A few weeks back, Scott posted about leveraging your e-mail signature and it’s been in the back of my mind ever since.

Part of the problem is that Mail.app doesn’t allow you to associate different e-mail signatures with different e-mail addresses within a single mail account. I have to remember to choose the proper e-mail signature for the e-mail I’m sending.

I currently have three very simple signatures:

Personal:

--Alex

https://alexking.org/

King Design (Tasks Pro™, Tasks, consulting):

--Alex King

King Design
http://www.kingdesign.net/

FeedLounge:

--Alex King

FeedLounge - http://feedlounge.com
the web-based feed reader redefined

I’ve kept these simple because long signatures generally annoy me, and I figure if people are curious they’ll click on what they’re given. 🙂

Now I’m considering trying to create a mash-up signature of sorts – including all three in my generic signature. Matt did this a while back and I thought his looked just fine:

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
 http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
http://pingomatic.com | http://cnet.com

The thinking behind this is somewhat explored here. We’re increasingly in an era where individuals trancend business entities – I don’t try to hide my projects on my web sites, why should I hide them in my e-mail signature?

Here are some possibilties I’m considering switching to:

Wide #1

-- Alex King

https://alexking.org | http://kingdesign.net | http://feedlounge.com

Wide #2

-- Alex King

Personal            | King Design           | FeedLounge
https://alexking.org | http://kingdesign.net | http://feedlounge.com

Tall #1

-- Alex King

https://alexking.org
http://kingdesign.net
http://feedlounge.com

Tall #2

-- Alex King

Personal:    https://alexking.org
King Design: http://kingdesign.net
FeedLounge:  http://feedlounge.com

One of the drawbacks of “going wide” are that the signature gets wrapped as the indent level increases in a long reply thread. A drawback of “going tall” is the annoying number of additional lines being added on each reply.

There are some other considerations here as well. One is respecting the comfort zone of more conservative companies. During a consulting gig in the past, I was very open about the various projects I was involved in and my main point of contact was concerned that I would not devote enough time to his project during the contract¹. A composite signature like this can project a “too many irons in the fire” status if that is what the person on the receiving end chooses to take from it.

I think it’s time to get some external input on this. Is Scott’s approach right? How “sales-ey” should a signature be? Should I be concerned about the conservative companies that have not yet made friends with the “individual brand” concept?

1. Which turned out to be far from the case, of course. But I hadn’t worked directly with him in the past, I’d worked with others at the company. [back]