You have probably heard this advice before, but have you done anything about it? What does your email signature say right now?
I get emails every day from people commenting on the blog, asking questions or telling me about their books which I love to receive and happily reply to. However, over 50% of those emails do not have any links in their email signature, and many have no email signature at all. Some have an image of a business card with no clickable links to their website or book for sale which is not very useful either.
How many emails do you send a day? To friends, your accountant, business colleagues, potential clients, potential readers and more. If your email signature is set up, you are constantly sending people your information and doing ‘passive’ marketing, spreading the word about you, your brand and your books. Use your email signature wisely and those people might click through and read more about your book/join your email list or contact you for business.
So, today’s book marketing advice is to sort out your email signature right now!
What information should an email signature contain?
To make sure people know who you are and can buy your books, you should include some of the following aspects:
- Your full name, your business name and tagline if you have one, or an explanation of what you do. Don’t assume people know what you are about.
- Your website and blog URL prefixed by http:// which makes it directly clickable (you should always use that prefix on the web for clickable links)
- Your book titles and where people can buy them or find out more information e.g. Amazon.com links or specific pages of your website
- A hook or offer for the reader that catches their eye if it is a topic they are interested in e.g. I mention my Author 2.0 Blueprint
- Social media links including Twitter, Facebook and any other main site that is relevant (you don’t have to use them all!)
- Address and phone details if they are relevant to how you run your business
- Logo or picture of you or your books if you want to include them. This is not mandatory, but if you do include them, make sure you also include plain text links as well.
My basic email signature is shown above. It is an image here but as an email signature all the links are clickable.
I don’t use any fancy formatting or images right now but there are plugins and code you can use to make it look prettier. That is great but just get something basic up for starters and worry about formatting later. If people want to know more about you, they want the information right in front of them. They don’t want to search for it.
If you’re having problems with your email, try Gmail
Some people have problems with their email accounts and providers. It seems some of them make it very difficult to set up email signatures. If you’re struggling with email, I highly recommend using http://www.gmail.com which is Google’s own free online email service. You can set up a signature through the Settings page, and then the General area. There are also a host more benefits including easily searchable text, contacts and tasks integration and much more.
What do you include on your email signature now? Do you have any favorite tools for making it attractive?
This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.