Email "signatures" - no big deal?

I have been working with a lot of accountants on their email habits lately. Surprisingly to me, the signature you put at the bottom of emails has been a big topic of conversation.

Some considerations:

• If you are looking for a consistent way to represent your organization's "brand", a consistent signature seems appropriate.
• If you are focused on providing the other person what they probably most need from your signature .... how can they contact you immediately if they want to talk live (i.e. email is just not efficient based on the issue(s) that need to be discussed) then give them your phone number. Some I've worked with get creative with this. They will have one signature with their office number and one with their mobile number depending on where they are that day. (Obviously these folks want to be immediately reachable!) Nothing can be more frustrating to someone to try and look through an email thread and not be able to find your phone number!
• Too much really can be too much! It might be nice to provide all of your contact information. (That makes it easy for us to create a contact file of you.) However, when you add your twitter account, your facebook page, your blog, your resume, and your life history, we may get annoyed. Note for twitter and linkedin and facebook pages, there are small icon-links you can create to save space. For example, here are the directions for linkedin. Facebook and Twitter directions are here.
• Don't spend too much time in focusing on your signature. Maybe create it once and be done with it?! If you have considered these options listed above, you are probably going to have a "responsible" signature. If you want to change it every so often go for it. It may have a "branding" impact (and that may be important to some) but don't let this consume too much of your time .... so you can get back to all those emails!!

If anyone wants to learn how you can save hundreds of hours a year for yourself, become more sane by getting out from inbox overload, or save thousands of hours for your organization contact me at brian@moxiepartners.com.