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Myths and rumors have been circling over the last few years about email marketing - have you heard them? Social media is replacing email; millennials don't use email; no one wants to share their data online; email is dead!

Or is it?

Psst! Come closer, and we'll let you in on a little secret: email marketing is, in fact, very much alive and, to this day, remains one of the most cost-effective ways to reach consumers.

So, don't believe the chatter! As we're about to break down the truth about email marketing campaigns and how you can effectively use your email signature alone to improve customer experiences and increase conversions.

A Culture of Email Senders

Social media may be dominating the communication arena lately, but that doesn't mean that the value of email marketing is lost. After all, we are a society of email senders, 4 billion daily users, to be precise, not to mention over 306 billion emails are sent and received each day.

And this makes total sense when you think of the number of emails you open and send daily.

Now consider this: each email provides your business with an opportunity to boost conversions. How?

With optimized for sales email signatures!

While often overlooked, your email signature is a simple yet powerful way to engage your email recipients.

In fact, emails with a signature receive 22% more clicks than those without one.

So, how can they help your conversion rate?

Building An Effective Sales Email Signature 

Let's start with the basics. You should include:

• All your contact information. That is your name, title, phone number, email address, office address, Skype/Google Meet username, and anything else that enables your recipients to contact you in any manner possible. Remember, just because they opened your email, it doesn't necessarily mean they are interested in reaching out in a follow-up email.
• Social handles. We don't need to tell you how important social media marketing is today. Therefore, linking your social media profiles is a must and will help increase visibility and boost credibility.
• A profile picture or company logo. With so much competition in the market, why should audiences choose you? A good profile picture can help you stand out, leave a great first impression, and puts your/the brand's personality on display - all crucial factors in this day and age.

And, don't forget to switch up your signature from time to time, whether that includes updating the linked content, your profile picture, bio, or anything else to determine what's converting and what isn't.

Have we managed to convince you to add an email signature yet? No? Well, let's consider the numerous upsides!

In short, they can help you divert more traffic to your website, add subscribers to your newsletter, and, as a result, generate additional sales.

Let's break down four ways to use your email signature for conversions.

Add a CTA Email Signature with Banners

Your email signature is the perfect place to deliver important messaging and calls to action (CTAs). Here, you can add links to new podcasts, articles, case studies, or anything else you're looking to promote in your campaign.

Just think about it, every email is a chance to make your audience aware of your newest piece of content, service, or product (that you've been working on meticulously).

Want to know what else you can promote? 

• An upcoming event, webinar, or conference - use email signatures to drive registrations and attendance and improve post-event interactions. 
• Share a new E-book or report. The goal is consistently to serve valuable content to prospective customers.
• Case studies and testimonials personalized to the stage your qualified prospects are in the sales cycle.
• Product offerings and discounts - personalization is key for this. Turn to your analytics to share offerings that match previous purchases. 

As seen in these email signature templates above, the bold SALE tag stands out in red to draw the reader’s attention and announces a special sale. It prompts the user to register with a clickable link — a great way to ensure a higher conversion rate.

Note: use hyperlinks and buttons in your signature instead of complete URLs — they're not only easier to consume but also help remove barriers between you and your clients.

Add a Dynamic Email Signature with Visual Content 

Creating compelling content is a must if you wish to succeed with your virtual communication efforts - and this begins with tempting and exciting visuals. 

Whether you use interactive GIFs, videos, your latest social media posts, or banners, regularly focusing on visual marketing to your email signature campaigns will do wonders for your goals. 

Still don't believe us? Consider this: 

• Audiences remember 95% of a message watched on video compared to a textual one.
• 96% of online shoppers first watch video content to determine if they want to buy a product or a service.
• Roughly 93% of companies obtained a new customer after sharing a video on social media.

Clearly, the importance of visual content is unparalleled.

So, if you're looking to drive more traffic, increase clicks, and push conversions, visuals are surely the way to go. 

Optimize Your Sales Email Signature for Mobile

Considering that 81% of business emails are opened on mobile devices, don't cut corners and make sure that your sales email signature is optimized for mobile. 

So, forget the default "sent from my mobile device" sign-off, as now's the time to put in the extra effort to make your HTML email signatures pop on mobile. 

Naturally, the first step is to check how your signature appears. For example, missing images, unaligned text, buttons too small to touch, and so on will instantly damage your brand and most likely end the chance of any recipient engagement.

If your signature design is not looking good or professional, it’s time to change it up to make it mobile-specific. You can take the easy route and use a mobile-friendly business email signature generator to organize all your information. Alternatively, you can have your in-house designer follow the following tips to create an effective HTML email signature:

• Smartphone space is limited, so don't go overboard with the information that you include. Keep it simple, and break up long limes to ensure it looks neat. 
• Keep image size small. Images must be suitable for mobile networks.
• Choose the right font size to secure readability. 
• Be aware of colors and how they affect readability on mobile - especially in dark mode.
• Ensure your signature is responsive and adapts to screen size.

Track, Measure, and Optimize Your Email Signature Marketing Campaigns

Everything we've mentioned so far considers raising awareness and communicating value to audiences to drive traffic, qualified leads, conversions, and sales. 

But, it's crucial to recognize that not everything you do and add to your email signature marketing campaign will be successful.

Therefore, it's vital that you track, measure, test, and optimize all your efforts to determine what's working or, on the contrary, if something is detrimental to your goals. 

So, here are some metrics to track to design the perfect email signature for your sales marketing goals: 

• Clickthrough rate (CTR): this is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your signature. This metric gives you direct insight into how many people on your mailing list are engaging with your content and are interested in hearing more about your brand.
• Conversion rate: this goes one step further than CTR, as it measures the number of people that click on a link in your signature and then complete the desired action, such as filling out a landing page, lead generation form, or even purchasing a product.
• Bounce rate (soft and hard): the percentage of emails that could not b successfully delivered to the recipient's inbox. Hard bounce rates occur due to an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address. While they don't directly impact your goals, these types of email addresses should be removed from your mailing list to avoid being marked as spam. 
• Subscribe/unsubscribe list rate. If your goal is to grow and attract more visitors, this is an important metric to track.
• Overall ROI: this is the return of investment for your campaigns. You can calculate this by total revenue divided by the total spend. 

Naturally, there are plenty of other important metrics to consider when building the best professional email signature, but this will be determined on your goals. To track, consider using UTM parameters in Google Analytics (you can also use platforms such as MailChimp). 

 Need help implementing these email marketing tactics? Why not reach out to our digital marketing experts today?

We're ready to help you build a tailored and successful email signature marketing campaign that'll tick all your business goals and take your campaigns to new limits.