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Email Signature: What It Is and What It Holds

An email signature is the block of text added to the end of every email you send, usually your name, role, company and contact details. It is the most-seen version of your contact details, since it goes out with every message, and it is also one of the easiest places to put a link to a digital business card.

What a Good Signature Holds

Name, role, company, one phone number, and one way to learn more. That is enough. Signatures grow over the years into a stack of numbers, taglines, legal text and badges that nobody reads and that mobile mail clients render badly. Each addition makes the useful parts harder to find, and most of what accumulates is better placed on a page that the signature points to.

Why Signatures Go Stale

The signature is set once and rarely revisited. A new number, a new job title or a change of address means editing it in every mail client you use, and then trusting everyone to see the new version, while old threads keep carrying the old one. The same drift that affects a printed card affects a signature, only quietly.

Linking to a Card

A short link to your card in the signature gives recipients a single, current place to find everything else: the extra numbers, the website, the button to save you as a contact. When any detail changes, you edit the card once and the link in every email already sent leads to the updated page. Use a link rather than an image of a QR code in an email, since the reader is already on a screen and a link can be tapped.

Plain Text, Images and Reliability

Many mail clients block images by default, so anything essential should work as text. Keep the signature short, make the link visibly a link, and avoid placing the only copy of your phone number inside a picture. A signature that reads well in plain text will read well everywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Should I put a QR code in my email signature?

Usually a link is better. People read email on the device they would scan with, and a link can be tapped directly. A code earns its place on paper and on screens shown to a room.

How long should an email signature be?

A few lines: name, role, company, one phone number and a link. Anything more is better placed on the page the link points to.

Will changing my card change old emails?

The text in old emails stays as sent, but the link inside them leads to your card, which shows its current details.

Keep reading

Related terms

Digital Business CardA digital business card is a web page holding a person’s contact details, shared by a short link or a QR code instead of a printed card. Because the details live on the page rather than on paper, they can be changed at any time without reprinting or resending anything.Contact CardA contact card is a single entry in an address book holding one person’s details, such as name, phone numbers, email addresses and company. The same phrase is also used for a shareable card, whether paper, a file or a web page, that exists to put those details into someone else’s address book.Contact ManagementContact management is the practice of collecting, storing and keeping up to date the details of the people you deal with, so that you can find and reach them when needed. It ranges from a phone address book to a full CRM, and the common failure is not storage but stale or missing details.QR CodeA QR code (Quick Response code) is a two-dimensional barcode, a square grid of dark and light modules, that stores text such as a web address and can be read by a phone camera. Unlike a traditional barcode it holds data in both directions and still scans when partly damaged or obscured.

Put this into practice with your own card

Put your details on one card page, share it by link or QR code, and change them whenever they change. The printed code keeps working. No credit card required to start.

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