Email signatures are full of all the different ways you can get in touch with the sender. If you follow this method, chances are that you won’t be contacted.
Photo: Peter Van Lacker
Two communications experts — Melissa Cassera of Cassera Communications and Ron Cates of Constant Contact — told Fast Company that that it’s best to include only one or two ways to get in touch with you. And of course, that should be whatever you are most likely to check and respond to.
“It’s overwhelming,” she says. Instead, give one or two of the best ways to reach you. You can even add a sentence letting the reader know the quickest way to reach you. For example, Cassera ends her emails with “Twitter is the quickest way to my heart”, and she includes her ID.
Cates says that too much contact information comes across as desperate. It can also be confusing. “Unless you have a retail store or office, it doesn’t make sense to put physical address in your signature,” he says. “Include one or two social icons but not all of them. The more choices you offer, the less likely any of them will be clicked.”
Cates also advises making everything “thumbable” for the small screen. Including just one or two contacts also has the advantage of being easy to click on a mobile phone without accidentally tapping the wrong link.
5 Common Mistakes You Are Making With Your Email Signature [Fast Company]
Comments
One response to “Write Only Your Preferred Contact Option In Email Signatures”
While mine is definitely just my office phone and mobile number (since it’s an email signature.. thus no need to write my email address in an email i’m sending…) , I don’t really think it’s that bad, especially for particularly impersonal stuff where the ability to talk to who directly contacted you is more about customer service than it is about requirement.
I think really the problem with the example image is more one of layout.. Nearly any information written like that is fairly hard to access heh.