Occasionally, a client will ask us to create a graphic email signature for them.
Well, the customer is always right of course, hahaha, but it really is MOST inadvisable to have a graphic in your email signature.
What I'm not sure that I fully understand is this - the clients who ask for this have, over the course of our business relationship, had many emails from TSDG. If it was a good idea, wouldn't we do it?
So, why isn't it a good idea?
There are four main reasons:
1. A graphic in your email could cause that email to be stopped by spam filters. And your email normally has to pass through three spam filters before it hits your inbox. There's one on the server, it's likely that your company will have a filter on its network and finally, you presumably have on on your own computer.
You really don't want to risk a valuable business email getting trapped and undelivered, do you?
2. A graphic adds to the file size of your email. Again, there are various failsafes around on your server, your network and your own computer that will prevent large files from being downloaded. Sometimes, and this happened here just the other day, large incoming emails are deleted by the recipient as they are taking too long to download. Email is supposed to be a quick and simple form of communication.
3. Email signatures that include graphics aren't bvery professional; they tend to brand the person as someone who doesn't know a great deal about the internet, rightly or wrongly. I know, as a firm who specialize in brand management, you'd think that we would be promoting the use of your logo in your email signature but let's be practical - your lovely logo is no good if no-one sees it.
4. Which brings me to the final point - many email clients don't download images anyway. If you use Outlook, you'll know that images in emails show up as red exes. So again, no-one is seeing your graphics and worse - they may think that it's an error. When you see a red x on a website, that's an error and this is now seen as a universal sign that says either ERROR or SOMONE DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING - not the impression you want to give!
It's much better to have a short email signature, in plain text. Like this:
John Smith
Owner
John's Jolly Juice Company
Tel: 123 4567 8901
www.johnsjollyjuices.com
You don't need your fax number, your cell, your blog, your Twitter, your Facebook page ...
And why on earth do some people put their email address in their email signature? That's a complete mystery ...
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