The Professional Email Signature Checklist: Everything to Get Right

A professional signature does three jobs at once: it tells people who you are, it gives them a fast way to reach you, and it makes your organization look competent. Miss any of the three and the signature quietly costs you credibility. Use this checklist to audit yours in a couple of minutes.

The essentials to include

1. Your full name. The largest, boldest element. This is the anchor of the whole block.
2. Your job title and company. One line each, or combined with a separator. This tells a recipient how to weigh what you have said.
3. One or two ways to reach you. A direct phone number and, if relevant, a booking link. You can usually drop your email address, since it is already in the message header.
4. Your website. Linked from your company name or on its own line.
5. One or two relevant profiles. LinkedIn for most people, plus wherever your work actually lives, not every network you have ever joined.

Formatting to verify

1. A clear hierarchy. Name first and boldest, then role and company, then contact details smaller and lighter. A reader should find any detail in about a second.
2. Web-safe fonts only. Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, or Verdana. Custom fonts do not survive the trip to someone else's inbox.
3. Restrained color. One accent color at most, usually for your name or a divider. Everything else in a dark neutral for readability.
4. Live text, not an image. Your details should be selectable HTML text, never a screenshot. Text inside an image disappears when images are blocked and cannot be read by screen readers.
5. Sensible spacing. A little breathing room between the name block and the contact block; no giant gaps or cramped lines.

Technical checks to run

1. It renders in the big three. Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail handle HTML differently. Send yourself a test and open it in each before you commit.
2. It works on mobile. Check that nothing wraps awkwardly and that links are easy to tap on a phone.
3. The logo is hosted and sized. If you use a logo, it should load from a permanent public URL with explicit width and height and descriptive alt text.
4. Every link works. Click them all. A dead LinkedIn link or a mistyped phone number is a small, avoidable embarrassment.
5. Images degrade gracefully. With images off, the signature should still read cleanly as text.

Optional, depending on your role

• A headshot. Useful in client-facing and sales roles, distracting in others. Our guide on whether to include a photo in your email signature covers the trade-offs.
• Pronouns. Increasingly standard and genuinely helpful for getting names and forms of address right.
• A legal disclaimer. Required in some regulated industries, unnecessary clutter in most. Keep it to a line or two; see our email disclaimer examples.
• A scheduling link. A single "book a time" link can replace three rounds of back-and-forth.

What to leave out

Just as important as what you include is what you resist. Skip the inspirational quote, the "please consider the environment before printing" line, the stack of eight social icons, the animated image, and the second phone number you never answer. Every element you remove makes the ones that remain easier to notice.

The test for any line: if you deleted it, would a recipient ever be worse off? If not, it is decoration, and decoration dilutes the signal.

Run the check regularly

Titles change, phone numbers get reassigned, and companies rebrand. Re-run this checklist whenever your role shifts, and once a year regardless. If building and testing the HTML by hand sounds tedious, Sigmint assembles a signature that already satisfies most of this list and previews it across Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail, with no signup, and you keep the finished HTML.