Add Value To Your Email Signature
This month I’d like for you to develop your custom signature in order to both enhance and reinforce your brand’s perception.
Your brand is how other people – especially prospective clients – perceive you. By using constant repetition and reinforcement, these important individuals can be encouraged to remember a few key facts about your brand.
Having the right signature style as a freelance copywriter can launch your name from a mere period at the end of a communiqué into a business and value-building platform.
Your unique professional signature should be a branded, informative, perception-controlling piece of marketing that shows up in every email, social media contact, letter, postcard, and the header of any pitch, sample, and submitted work.
Your signature should include:
1. Your name’s recognition
Your name recognition is your biggest moneymaker. You may want to stick to your own name, but many top copywriters like using a specifically crafted nickname to accomplish instant value and authority:
- Joshua “The Spellbinder” Boswell
- Dan “Millionaire Maker” Kennedy
2. Your job title
Your job title should encompass what you do, and ideally include the top benefit you bring to your client while adding to your name recognition. For instance, instead of “web writer” try “New Online Platform Pioneer.”
3. Your company name
Even if you’re a solopreneur, you need to have a company name to help reinsure and enhance the value of your brand. Pam Foster used to use “Pet Copywriter.”
4. Your single strongest authority platform (website or social media page)
Honestly most people aren’t going to “read” your signature, or click the links. But having it there is a positive reinforcement tactic. Your customers and potential clients still see that you have a website, or a branded Facebook page, or a LinkedIn profile. It helps to create and enhance a feeling of authority, trust, and confidence.
5. The one best way to contact you
This is one area where you can stand apart from other professionals. A lawyer or accountant might have two or three different contact methods.
However, by having only one contact point as a rule, you make your clients’ job simpler. You also make sure that people are getting in touch with you where you can be sure to see them, and where you are most in control of the conversation.
6. Your logo and/or branding colors
If you do have a logo this is a perfect place to show it off. Including a little picture graphic at the end of your communications – especially email – is a great way to build authority, even and especially if you’re brand new.
If you don’t have a logo, you want to be sure to include at least one color element, even if it’s just the text color of your name, to help support the idea that you’re the real deal with a real business and real value.
Once you have your basic signature set up, you can adapt it to almost any use.
For instance, if you have your signature in the top right-hand corner of a submitted pitch or proposal (as you always should) and the document is longer than a page, then you can take your name and contact method and put it into the header next to a page number. This reinforces your name, and ensures that if a client misplaces a page they can still get ahold of you.
Or you can use the name and brand elements of your signature in a phone call.
When you call a client, you can say “This is Dan “Top Eastern Seaboard Content Man” Jones calling for Jones Is Just Awesome LLC, how are you today?” You can use the same message when leaving voicemails (always a scary proposition) or in creating your own “leave a message” recording.
This is the month for you to take your signature from an “oh, that’s who sent this,” to a “wow, that person is a real professional, I want to hire them right now!”