attention of your customers & encourage them to click the shop now button. And if they look for your contact information or company’s social media links, they will find them easily on the right.

Grab this simple yet effective signature template and use it to promote your Black Friday campaign

Sell with good taste

Email Signature template for Black Friday campaigns

Is elegance an important ‘ingredient’ of your company’s image? Do you sell premium products? Do your customers look for classy solutions? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to at least one of these questions, we’ve got a template for you! The golden and black elements make a perfect combination to create a tasteful design which will encourage customers to buy from you. And if they want to contact you, they will easily find all the necessary information. Finally, this email signature looks equally good (if not better) when viewed in dark mode.

Download the template or adapt it to your needs with our email signature generator to enjoy premium experience in your email communications

Joy of buying

Get a Black Friday email signature for free

With this signature template, you’ll put your customers into good mood. The banner is full of bright and vibrant colors to give your recipients a break from gloomy emails they are used to. The upper half is seemingly in the shadow but it’s still clear, informative, and consistent with the banner in terms of colors. It’s worth adding that the template works just as well in light and dark mode in Outlook (and other email clients, too).

Download this Black-Friday-themed email signature template and bring joy to everyone

All about canned responses in Outlook, part 2: Outlook templates & email signatures

Canned responses part 2 - Outlook templates, OFT, email signatures

Canned responses can make your job much easier. They save you from having to do repetitive work and make it quicker to provide helpful answers to recurring questions. This article shows how to use canned responses with Outlook email templates (OFT files as well as with the My Templates add-in) and with email signatures. At last, I’ll show you how to manage canned responses for the whole team or organization at the same time.

This is the second part of the article about canned responses in Outlook. See part 1 in which I explain how to use Outlook Quick Parts.

Outlook templates (OFT)

There are two kinds of Outlook templates: OFT and My Templates. I’ll dive into the first variant first, as it is the better-known one.

OFT (Outlook file template) is a separate file which contains not only the email body but can also include a subject that you define. Here’s how to use them:

To create a new OFT file, start composing a new email in Outlook. Once you prepare your email contents, click File and Save as.

Now, from the Save as type dropdown, choose Outlook Template. Type in a file name and save the file.

Outlook - new OFT template - save as OFT

To use a saved Outlook email template, click New Items > More Items > Choose Form.

Finally, from the Look In dropdown, choose User Templates in File System, click the appropriate template and then click Open.

Pros and cons

Pros:

They support all the formatting options.
Fine for new emails.
Can be used in Outlook rules as an automatic response.

Cons:

Extremely troublesome to use them for replies and forwards (and canned responses are, by definition, replies).
No way to insert them directly into a reply.
Don’t work in Outlook on the web.
No way to centrally manage them for a team or the whole organization.

My Templates in Outlook

My Templates is a built-in Outlook add-in which lets you add canned responses similarly to Quick Parts, but I find it a bit more intuitive. Here’s how it works:

In a message composing window (it works in email preview, too), click the View Templates button. In the desktop Outlook, it’s located in Message > My Templates, while in Outlook on the web, you need to click more options (the three dots icon) and then My Templates.

Outlook on the web - My Templates button_2

In both Outlook email clients, clicking this option will show up a new pane to the right. To add a new canned response, click the plus (Template) icon.

Now, the My Templates editor has no formatting options. You can use keyboard shortcuts to make slight adjustments (like Ctrl+B for bold), but it’s easiest to simply compose your canned response in the standard Outlook new message window and paste the contents here. Click Save when you’re done.

Outlook on the web - save a new template

After your template is saved, all you need to do is open the My Templates add-in and click the template you want to use.

Pros and cons

Pros:

Similarly to Outlook Quick Parts, it’s easy to use.
Can be used if you reply in the email preview pane (you don’t need to open the message in a new window).
Works for both desktop Outlook and Outlook on the web.

Cons:

The editor does not support any formatting options. You can paste formatted text and images into the add-in pane, but it will not be displayed correctly in the preview box.
There’s no way to centrally manage canned responses for a team or entire company.

Email signatures

I won’t elaborate on how to add and use email signatures. You can refer to this guide if you need instructions on how to set them up.

The email signature feature is usually used for your professional HTML email signature. They often include contact details, company branding, a marketing banner, maybe a legal disclaimer. But if you dare to think a bit out of the box, the signatures feature is perfect for canned responses.

Pros and cons

Pros:

Support all the formatting elements and images.
Work in desktop Outlook and Outlook on the web.
Can be managed centrally for a team or entire organization!

Cons:

By default, you can set up only one email signature in Outlook on the web. However, in the next section I will show you how to fix that with a third-party tool.

Centrally manage canned responses for your team

If you want to centrally manage canned responses (via email signatures) for your team using native options, you can use the following solution:

VBScript: create an HTML Outlook email signature for the whole company – this method uses GPO to create personalized HTML email signatures for the whole company. You can use it to deploy canned responses as well. It deploys signatures to Outlook for Windows. The problem with this solution is that it requires some scripting and HTML knowledge. It also personalizes signatures based on local AD, which is a problem if you use Azure Active Directory. It’s also quite problematic when it comes to updates.

Fortunately, there is a third-party alternative which doesn’t suffer from those limitations.

CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 lets you create email signatures for the whole company directly from a web browser.

One of the out-of-the-box examples of use is to manage canned responses for a team or the whole company. You can set up as many canned responses as you need. They can include the message body itself as well as a signature and a relevant disclaimer. Each user (or users belonging to certain groups) will be then able to pick the canned response directly in their Outlook or Outlook on the web.

How to use email signatures as canned responses – see this guide to learn how to set it up.

What is email signature branding?

Good email signature branding example

Most popular email signature problems

No email signature

Broken email signature

Unprofessional elements

Everyone sends whatever they want

Ways to handle email signature branding

No management

Pros

Cons

Email signature branding policy

Pros

Cons

Manual email signature management

Pros

Cons

“I can do it meself” management

Pros

Cons

True email signature management

Pros

Cons

Best email signature branding tools

The cost of unprofessional email signatures

Advantages of professional email signatures

Enhance your company’s visual identity

Marketing strategies

Where to start with email signature branding?

How to set up email signatures for the whole organization?

See also

Reasons for unifying email signatures

How it works

Required permissions

Get HTML email signature template

Set up an HTML email signature for everyone

Limitations

What is email signature etiquette?

Two-page disclaimers for two-letter emails

How to fix this?

10 MB jpeg graphics

How to fix it?

Outdated details

How to prevent this issue?

Full-composition signatures for replies & forwards

How to avoid it?

Treating emails as websites

What to do?

Image-only signature

How to fix it?

Email signature etiquette within a company

Best Black Friday 2021 signature templates

Make your offer stand out

Simple & effective design

Sell with good taste

Joy of buying

See also

Outlook templates (OFT)

Pros and cons

My Templates in Outlook

Pros and cons

Email signatures

Pros and cons

Centrally manage canned responses for your team