By Cathy Planchart, Senior Project Manager

Including a complete signature at the bottom of your email is the right thing to do. It makes it easy for the people with whom you are working to contact you in another way, should they need to. Otherwise, time is wasted looking for contact information somewhere else, or worse, not having a phone number or mailing address for them. Occasions do arise when a phone call or physical mailing is needed. So, it is beneficial to make readily available your complete contact information via an email signature. Consider your email signature as an “old school” business card.

Often, it is more efficient to make a phone call and have a discussion than to send an email. If you need email documentation of your conversation, consider sending an email summary after the fact. Personal conversations can be more productive than emails flying back and forth. For instance, just this week, I was making dinner plans with a friend, and it took four emails and three texts to complete the task. Could our plans have come together more quickly had we just talked on the phone?

In the email service I use, I set up my email signature once and include it automatically on all my emails. A standard email signature typically includes:

• Name (first and last)
• Title
• Company name
• Physical/mailing address
• Email address
• Phone number

Other items you may want to include in your email signature:

• Cell phone number - provides those you interact with another way of contacting you, including text message.
• Company website URL and social media links – helps promote your company.
• Confidentiality statement – offers protection if your message gets into the wrong hands.
• Preferred pronouns – assists the recipient in knowing how you prefer to be addressed.
• Time zone – indicates your availability throughout the day, especially for those working remotely and/or communicating routinely with others across the country or around the world.
• Typical working hours – makes others aware of the best time to contact you.
• Out of office dates – alerts those with whom you communicate about upcoming outages.

Having a complete signature at the bottom of your email is helpful to the recipient, increases efficiency and promotes productivity. So, take a moment to review your email signature, modify it if needed or create one. Then, choose your default settings so your signature appears on all new messages, and consider also including it on replies and forwards. By doing so, your signature will always be included on your emails. If you decide, for whatever reason, you don’t want it there for a particular email, then you can just delete it. Including your email signature is a good practice, not to mention one that is simple to implement and makes it easier for people to collaborate with you!

MKP communications inc. is a New-York based marketing communications agency specializing in merger/change communications for the financial services industry