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:
- What is a signature?
- 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.
- They can be used in personal email, business email, mailing
lists, and newsgroup posts.
- They can be used by ourselves, our employees, and our family
members, to publicize our business.
- Before using a sig in a newsgroup or mailing list, read the
FAQ. The group might restrict the use of sigs.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.")