The email signature is the first place a lot of people go wrong when it comes to outbound. But for many, the cold email signature is the bit they don’t think about.

Which is insane, because it’s the last thing a prospect sees before deciding whether you’re:

1. a real person
   
   

2. a vendor worth replying to
   
   

3. a sentient Mailchimp template wearing a human’s skin

Your signature has three jobs:

1. Prove you’re real
   
   

2. Make it easy to reply
   
   

3. Avoid doing anything that triggers spam filters or screams “mass outreach”

Now cold email logic, if followed precisely, tells you to keep signatures as plain as possible. And cold email logic is correct; for optimal deliverability you want to strip back all links and images. This would be my perfect signature: 

But spoiler alert, I actually don’t follow best practice when it comes to signatures. For our campaigns I actually include an image (shock horror). Why? Because I personally things it helps with brand recognition, so the one I use looks like this:  

For me, brand recognition through the image gives credibility, and whilst I sacrifice a bit of inbox placement (not huge, it’s usually around 1-2% from the test we’ve carried out), a part of me thinks it’s a worthy trade off. Some mail clients block images by default, so if you’re running campaigns to big enterprises, financial services, or other highly regulated industries, think twice before including any kind of image. 

One thing I’m also conscious of is trying to make people think they are not receiving an automated email. And a lot of automated email platforms push the plain text signature; and to me they always are a dead giveaway that I'm just another name in a sequence.

Where people go really wrong is with links, and excessive HTML. HTML is bad for a few reasons, mainly because it’s what hackers and fraudsters will use to take you somewhere naughty. Every additional link is another tracking service and deliverability risk. 

A terrible signature for deliverability would therefore read: 

If you have anything that looks like this ☝️then you don’t have a signature, you have a spam-weighted attachment. 

If your cold email is the pitch, the signature is the receipt. Make it clean, minimal, and human.