Email Signatures: How I Use Mine to Market My Business

I would like to introduce this post and give you some background.  I wrote a post called “Email Signatures: How to Use One to Market Your Business” last year and submitted it to Ezinearticles.com as well.  I was surprised by the popularity of it.  I think that perhaps there were a lot of people who had never thought of using one as a marketing tool and appreciated the heads up. (And I would like to give credit where credit it due–I learned about them from Erin Blaskie when I attended her “The VA Coach’s 8 Week Build Your VA Business Program” in June of 2008).

Tonight I was reading a blog called Self Made Chick and in one of her posts, she writes that “the one word that helped my blog grow to 800+ subscribers in 17 weeks” is I.  That’s it! I.  She found immediate success and incredible traffic to her site when she began writing about what she had done, tried, seen, experienced and so on.

Here are some examples of what she (gawd I love this!) means:

How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
vs.
How I Made $4,000 in 14 Days With Affiliate Marketing

or

How to Use Press Releases to Grow Your Business
vs.
How I Landed a $75,000 Contract with 1 Press Release

You see what I mean?  Just a slight tweak changed everything.  I need to keep reading her blog (and so do you).

So here is the edited version of that same post/article, but this time I am going to put me into it.

(By the way, here is the original in case you are curious as to what I originally wrote).
Email Signatures

I think email signatures are little super heroes of marketing and advertising.

It cost me nothing but a minute or two to set up, and yet it’s had the most profound impact on my  business. All I did was add my name, telephone number, website address and a catchy tag line and I had an email signature.

Here is a comparison between an email signature that is not being used to its full potential and one that is.

Imagine I get an email from someone who discusses how their business services can help my business. They extol the virtues of what their services and offerings can do for me and my business, and why I need them. They pique my  curiosity and I think that what they have to say is great, but I  would like to check them out.

When I go to check them out, I find that:

Scenario One:

Their signature only has a name of the sender. To check them out further, I will have to contact them by replying directly to the sender. This is my only option at this point. What if I want to do a little behind-the-scenes checking up on them? I am afraid I’ll get a sales pitch that I’m not ready for yet. What if I can’t trust this person/company? They are online after all. With no way to do any checking on this business, chances are I will delete this email.

Scenario Two:

Now imagine that I have gotten the same email from the same person. I think the same things about checking them out and not wanting any sales pitches, but this time when I scroll down to the signature I  find:

• a link to their website (I think: good I can check them out further without having to ask them for the information),
• a toll free phone number (I think: wow, they must be a fairly well established business to have a toll free number),
• a call to action or tag line that really rings true and makes me want to proceed further with this person (I think: this guy is good–he knows exactly what my pain point is and what I need)

This is such a simple action to take and can really added legitimacy to my business. It helped to advertise and market my business, and it helped me get traffic to my  website or blog site.

Note: all email programs have settings so that you could create an email signature. Go and do it now – I am not sorry and you won’t be either.

Oh and here is my actual email signature:

Kathleen Sullivan, The Savvy VA
Innovation for Your Online Business
http://www.thesavvyva.com
Toll Free Phone and Fax (800) 921-4812
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/thesavvyva
Facebook:  http://facebook.com/mysavvyfanpage
WordPresser: http://wordpresser.ning.com/ for all things WordPress
Give yourself the gift of a running start for your online business–get a WordPress blogsite!  Contact me today.

I hope you enjoyed my post. Leave me a message and let me know.