Signatures

By James Harvey Stout (deceased). This material is now in the public domain. The complete collection of Mr. Stout's writing is now at http://stout.mybravenet.com/public_html/h/ >

 

Jump to the following topics:

  1. What is a signature?
  2. General ideas regarding signatures.  

What is a signature? A signature (i.e., a "signature file" or a "sig") is a block of text at the bottom of email or of a newsgroup post. This text can be used to publicize our business.

General ideas regarding signatures.  

  1. They can be used in personal email, business email, mailing lists, and newsgroup posts.
  2. They can be used by ourselves, our employees, and our family members, to publicize our business.
  3. Before using a sig in a newsgroup or mailing list, read the FAQ. The group might restrict the use of sigs.
  4. Put different types of information into the sig:
    • We can include our name, company name, email address, physical address (street address or snail-mail address), URL (and FTP address if we have an FTP site), phone number, fax number, autoresponder address, ICQ number, a company slogan, a description of our company and its products or services, etc.
    • Avoid these items in your sig:
      • Non-business text. This includes humor, philosophical quotes, etc. This non-business text might alienate potential customers because: people might not understand it (particularly if they are from another culture in this worldwide medium); they might be offended by it; they might consider it to be a waste of time; they might have to pay for it (if they pay for email based on the size of the files).
      • Graphics. Don't create graphics with letters and numbers -- using tabs, the space bar, etc. The picture will probably be out of alignment when it appears on different browsers and different types of computer; if so, your beautiful design will end up as a random, incomprehensible assortment of alphanumeric characters.
      • Attempts to sell the product or service directly from the sig. Instead, direct the people to your website or autoresponder, where they can get more information.
  5. Create different signatures for different purposes. The variables can be:
    • The degree of blatant advertising. If a group prohibits ads (but it allows sigs), we might need to use a sig which is more subtle, perhaps with just our company name, email address, and URL.
    • The various products or services. For example, one sig could emphasize our web-design service; another sig could emphasize our web-hosting service.
    • Special events. These events might be special offers, sales, new products or services, a guest host in our chat area, or a new feature on our web site.
    • Variations in the text. We can experiment with different sigs to see which ones are most effective. To determine which sigs are attracting attention, we can put a different email address onto each one.
    • A link to our non-commercial web site. This might be necessary if the group does not allow any type of commercially oriented sigs. For those situations, our sig can link to our non-commercial site, and then the non-commercial site can have a link to our commercial web site. The non-commercial site can take various forms:
      • It can be our personal web site.
      • It can be a small site which we have created to offer free information about a subject which is related to our business. Many commercial web sites have free info anyway; we would just need make a copy of those free-info pages to create a different, non-commercial web site.
  6. Keep the sig short in height. If it is more than six lines:
    • It might be considered a flagrant advertisement. Some groups would disapprove.
    • It would require more time to download. (Actually, the time difference is minimal.)
    • It might be deleted. Some mailing lists delete long sigs.
  7. Keep the sig short in width. If it is longer than 60 or 70 characters in width, one end of it might be cut off by the recipient's email software.
  8. Instead of using a sig, we can use an attachment at the bottom our emails and newsgroup posts. The attachment can be any type of file: our banner, any ascii file, any html file, etc. We can still type a regular letter at the top of the message; the attachment will appear at the bottom. Consider these points:
    • Depending on the type of file we are sending as an attachment, it might be able to have colored text, a colored background, gif animation, sound files, and other features.
    • The attachment would be prohibited in many newsgroups and mailing lists.
    • It increases the size of the email. (However, a small html file can be 10k or less).
    • Our recipient's email program might not accept html graphics. If so, we might want to use a standard sig in addition to the html attachment, so that there will still be an ad at the bottom of our message.
  9. Remember that the sig is an advertisement. Give it as much planning as you would give to any other ad. (Refer to the chapter regarding "ad copy.")

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