5 ways email signatures can be used to boost your marketing efforts

While social media is all the rage these days, digital marketers would do well to remember the effectiveness of email as a marketing tool. Emails cost less, have a greater reach, and drive more sales than any social media site. One of the most important things often overlooked in email marketing is the use of an effective email signature. Due to the calls-to-action and detailed information that is usually present in emails, several marketers don't recognise the marketing boost their email signature can provide. Here are five ways in which you can do so:

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Provide links to your website and blog

People who have read through your email will likely be interested in learning more about your business. Providing links to your website and blog in your email signature affords your viewers an easy opportunity to know more about your business. Not only will this drive more traffic to your site, it can also convert leads who are on the fence about using your services into paying customers. The links you provide don't necessarily have to be text based; image links (of the company logo, for example) have been proven to be highly effective in generating clicks.

Give them the chance to connect on social media

Yes, I did just tout the advantages of email over social media for marketing, but gaining more followers on Facebook and Twitter is never a bad thing. Chances are your business posts on social media sites far more often than it sends out marketing emails. Email subscribers who also follow your brand on social sites will have a medium for continuous engagement at regular intervals. This means that they won't forget about your business in a hurry and the next email you send them might have a better shot at achieving its goal.

Share your latest offers

Your brand might be running a new offer on a particular service. Or maybe there's a discount on a new product you just launched. If such marketing campaigns are proving to be successful elsewhere, informing your email subscribers about them is a near-effortless way to boost your ROI. Your email signature can display the offer as a simple text CTA or an image-link featuring the product on sale.

Link to testimonials and case studies

People are more likely to try a product or service if it's recommended by existing customers. They will also be keener to use your services if you can prove their effectiveness. That is why providing a link to customer testimonials or a case study can increase a lead's trust in your brand and hence convert them into customers.

Promote your brand

Did your business receive a glowing recommendation in a news article? Informing your subscribers about it not only promotes brand awareness and drives more traffic to your site, it's also a great way to build credibility. You can also share videos or images that showcase things like your office culture and stories by employees. This makes your brand more relatable to the subscribers, who will begin to view your company as a human enterprise rather than a money-making venture.

While using these techniques, be sure not to go overboard and incorporate all of them at once in your email signature. Nothing puts people off like poorly designed chunks of information chock full of ugly hyperlinks. Also, maintain a clean and appealing design for your email signature – standardise your fonts and colours and limit the number of images to a maximum of two. Properly implemented email signatures will have an instant positive impact on your email marketing efforts.