Since its creation in 1971, email has continuously evolved and developed, having become one of the most important tools for modern businesses. With over 300 billion emails sent every single day, this is a leading form of communication that’s used in academic institutions, businesses, international organizations, and even personally. As a form of communication that’s become mass-adopted, you’re likely going to be using this service at least once a day.
Within the world of business, the average person will send around 40 emails every single day. When doing this completely automatically, people often spend time filling out additional information, like signing off with their name, and even adding further details like their job title or other contact information.
If done completely manually, this extra information that they type within each email leads to a huge amount of wasted time.
In This Article
How Email Signatures Save Time
When discussing the benefits of email signatures, several core ideas come to mind. Typically, people focus on how email signatures make your emails look more professional, how they can provide additional information, and how they’re fantastic for incorporating branding elements into every communication you send.
However, by far the most important benefit of email signatures is the fact that they save huge amounts of time when at work. Normally, the following information is included in the most standard email signature:
- A cordial sign-off
- Name
- Title
- Company
- Company Link/Website
- Branding colors
- Email / Phone / Work phone additional contact
Just taking a look at even the most basic email signature, it’s easy to see that if you were to type all of this out, you’d be eating up a lot of time. To write out all of this information, even if you’d already memorized it, would take around a minute for every single email that you send. Returning to the idea of sending, on average, 40 emails a day, that’s going to take you almost 40 minutes of your entire working day just to type out the same information.
Expand this over a week, and you’ve wasted hours upon hours of time simply repeating the same information in your emails. When this is then compared with an email signature, which pre-generates all of this information for you, you can instantly see how much time this will lead you to save.
Whether looking at the time-saving capabilities of an email signature as an hour a day or 5 hours a week, how effective they are is undeniable. When you combine the ability to radically save time at work with the other additional benefits of an email signature, it’s obvious why these tools have become such a staple of the modern workplace environment.
How Multiple Email Signatures Save You Even More Time
One commonly assumed fact about using an email signature is that you can only use one at a time. Typically, companies will outline their preferred style of email signature, making sure that all of their employees have a coordinated email appearance when messaging online. While this is predominantly the case, not all the case information needs to be sent between internal and external messages.
For example, if you’re simply emailing a coworker, then the marketing materials that you have at the end of your email signature might seem out of place. Foremost, they probably already know about the marketing promotion that their own company is doing. Second of all, they’re not the target audience, so this aspect of the email signature just takes up space without providing any benefit.
This is especially the case when certain departments only have one email signature. Looking at Human Resources, the information they share in their signature within internal emails will be drastically different from that they’ll want to share with external sources. For example, if they include a company-wide survey about job satisfaction in their signature, that’s not something that they would want to share with anyone that’s not part of the company.
With this in mind, one of the best ways to make email signatures work for you is to create several versions that you can attach to different emails. Alongside benefitting from the many advantages of having a signature, the ability to choose from a selection means you can customize your emails for their intended audience.
Using more than one signature allows you to rapidly change the intention of the email signature itself. You could have one for external contacts, which includes marketing materials, further contact information, or other useful links to your business. Equally, you can have an internal email signature that links to company pages, gives internal information, or specifies more about your team leader or other useful data for someone that’s working at the same business as you.
Take a look at Wisestamp’s email signature examples to get an idea of just how many signatures you could incorporate into your emails, focusing on all of their varying benefits. It’s always a great idea to have more than one email signature disposable and ready to share.
Final Thoughts
In our era of modern business, where instant connection has led to communication on a scale that’s never been seen before, email has become a predominant force in the corporate world. From internal communication to discussing business with external leads, emails are pinged from one account to another almost without end throughout the day.
Considering the importance of emails in modern business, it’s no wonder that email signatures have become such a useful tool. Allowing you to come across as professional while also saving time, including an email signature is one of the most effective ways to streamline communication while also providing additional information to those you’re emailing.
When incorporating multiple email signatures into your account, the benefits increase even further, allowing you to rapidly shift between signatures depending on the recipient. With this, you’re able to ensure you always deliver the most useful emails possible, including information in your signature that is only relevant to the people that are reading them.
