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One area that consistently gets overlooked is the email signature. Some people have something such as ‘Regards’ – ‘Sincerely’ or ‘Thank you’ and then their first name. This is truly not the best way to end your emails with business associates and customers. It just really lacks a sense of professionalism.

There are certain bits of information that you should have programmed in to display on all of your business emails. This information includes the following:

Your name and title

Your company name

Phone number(s)

Fax number(s)

The physical address of your company

Your mailing address if it is different from your physical address

Your website address

Your e-mail address

Your business logo or slogan, if you have one

You may feel that it is unnecessary to list your email address. However, your email address may get lost or be unreadable if the recipients of your email forward it to their contacts – and their contacts forward it to their contacts and so on.

The best way to ensure that all of this information is included in every email that you send from your business email account is to go into your message options and add a signature line. This signature line will appear whether you send a new message or forward a message that you received from someone else. Doing this is especially important if you are emailing from a Blackberry or other PDA. No one likes to get an email that ends with the message ‘sent from IPhone’ or ‘sent from Blackberry’.

When setting up your automated email signature, refrain from anything that is unprofessional or cute—such as graphics or funky background colors. Your email signature area should be aesthetically pleasing and professional. Besides graphics and funky background colors, here are some things to avoid:

Extra large fonts

Small fonts

Multiple colors

Multiple colors and fonts

Your email signature may seem like such a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but you’d be surprised at how important it really is to your business associates and customers. Receiving an email that looks like it was hastily written or one that looks childish and cheesy can turn off people that you interact with regularly.

Setting up a professional email signature doesn’t take more than a few minutes, but not doing it could hurt your business forever. When you are running an online business don’t take anything for granted. Everything that you put out there – whether it is a blog posting, forum posting, Twitter comment, Facebook status, bio or email signature – is a reflection of you. All of this information works to ‘brand’ you and your business for the good…or the bad.

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