Your Email Sig – A Writer’s Marketing Tool
August 5, 2007 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
If you want writing clients, you’ve got to get your name and contact information out in the world where the clients are. If you want people to buy your writing, you’ve got to let them know you write and how to contact you.
The easiest and cheapest way to market yourself is with your email signature. It’s free and it’s easy.
Of course, your email sig by itself is unlikely to generate business, although I’ve had it happen once or twice. Rather it’s a way to back up your other marketing efforts and make it super easy for potential clients to contact you. I’m amazed at the number of writers who contact me via email who don’t have an email signature.
My current sig looks like this:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anne Wayman – 619-280-2192
www.writingwithvision.com – turning your dreams into words
www.thegoldenpencil.com – a blog for freelance writers
www.annewayman.com – resume, samples
www.aboutfreelancewriting.com – a site for freelance writers
www.powerfullyrecovered.com – a site for 12 Steppers
It’s a bit long – 7 lines including the line of tildes that act as a separator, but it works and I do have more websites than most. It appears on every email of mine unless I deliberately suppress it, which I haven’t done for ages.
Yes, my phone number is there. I want people to be able to call me. Yes, I get calls and sometimes those calls turn into clients – often enough to make it worthwhile.
My websites are there to make it easy for people to find them… it’s that simple.
If you don’t have an email signature, make one today.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
And I thought my sig was long at four lines. I think I’ll follow your example, Anne, and add some of my other sites to the sig.
Hey Anne- I’m always surprised by the people who don’t add an email signature. I’ve been frustrated on more than one occasion when I’ve wanted to call someone, or check out their website again, but when I pull up an email of theirs- no phone, signature, no website. And, what’s worse, their email doesn’t have their URL in it…
Your readers may want to consider the following kind of email signature- I’ve found it to be pretty darn effective:
An email signature that reall holds water
http://heartofbusiness.com/articles/mkt5.htm
This is very good advice. I used to have a sig, but removed it as I seemed to be, as you said, repressing it a lot of the time. Maybe it’s because I am shy, and I don’t want people to think I am always advertising myself. But what the heck, I’m a writer, this is what I do. I am going to put it back asap.
Sharon… seems like in the olden computer days we were told to hold our sigs to 3 or 4 lines… but some of that I think came from the overuse of ascii graphics.
Mark – another good article.
April – you’re offering a service… people need you. Part of your job is connecting with those who are looking for you.
Definitely an email sig is recommended in most cases.
I just want to mention that not every recipient or customer is equal. Some may be annoyed if you are to obviously announcing yourself or your services. I got very different reactions over the years. Also it seems that people react differently to signatures over time. Nowadays I´m quite careful which signatures I send to whom or if I use one at all. I start with just one line in the signature when I send the first mail to a new customer. If there is regular correspondence I ad more lines now and then but always slowly. Well, that might be not relevant for every market but for more “sensible” markets it´s worth to consider.
Dave, over time I’ve had all sort of reactions too. But it seems like the last year or two no one has complained, at least not the folks I market too… those who want to get a book written.
I for one, wouldn’t be without mine. And I agree with Sharon, at 4 lines, I thought mine was long. Like you, I have a few sites — all interreleated. The sig line helps clients to locate the different aspects of my business easily.
Neat observation.
;)