Personal email signatures: what information to include and how to create them?

[Update]: This article was updated to reflect new trends and inspirations in personal email signatures.

Personal branding is a key ingredient if you want to look for new opportunities. It is worth investing some time in creating an online presence, e.g. using your personal blog or website, professional profiles, social media channels or by designing an engaging signature for your email correspondence.

Private email signature

You may think that using an email signature in your personal correspondence is a waste of time and space. Wrong! If well prepared, such a signature lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by showing them what you’re currently up to on your social media profile. You can also share your hobbies with the world if you add a link to your blog or portfolio.

Even more importantly, your personal email signature can also act as a virtual business card. In just a few lines, it will help you transmit the most important information when it comes to the job search, sending business proposals or building your personal brand. Have we convinced you? Let’s start designing a perfect personal email signature.

What to include in a private email signature?

Creating a personal email signature may seem easy-peasy. But when you finally get down to it, many questions might actually arise. Should I include my email address in the signature? What set of contact details is needed? Is my holiday photo good enough to add it? If you are struggling with those doubts, take a look at the short list below.

Your name

It’s good to start with your first name and last name, and add optional middle initial if you have one. For better information hierarchy, consider using a bigger font, a different color or even underlining your details. Do not use a nickname unless you are Banksy.

Email address

It is very important to use a professional email address. Addresses like hotbabe88[at]yourmailservice.com are not good ideas as they show lack of competence and simply look silly. The easiest way to create a good email address is to use your first name and last name (or your personal brand name). By the way, when configuring your email, set up the name to be shown for emails sent from your email address. It not only looks professional, but also helps other people find your email (by searching your name or sorting), when their inbox is full of messages. Most webmail services include configuration options for both display names and custom email aliases, so you should have no problem with this.

Telephone number

Provide the phone number at which you can be reached most often. Remember to include the right telephone prefix in front of your number: for landline, a local and country prefix, and for your mobile phone number, only a country prefix. Do not include more than two telephone numbers in your signature, as it will be confusing for others.

Website/Blog/Social Media URL

When you are building your personal brand, it’s a good idea to link to your active social media sites from your email signature. You can use icons to represent social profiles, but make sure that your signature is not muddled with too many icons or images. Remember: before adding a social media site to your signature, ensure that it does not contain any embarrassing posts or pictures.

Photo or personal brand logo (optional)

If you use one, make sure it is not too big, so that it doesn’t dominate the whole email content. Depending on email signature design, it shouldn’t be more than 80x80px. And if you want to be taken seriously, ensure that photo is of good quality (not blurred or unsharp) and shows how you really look today, not ten years ago or after using filters. Learn more about photos and graphics in email signatures here.

Mind the dark mode

When using images in your email signature, an important thing is to make sure that they are in the PNG format with transparent background – that way, they will look nice in light and dark mode. Most email clients support both modes now, so it’s good to keep that in mind when designing the content for your email signature. This rule applies to all graphic elements you want to include in your email signature. Whether it’s a logo, rounded photo of you, or an outlined social media icon, there shouldn’t be the white background underneath and around. Learn more about email signatures in dark mode.

Smartphones

Since more and more emails get received on smartphones, you should optimize your email signature to make it look professional on mobile devices. Remember that smartphone displays are quite narrow, and preferably your email signature should be oriented more vertically rather than horizontally.

Get inspired

Private email signatures can be useful in everyday email communication, but they’re crucial to build your personal brand or to gain more followers if you are a social media influencer. There are many ways to create your email signature with personal branding. If you need some inspirations, take a look at the examples below you can download and use for free.

Learn how to configure a personal email signature in:

• Gmail
• Apple Mail
• Outlook.com
• Outlook 2016, 2013 & 2010
• Outlook for Microsoft 365 and Outlook on the web (OWA)

Read more:

• Tips & tricks on sending a perfect job application by email
• A quick guide on internal email signatures for your company