I use email every day. I wouldn’t say I receive a lot of email, but I rely heavily on it for my job. Over the years, I’ve noticed a trend to try and cram as much information into the signature of the email. It’s like people think that’s it’s free advertising for themselves. All text signatures don’t seem to bother me as much, but it can get out of hand in some cases. I want to go over some of the email signatures I’ve seen and why they drive me batty.
Graphics/Logos – Usually a single, small logo in your signature isn’t a big deal. Email storage isn’t an issue anymore, so that’s the problem. It’s more a case of distraction. Especially when you are in a string of replies and the logos pile up one after the other. It makes parsing emails even harder.
Social network icons and links – This is a somewhat new thing. People put little social network icons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc right in there signature and link them to their respective profiles on the service. Really? Thanks for pushing your social life down my throat every single time I email with you. Almost everyone is on Facebook, so I really want to find you I’ll search for your name. It’s like you are trailing around a tiny website at the bottom of every email you send. I guess the compromise is to just have text links, but that’s a small improvement.
Disclaimers/Confidentiality Notices – This one is debatable on the usefulness or actual legal importance. I know nobody reads them or obeys by the rules enforced by them, but I’ve seen articles about the legal implications for having them. So I guess I can’t say either way, but that they are just annoying.
Don’t print this!/Save the trees! – These are just ridiculous. I’m all about not printing my emails. I rarely print anything, but putting this in your signature with an image of a little tree isn’t helping anybody or stopping anyone from printing the email.
Free email services advertising – I had a conversation with someone with a Juno.com email address a while back that had actual advertising and links in the email signature. I understand it’s a free email service, but this is just crazy. I seem to remember free Yahoo.com email use to put their own advertising in the signature as well. I don’t if they do this anymore though.
Device/carrier specific – these are the default signatures that are on almost all cell phones: Sent from my iPhone, Sent from my iPad, Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile, Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®. Why do I care you are sending the email from your phone and why do I care which cell carrier you use? Does that excuse your bad typing or shortness of response? Here’s how you remove this from an iPhone.