How to make an email signature

An email signature is the four or five lines under your name that tell the reader who you are and how to reach you. It has one job: to be found and trusted at a glance, on a phone, at the end of the fifth reply.

What to put in it

1. Your name, as people say it.
2. Your title and company. "Founder, Acme" or "Support, Acme" - the role tells the reader why you are the one writing.
3. One phone number, if you take calls.
4. One link: the website, or a booking page, or LinkedIn - whichever you want the reader to click. Every extra link competes with it.
5. A photo or a logo, optional, one or the other. A face makes a cold email human; a logo makes a company email look like the company.

What to leave out

• Banners, badges and social icon rows. On a phone they are a stack of clutter under every reply, and a signature full of images can count against a message with spam filters.
• Quotes and slogans. Decoration under a business email reads as noise.
• Long legal disclaimers. If your company requires one, it goes under the signature, in small grey text.
• A design tool's HTML export. Signatures exported from design tools often break in Outlook and blow past Gmail's 10,000-character limit. A signature is a small table with inline styles, and it is easier to have that made than to make it.

Make it

Use the generator. Type your details, pick one of the five layouts and an accent color, add a photo or logo if you want one, and click "Copy signature". There is nothing to sign up for. The result renders the same in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, on desktop and on phones.

There are two things worth doing before you copy:

• Click "Send me a test" and open the email on your phone. That is the screen most of your readers see it on.
• Try the Compact layout for replies. A full signature is for the first email in a thread; every reply after that only needs your name, role and one link.

Put it in your mail app

Then follow the steps for your mail app - each one is four numbered steps:

• Gmail, on the computer and in the app
• Outlook - new, classic, web, Mac, or the phone app
• Apple Mail on Mac
• Mail on iPhone and iPad
• Zoho Mail

If a tool or an AI assistant sends email for you, it never sees the signature saved in your mail app's settings. The agent guide shows how it fetches the signature instead.

The same signature for everyone at the company

Once yours is right, the company's is the same job done once: one logo, layout, color, font, review badge and booking button that every signature follows, and when they change, everyone gets their new signature by email. That is the Company plan - priced by the size of the company, with members added as you grow.