Most people spend time focusing on subject lines when it comes to crafting an outbound email, which is incredibly important, but if you spend time writing a great subject line, you should go the extra mile and make sure your signature is just as excellent. Imagine having the perfect sandwich but the bottom piece of bread is soggy and falls apart… it ruins even the best sandwich. The same is true with outbound emails.
Once you get a prospect to open an email, you need to provide value and context. Remember you are reaching out as a complete stranger. Prospects have no idea who you are or if you are a credible person. Assume everyone who opens a cold email is immediately suspicious. The best way to improve context is through your email signature!
How do you add credibility and reduce suspicion? Make their research easier and faster by giving them quick links detailing who you are and who your company is. Don’t you love when you find exactly what you are looking for? Well, your prospects do too!
Let’s first take a look at a bad outbound signature
Why this isn’t ideal:
- This signature provides zero additional info about who they are.
- No title or role is a major miss. Are they a senior position with authority? Or is this person a jr. sales person?
- Don’t make someone have to copy and paste to do research on you and your company.
Another poorly executed outbound signature
Why this signature doesn’t work either:
- More does not mean better. Keep things easy on the eyes. The goal is to make things easier, not more difficult.
- Images are great for context but only use 1 and make sure it is relevant. “Top XX company to do XX” award logos are NOT relevant. These are meaningless, especially if you add more than one.
- Triple check your signature formatting. Don’t include weird fonts or colors that make it look different from the body of your email. If something looks confusing to a reader they will naturally divert their eyes.
Example of an ideal outbound signature
What makes this signature work:
- Include your position / job title (Ideally something relevant to the prospects you are reaching out to)
- If you include your company name in your signature make sure it is hyperlinked to your homepage.
- Linkedin is the place for all things business and career, so leverage it by linking to your profile!
- Including a photo of yourself adds a visual layer of context and helps people imagine someone actually talking to them. Use a friendly picture to capture attention. People are naturally attracted to human faces.
Outside of the signature itself, you need to make sure the sender of the outbound email is relevant to the prospect. If you title doesn’t align with the prospect’s, chances are they will know you are trying to sell vs. help. An example is a marketer trying to reach out to a CTO. The two titles speak different languages and have dramatically different roles. A CTO will see “marketing” in the title and likely not respond because they assume the outreach won’t provide them value relevant to their responsibilities. If you can’t change the sender to suit a prospect’s title, don’t include the title in your signature.
15 minutes for a year of results
The beauty of taking some time to optimize your signature, is you really only need to do it once. While subject lines should be personalized for each email, a signature is universal and is more of a once and done tactic. With that said, your signature can have a BIG impact over the course of weeks, months, and over the year. A little effort here goes a long way.
To make sure your signature is formatted correctly and links are working, send out test emails to yourself and to your co-workers. If available to you, try viewing the email in a variety of email clients like Gmail, Mac Mail, iOS mail, Outlook, etc. Optimize for the email client the majority of your prospects use.
Need more expert outbound tactics? Our team has sent hundreds of thousands of outbound emails and Linkedin messages. We are constantly running outbound campaigns and know what works and what doesn’t. Get in touch with us and start filling your pipeline with more leads.
