An email signature is a small block of text that is inserted at the end of an email message. It typically includes the following information about the sender – full name, job title, company name, contact information and link to company website. Below is an example of a simple email signature:

The email signature plays a similar role as your company letterhead in physical correspondences; it provides essential information, bolsters credibility, displays professionalism and serves as an additional marketing and branding tool.

Why Should Your Business Use an Email Signature?

There are several reasons why your business should implement email signatures.

1. It makes your business look professional. A well designed signature conveys professionalism with each email correspondence.

2. It makes it easier for people to contact you. This is achieved by providing quick access to your contact details.

3. It reinforces your brand. This is further reinforced when everyone in your company uses a consistent signature design.

4. It can be used as a marketing tool by including a call to action. I.e. providing a link to your latest promotion or company blog.

5. Can be used to drive traffic to your website and social media pages. By including these links in your signature, there is a likelihood that a small percentage of your recipients will click on them.

What to Items to Include

Below is a list items that can be included in your signature:

• Full Name
• Job Title (optional)
• Company Name
• Contact information – (Phone number, email address, physical address). Only include the information that is relevant to your business. If you don’t readily accept visitors, then no need to include your physical address.
• Link to company website
• Logo (optional)
• Company tagline (optional)
• Call to action (optional). If used, ensure to update it from time to time to reflect your various promotions.

Tips

Here are some tips to keep in mind with setting up email signatures for your business.

1. Keep it Simple
Your signature should be informative and easy to read. It shouldn’t overwhelm the recipient with too much information. Prioritize the information you share. Design your signature so that it only conveys salient information.

2. Be Consistent
Your signature should be consistent across your company, reinforcing your brand.  Develop a signature policy for your company so that everyone uses the same design and layout. This helps to ensure that all company email correspondences include signatures that are professional, convey relevant information and reflects your company’s brand.

3. Make it Mobile Friendly
Optimize your signature design for mobile devices. A lot of emails are now read on mobile devices thus you should ensure that your signature is responsive and mobile friendly.

Additional Resources

• How to setup a signature in webmail
• How to setup a signature in Outlook
• How to setup a domain-wide signature in webmail

The post Email Signature Explained. Are you using it in your business? appeared first on Altokom.

The number of passwords the average person has to remember is staggering, especially coupled with the following good password guidelines:

• Passwords should be unique.
• Passwords should contain a mixture of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and symbols
• Passwords should have a minimum length of 12 characters. The longer the better.
• Passwords should be regularly updated. Some experts suggest every 60 days.
• Passwords shouldn’t be written down.

Remembering 19 unique, complex passwords is near impossible for most people. To deal with this situation, many sacrifice security for simplicity. They reduce the number of passwords they have to remember by reusing the same password on multiple sites – a hacker’s delight.

Password Management

Password management doesn’t have to be a chore, and there needn’t be a trade-off between security and complexity, password managers make this possible. A password manager is a great tool for remembering all the numerous passwords a person has to remember in this digital age, whilst still adhering to good password guidelines. Instead of remembering 19+ unique complex passwords, you only need to remember 1 unique complex password.  The password manager takes care of the rest making password management a breeze. A good password manager provides the following:

• Generates unique, strong random passwords for each of your accounts
• Stores the login details (username, password, URL) of all your accounts in an encrypted database.

In addition to the above passwords managers also provide the following additional benefits:

• Can fill in your usernames and passwords for your various account websites, meaning less time typing them in.

Our password manager of choice is KeePass (http://keepass.info). KeePass is easy to use, supports multiple platforms and gets the job done. Here’s a list of other password manager tools that can be used.

• LastPass (lastpass.com)
• Dashlane (dashlane.com)

The post How to Take the Headache out of Password Management appeared first on Altokom.