Your email signature is a special piece of your online identity. It’s attached to every email you send yet you probably haven’t touched it in months, like some piece of lint stuck in your hair everyone can see except you. Really it should be a beautiful tiny picture of you and your business, but in reality, they end up being more of an embarrassment than a bonus.
Here are six of the email signatures you probably still see everywhere
1. The double cliche signatures
Finished a letter with Yours Truly or Best Regards used to be a common practice, so it made sense to put them in emails. However, some already have them in their signature, which means it gets written twice!
So it’s double the cringe – first, they think they need to email like an 18th century postmaster, and second, they end up writing the phrase twice.
-MailTime,
Best Regards
—————
-MailTime,
Yours Sincerely
—————
-MailTime,
Yours Sincerely
2. The endless Contact Signature
You will see this kind of signatures mostly from a salesperson or a corporate worker. It has become a tradition for them to add every detail of their information to EVERY email they send. That’s probably why most salespeople gave the impression of being too desperate. Name, title, company, address, office number, cell phone number, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, personal website, or even their tumblr page? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Email is already an easy channel to connect through – if they really want to find you elsewhere there’s always Google. And I doubt you want everyone you email to have your personal phone number…
With MailTime, this kind of signature gets parsed out for sure…
-MailTime App Junior
41 Freelon St. 94107 San Francisco, CA
T:@mailtimeapp
Fb/MailTimeapp
Insta/mailtimeapp
W:http://mailtime.com
855-MAILTIME
3. The Irrelevant Quote Signature
For the poets and artists out there, there’s no better chance to show the world how clever and wise you are than your email signature. And of course, there’s nowhere more relevant to stick a Rumi quote than after a terse message negotiating up your consulting price.
Sometimes you get lucky and they’ll stick in a joke, or something by ‘Anonymous’, or a quote by someone you’ve never heard before, or some cliche tech hero. I’m sure their moment of enlightenment help the cubicle dwellers who read them
“Let the drop of water that is you, become a hundred mighty seas.
– Rumi, A Garden Beyond Paradise”
4. The goddamn image signature
A true classic. Some senders go so far as to design entire creative advertisements for their email signatures, complete with multiple photos sandwiched among text.
As of the most recent MailTime update, these will be parsed out too!
..▓▓..▓▓
..▓▓……▓▓
..▓▓……▓▓………………▓▓▓▓
..▓▓……▓▓…………..▓▓……▓▓▓▓
..▓▓….▓▓…………..▓……▓▓……▓▓
….▓▓….▓…………▓….▓▓….▓▓▓….▓▓
……▓▓….▓……..▓….▓▓……….▓▓….▓
……..▓▓..▓▓….▓▓..▓▓…………….▓▓
……..▓▓……▓▓….▓▓
…….▓………………….▓
…..▓…………………….▓
….▓……^……….^……▓
….▓…………♥………….▓
….▓……………………..▓
……▓……….ٮ……….▓
……….▓▓……….▓▓
Including a non-text file in a signature may cause trouble for your readers because you have no idea where this email will be opened. This rabbit might look great on your laptop but it doesn’t mean that it won’t be cut in two on your friend Charlie’s cheap phone. Though it is quite cute!
5. The ‘Sent from’ signature
You can’t win with this one. ‘Sent with iPhone’ makes you look like an amateur who just got their first Apple product yesterday, while ‘Sent from my Samsung phone’ (or pretty much anything else) means now everyone knows you have a Samsung phone.
It gets even worse when you switch between clients on desktop and mobile, and send different signatures with every email. Instead, there’s a much better solution!
6. No signature!
With Mailtime, it’s true that you can still edit your signature however you like – our favorite is the default ‘Have a good MailTime’.
However, since MailTime’s content parsing engine strips out all signatures regardless, there’s not much sense in putting effort into your MailTime signature. Instead, put that effort into the email body instead!
That’s what’s really important – communication. Don’t waste time reading all those digital clutter, whether it’s signatures, metadata, or archived replies. MailTime can help with that!
And wait for it …
7. The Legendary Confidential Signature
This e-mail message is intended solely for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential or privileged information. If you have received it in error, please notify us immediately and destroy this e-mail and any attachments. In addition, you must not disclose, copy, distribute or take any action in reliance on this e-mail or any attachments.
Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. E-mail may be susceptible to data corruption, interception, unauthorised amendment, viruses and unforeseen delays, and we do not accept liability for any such data corruption, interception, unauthorised amendment, viruses and delays or the consequences thereof. Accordingly, this e-mail and any attachments are opened at your own risk.
