4 December 2024
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
Business Advice: The importance of email signatures – and the death of the letterhead
For those of us who are older we will remember paper letter, it is true to say that a letterhead was key, it represented your business like a salesman in an envelope.
In English, we read from the top down. So, before you read a message you are already aware of what company it comes from. A letterhead should contain (a) the name and legal form of the company
(b) place of registration of the company and the number with which it is registered
(c) address of the registered office of the company, but for emails there are no such requirements.
The older style: Charlie Chaplin’s business letterhead had a picture of the building to build credibility. Factories often had photos of smokestacks to show their large scale. Banks would often boast of their massive share capital, or have photo of their stately headquarters.
In Ireland, within living memory, a letterhead would boast that a company had multiple telephone lines.
021 555 2138 (5 lines)
A letterhead would proudly mention directors names, and even qualifications, at the end of the page
Dr John Murphy, Joe Bloggs (British), Mary Jones PhD
But, time moves on, and now much correspondence is by email. An email signature is the modern equivalent of a letterhead, but people are missing a trick by having sloppy practices such as
[no name]
sent from my mobile device
whereas they should have
Regards, Joe
Joe Bloggs, Job Title, Section Name, Dept Name, Postal address-
021 555 7894 – joe.bloggs@example.com
I recently was emailing customer support of a well known Irish brand, trying to get a refund for an auto renewal subscription that I had cancelled, but for which they charged regardless. The emails were clearly templates and were signed off as just
Customer Support Rep
The person (or persons?) I was corresponding with was not taking ownership of the issue. You could argue that for a minimum wage position, why would they, but for the brand it looked bad. If they had to write a name, even a permanent fake one, it would give ownership of the issue, and let the customer know that the same person was on the other side.