Email Signature Best Practices and Examples
A good email signature gives the recipient what they need to identify and reach you, and nothing more. These email signature best practices keep yours clean, professional, and reliable across desktop, web, and mobile clients. The examples below are evergreen, so they apply whether you use Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail.
What to include
- Full name and job title. The minimum a signature needs.
- Company name. Helpful for recipients who do not recognize your domain.
- One phone number. Your primary line, not three options.
- Website. Linked text, not a bare URL.
- A photo or a logo. A square headshot or a company logo, not both.
- One to three social links. Professional channels only.
What to leave out
- Inspirational quotes.
- Long confidentiality disclaimers (keep to two lines if your industry requires one).
- Multiple fonts. Pick one and stick with it.
- Animated GIFs. Most clients block them by default.
- Background images. They rarely render the same way twice.
Sizing and format tips
Keep the signature compact. Aim for roughly four to seven lines of text and a single image. Use a web-safe font and a font size between 12 and 14 pixels so it reads well without dominating the message. Build the layout with HTML tables and inline styles, which is the only reliable way to get consistent rendering across email clients. Host images at a stable URL rather than embedding large files, and keep any photo or logo under about 200 pixels wide so it loads quickly and does not overwhelm the message on small screens.
Keep it accessible and lightweight
Add descriptive alt text to your image so screen readers and clients that block images still convey who you are. Make sure text has enough contrast against the background, and never put important information (your name, phone, or email) inside an image, where it cannot be read, copied, or searched. A lightweight signature also loads faster and is less likely to be clipped by Gmail's message size limit.
Mobile considerations
A large share of email is read on phones, so test how your signature looks on a small screen. Some mobile apps, including the Gmail app and Mail on iPhone, support only a plain-text signature, so keep a short plain-text version for those. For everything else, a single-column layout with a modest image and tappable links works best, since wide multi-column signatures often get squeezed or cut off on narrow screens.