Best Tips to Update Your Mobile Signature Now

Let’s start with the basics. What is the main purpose of a phone signature? It is to introduce yourself and your company and to remind your contact who you are. Not to mention increasing brand awareness and creating additional promotion opportunities.

Using a professional mobile email signature in business correspondence will help you to:

• Establish trust and credibility
• Provide your recipient with multiple ways to connect with you
• Back up your name and brand with social proof
• Increase your business’ brand awareness
• Promote products or services
• Drive traffic to your company website

And many more things. It all really depends on how you will use the potential of your mobile email sigs.

You might be among those many people who use “sent from my mobile device,” which is a standard for people with portable devices. If you’re using a business phone system to send an SMS, you can also edit your signature to make it custom to your brand messaging. The iconic “sent from my iPhone” has generated a lot of “sent from my iPhone” alternatives. There are device specific sign-offs or system-specific ones:

• Sent from my Android phone
• Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone
• Sent from Samsung Mobile
• Sent from my BlackBerry (remember those?)
• Sent from my Windows Phone
• and so on.

Regardless of the type of your phone, the general formula is:

Sent + from + (my) + [device name / OS]

Creative variations of the “sent from my iPhone” signature include mentions of the following communication (and not only) means — rotary phone, Commodore 64, carrier pigeon, typewriter, Atari, steam-powered digital telegraph, toaster, Skynet, a galaxy far far away, and many others.

People use these types of signatures mostly as an excuse for making typos and writing rather brief messages. You should keep in mind that they no longer validate your lack of attention or bad use of auto-correction. Here are the three main reasons why:

1. No one cares which phone you use

Initially, the iPhone signature was meant to tell the world that you have an iPhone. On the one hand, it was a smart campaign from Apple (which other companies picked up). On the other hand, it was a message on its own, a declaration of the status. With a variety of devices these days, you won’t surprise anyone by telling that you have one of those.

2. “Sent from my mobile device” is no excuse for your mistakes

It can be harder to avoid mistakes when writing from a phone versus from desktop. A smaller screen, a not very convenient keyboard, and an auto-correction tool with a mind of its own all contribute to this. Still, there is no need to mention this in your mobile signature. It’s always better to make sure your message is actually error-free.

3. It is not appropriate for business emails

A standard mobile sig (funny or not) is not really appropriate for business communication. It won’t help you appear professional, improve your relationship, or do good to your brand. It is merely a signoff that you can use for fun with your friends and personal contacts.

Stop using a standard mobile signoff simply to justify your bad grammar or hasty messages. Change your default smartphone email signature to something more effective, especially since we are using our smartphones more frequently to communicate with our business contacts.

You need a presentable signature, just like the one you would normally have in the mail client on your computer at work. It should do the following:

• Tell who you are
• Provide your recipient with your contact details
• Communicate your company’s brand message
• Be a place for additional information about your business that is not entirely related to the message
• Serve your company’s business goals

There are a lot of things you can do with the help of an email closing. So, update the one on your smartphone and start exploring all the possibilities.

Let’s look at some smartphone signature design tips.

Design tips for creating a mobile signature

The first and foremost thing that you should do is to make sure you are building a mobile-friendly email signature. Think about what your contacts will see on their mobile devices. Bear in mind that the phone screen is much smaller, while the space is pretty limited. It means, the objects must be larger, while the number of them smaller. And don’t forget that mobile internet speed can be limited.

• Use vertical signature templates

Because a typical mobile screen is vertical, be sure to align your signature elements vertically too. Don’t fit everything into a single line. Break the information apart when possible. At the same time, make sure that you don’t have too many lines with text at the end of your email.

• Add your cell phone number

It is only logical to include your mobile number when you are writing from your device. Make it easy for people to call you right away by tapping on the phone digits. To do this, you will need to create a hyperlink with “tel.:” followed by the number (no spaces).

• Add your email

Although we wrote before that adding an email address in the email signature often makes no sense, it does in reality, especially on mobile. First of all, you can expect your contact to click on it and be able to create a new message, especially when they want to start a new subject.

• Add larger social icons and stick to three

If you are linking to your social profiles, use social icons. Keep in mind that they must be big enough to be clickable. Also, choose the most important ones and limit their number to three — you probably won’t need to link to all your social accounts anyway.

• Add a banner to the phone email signature

An email signature banner can not only be visually attractive but also helpful for your business. You can use it to advertise or promote just about anything, from an announcement of a new article or an invitation to connect at a tech conference, to an explicit ad for your company’s new product.

• Use small images that could be uploaded using a cellular network

If you are using images in your cell phone email signature, make sure their size is optimal for cellular networks. Bear in mind that not all places have good connectivity, as well as not all mobile devices support high-speed mobile internet protocols.

• Delete green line messages

Some devices can color-highlight quoted messages (“green line messages”), which can be disabled in some email client settings. Also, you can ensure that your signature appears before the quoted messages in an email conversation. Check all your email app settings carefully when adding a new closing.

If you are wondering how to change a signature on iPhone or your Android device, read on.

In general, what you need to do is to go to your device’s (if you are using a native email app) settings and find the “Signature” tab. From there, you can update your mobile signature text.

iPhone

If you are using the native mailing app:

1. Go to the Settings.

2. Scroll down to find Mail and tap on it.

3. Scroll down again and go to Signature at the bottom.

4. Choose:

a. All Accounts if you want the same closing across all your email addresses.

b. Per Account if you want a customized signoff for each account.

5. Replace the defaults with your iPhone email signature ideas.

Image courtesy of Imore

Android

The process of updating your signature in the Email app looks a bit different for Android users:

1. Open the Email app.

Image courtesy of apexhosting

2. Go to the Menu.

3. Open Account Settings.

Image courtesy of apexhosting

4. Select Signature.

5. Edit your sign-off message and tap Ok.

Image courtesy of apexhosting

Now, if you want a more complex HTML signature on your smartphone, then you will need to create one using a web/desktop email client or a Gmail mobile app. In this case:

1. Go to the Settings and select Signature.

2. Create an HTML signoff and send it to your email.

3. Open the email you just sent and copy the sig.

4. Go to either Account Settings in your Email app (Android) or Mail in your Settings (iOS), and choose Signature.

5. Paste the previously copied signature.

6. In case the sig was autoformatted when you pasted it on your iPhone, shake it and select Undo Change Attributes.

Voila! Your new signature is there.

The best mobile email signatures are actually the simplest ones. All you truly need is:

• your name,
• title,
• company name together with the website URL,
• your phone number.

You can also add an HTML banner and an image, such as company logo or your professional photo.

If you are looking for some mobile email signature ideas, check out the ones below.