I find that including a hand written email signature is a great way to add a personal touch to my emails and other documents requiring disclosure.
The only problem is, I had no idea how to add my signature, and you may be in the same boat.
I invested some time learning how to include my signature on emails, and I’d like to share my findings.
Coming up, learn different ways to send messages bearing your signature, and I’ll also focus on ways to use email to connect with your clients and customers.
Ready?
The Mobile Method
To add your signature using your phone, write your signature on a piece of paper. Snap a picture with your phone’s camera app and send it to your inbox. When you receive the image, save it on your computer. Then, use image tools to crop the picture to your liking before scaling it down to the appropriate size.
The Traditional Method
This method also requires you to scribble your signature on a piece of paper. Rather than take a picture, use a scanner to scan your signature and save it as a .gif, .png or .jpg. Now, insert your scanned signature into an email before cropping and scaling the image to your liking.
The Designer Method
If you have a tablet and stylus, write your signature using a program like Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Crop and save your name as a .png, .gif or .jpg. Insert the edited image into your email.
Using Email To Connect With Customers
Now that you know several ways to make your emails more professional and personal, you can combine that knowledge with understanding how to forge a deeper connection with your customers and clients with email. The key to connecting is adding value to your customers’ lives, not sending empty messages that go straight into the trash.
If your customers willingly signed up for a newsletter or other email marketing material, you owe it to them (and yourself) to honor their trust in you. You must also bear in mind that many people have busy lives, so you must send messages they’ll prioritize rather than let sit unread in their inbox for several days or weeks.
Vary the marketing messages you send. For instance, in one message, you could answer a common question about your services, products or company. In another, you can help your customers solve a common problem in your industry or one you’ve noticed related to your products or services. A relevant tutorial could add value to your audience lives’. Don’t be afraid to reach out to customers to ask what kind of material they’d like to see.
No matter the material in your newsletters and other correspondences, never forget that your customers are people. Many companies and entrepreneurs make the mistake of viewing clients and customers as little more than dollar signs. With every message you send, take steps to show you have your audience’s most favorable interests in mind. When you take this approach, you can find you have an easier time deciding what kind of material and content to share.
Would you consider your emails to be interesting? This touches back on clients and customers prioritizing your messages. Think about what you normally do when checking your email. You could absently scan your inbox while watching TV or a movie, between cooking steps or while you have a break in your workday.
No matter what your customers do while checking their email, your message should be so engaging that they stop whatever they’re doing to focus on what you have to share. One great thing is that you don’t have to go to great lengths to capture audience attention. Injecting a bit of humor or using visuals and sound bites helps engage the senses and keep people interested.
Maybe you’ve already had a few significant experiences with connecting with clients or customers. If so, revisit that winning content, be it in a social media post, email or blog post. Note what you feel was effective and what you can fine-tune. In future emails, try different ways of replicating that success.
Personalizing Your Email Correspondence
You can do more than add your signature to personalize email messages. For instance, if you have a customer’s name, use it on your messages. Doing so makes customers feel like you wrote a message specifically to them rather than every client or customer you have. When using this tip, I recommend including the person’s name in the email’s subject line and the email itself.
Friends celebrate each other, so look for ways to do the same with your customers. When customers sign up for newsletters or something similar, have them include their birthday so you can send a special offer on their special day. You can also celebrate the day customers signed up for your newsletter or the day a person became your client. No matter what day you celebrate, make the message worth opening and reading.
If you send email offers, tailor them to specific customers rather than take the scattershot approach. For example, if you sell tea and coffee, you don’t want to send an offer for discounted tea leaves to a customer who only orders coffee. Likewise, your male customers don’t want offers for women’s clothing items. Personalize your offers as much as possible, even down to geographic location if a customer’s zip code affects his or her eligibility for an offer.
On a related note, personalize all recommendations. You may have already experienced this tip firsthand if you use a streaming service that recommends TV shows, music or movies based on your past activity. You can curate recommendations by using past purchases and browsing history, but ensure that you have consent to track a person’s browsing history. Not only are personalized recommendations great for connecting with patrons, but they can also save your clients and customers time browsing your selection of services or products.
How many times do you notice that customers abandon their cart while shopping at your online store? Social media, family, cooking, phone calls, text messages and streaming content can all pull a person’s attention away from online shopping. Work with these distractions by sending a cart abandonment email within an hour of the shopper leaving your online storefront. Entice the customer by including an image of the product(s) in the cart.
Focus on making sure your messages don’t end up in spam folders. Before sending emails, scan them for keywords that may send your message straight to the spam box. Research the most current and effective keywords that bypass spam folders and send your content to inboxes where it belongs. Also, give your subject lines a second glance to ensure they don’t read like a sales pitch, which can also ship them to a spam folder.
Small touches often make the biggest impact when you want to add some personality and personalize email messages.