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 
-- 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?
- 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]
I really like the Tall #2. It looks clean, is easy to read, and it is easy to distinguish where to go depending on what you need/want.
I was just thinking about this too, now that I’m using Thunderbird. I’m liking Tall #2, also.
Funny, probably like the tall ones the least.
Well, I like the idea of combining everything. It’s like a portal… in signature form — everything in one spot for your easy navigation.
I dislike the tall ones. I think a signature should be no more than 2 or 3 lines, tops. Anything past that and I start feeling like I’m reading something from our marketing department… God I hate that confidentiality notice.
Still, on the other side of the coin, I think tagging all your URLs onto one line makes it too wide — a signature should never wrap (and that’d put you at wrapping after about 2 replies in my clients) and should in general never take up more than 1/3 of my screen’s width. It’s meant for reference so it shouldn’t grab my attention until I go seeking more information (or, obvioiusly, get to the end of the email).
So we’re now left with some kind of combination of tall and wide. Personally, I like Matt’s — it’s simple, it’s short, it’s skinny, and it includes all the information you need. Unfortunately, you can’t get the nice even look with just 3 URLs, so perhaps including ‘taskspro.com’ could even things out without being overkill (since it is your flagship product).
On a personal note, I also don’t like including ‘Personal’ and ‘Business’, etc. in there. I think that makes it too large again, and it should really be pretty obvious what’s what anyway. I also don’t like how Matt tried to center “http://photomatt.net” in the first “cell”. Until you realize it’s centered, it just looks out of place and like he made a typo by indenting the first line. The second “column” is also left-justified (since there’s no hard border), which makes it even worse.
Now, to totally mix things up, I just thought about shortening everything:
--
Alex King
alexking.org | kingdesign.net | feedlounge.com
Or something to that effect. Stripping off the “http://” at the beginning of each URL helps keep the length down (not to mention eliminating the part everyone knows about these days anyway) and lets you combine everything onto one line without risking wrapping too quickly.
I’ve never seen an email from Matt, but I’d be interested to see what he did after leaving CNet — is it still in his signature? If not, what’d he do when it went down to an un-even 3 URLs?
Last but not least, the conservative companies. I don’t think you should worry about being too individualistic or personal in your signature based on the company politics. Unless you’re misrepresenting yourself in the first place (which I highly doubt from you) and leading them to believe you’re more than a one-man-band, they shouldn’t be surprised that you’re an individual. It’s not like getting an email from someone at Microsoft or BMW, etc. that’s pushing their own URL. When you hire someone from what’s obviously a large company, you expect something different than when you hire a self-employed contractor or consulter. In the end I don’t think it would cause any kind of problem.
Just my 2 cents — hope it helps.
Without the ‘http://’, the links are not clickable in most e-mail programs – hence their inclusion is not optional.
I like tall #1. The “Personal” etc is implied in the URL I think, so no need to state it out like you did in tall #2. I don’t like the wide ones because of the issues you mentioned with them wrapping (possibly poorly) in email clients.
Hmm, good point about the links.
Another question that may affect things is whether you generally send email in HTML or plain text. HTML would usually mean a variable width font, which would screw up any cool spacing in a lot of instances, while plain text would let you establish more positioning.
Also, a totally off-the-wall idea here: What if you did setup a single site that linked to your others instead? Then you could put a single URL in your signature and have it list everything else — something very simple that only serves to provide links and short descriptions to the rest of your sites (I’m thinking along the lines of automattic.com – big and graphical, yet simple).
matt – I don’t necessarily agree that it is implied, especially if someone is not yet aware of the other sites.
CM – HTML e-mail is evil, and the sites already cross-link.
I was going to suggest the one-site-points-to-all method. I mean, I employ it, and so does Matt Haughey. What more prior art do you need, Alex? 😉
[I even have a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, which I’ve chosen to obfuscate via TinyURL. Please note that I am not reponsible if you view this while consuming liquids.]
*shrugs* They need to learn to read then 😉
Sorry, I’m not big on hand-holding.
Geof – I had considered that too (though not that domain), but I’m not so sure adding another domain really helps the situation.
matt – that’s kind of the point – you’re saying not to give them anything to read.
Perhaps I just need to put an uber-about page up here or something.
Nah, I’m saying that all they need to know is in the url.
alexking.org – chances are it’s your personal site
kingdesign.net – looks like a design firm to me …
feedlounge.com – probably a web app / forum / blog of some sort, probably should click on it if I want to know more.
I don’t see how “personal” “king design” or “feedlounge” being placed before the url tells me any more then what the URL already tells me…
I like Tall #1. Tall #2 just says the same thing as the url. In Wide #2, the top line was collapsed in BlogLines so the entries did not align with their bottom counterparts.
I hadn’t even gotten around to messing with my email sig since that is mainly personal but I have been sprucing up my various forum signatures.
What’s next? Blog signatures?
— Matt Smith —
MyHomePoint – Powering the Modern Family
SwoofWare – It’s only work if somebody makes you do it
Alex: You could stand to have a well-detailed about page. You’ll probably want a limited number of people who know you to ask you questions that you’d want to answer to help you write the narrative.
#2 is best, but if this is sales-ey (which is the whole point) it should better define what each project is. I would hope that most of your email readers can parse out the product name from the .net or .com, so I’d prefer a product tag line:
Task Management Software: http://kingdesign.net
Web-based Feed Reader: http://feedlounge.com
Personal: https://alexking.org
The downside is it will be much harder to line things up and make it look nice. Maybe url’s then marketing tag line?
I like Tall #1. I agree that the labels for King Design and Feedlounge are redundant; you are adding unnecessary bulk. To me, they should be more descriptive or simply left out.
New post on SitePoint today about email sigs…pretty fun read. http://www.sitepoint[...]-signatures/