Is your e-mail signature helpful to others?

Designing your perfect e-mail signature

by Bhavin Gandhi

Have you ever been in a situation, where you have got an e-mail from a long gone friend without any contact information about him? I am sure, most of us must have received at least one e-mail in their lifetime, which is from their close friend, but it doesnt provide any information on how to contact them. Lets take this for an exampleMr. X, who was your close college friend, suddenly sends you an e-mail about few things that he might want to discuss with you. What will you do in that situation? You might want to call him, but there is no contact information provided by him (no signature in his e-mail). And hence, you would rather be satisfied by responding to his e-mail instead of finding his contact information in your address book and calling him. Is that not right? Imagine the similar situation at your workplace. Lets say, you get an e-mail from Mrs. Y, who works in the different department, requesting specific information from you. Lets say, you dont have any idea on what she is asking for. So, instead of calling her (since she doesnt have her contact information in the email signature), you would respond to her e-mail, and she might have to wait for few hours to clarify her side through to-and-from e-mail communication. Due to this long chain of e-mails, she will end up losing precious time to resolve the issue at hand. Imagine, if she would have included some basic information about herself with the contact information. Wouldnt your response be different in that situation? Lets say, if she would have put that she works in the licensing department as a project manager for XYZ. I am sure, this information would have helped you to put her e-mail in some context, and your response would have been much more quicker and informative. So, how do you avoid these situations? What kind of information should you be putting in your e-mail signature? Well..answer is very simple. You should include your name, your designation, your companys name, your work address, your work e-mail, your work phone number, your work mobile number (if any), and your professional picture (if possible). Your name and designation should help your responder to put your e-mail in some context. Your work address might be useful, when your responder might want to mail something in response to your e-mail. Obviously, your e-mail address and phone numbers would be very handy for your responder, if they want to reach you quickly. And yeah! Though your professional picture is optional, I would highly recommend you to upload that on your Outlook or embed in your e-mail signature. Professional profile picture helps your responder to remember you by the face. If I were you, I would have my e-mail signature as follows. Also, note that all of the contact information provided below is fake, and hence, please dont contact me through that contact information. You can rather reach me through my Contact Me page, which contains various ways to connect with me.

Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com

I hope, these tips will help you to design your perfect e-mail signature, which can help your responder to get all the information that they need, in order to quickly respond to your e-mail. Do you have any similar tips like this, which can make your e-mail communication effective? Thanks. Bhavin Gandhi.

Bhavin Gandhi | November 6, 2012 at 9:05 AM | Tags: 21st century, Business Communication,Communication, E-mail, E-mail Communications, E-mail signature, Leaders of Tomorrow,Leadership, Management, Market yourself, Self improvement, Sell yourself, Written Communication | Categories: 21st Century, Leadership, Management | URL: http://wp.me/p103Cm-8t

Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com