One of the ways to get things stored and ready for recall in long term memory is through repetition. Chances are you already know your name and contact details, however, so the profit of typing them repeatedly at the end of your emails is minimal.
Why Include a Signature With Every Email You Send?
At the same time, you can include a short display of your copywriting skills with every email, and the benefit — possibly through people seeing your message repeatedly — can be enormous.
These are but two good reasons to automate the addition of some essential text to every email you send. In Outlook creating a signature comprised of this text is easy, even though you have to explore the depths of Outlook’s settings a bit.
Create an Email Signature in Outlook
To set up an email signature in Outlook:
- Select Tools | Options… from the menu in Outlook.
- Go to the Mail Format tab.
- Click Signatures… under Signatures.
- Click New….
- Give the new signature a name. Note: If you set up more than one signature for different purposes — work mail vis-à-vis personal chat, for example —, name them accordingly.
- Click Next >.
- Type the desired text of your email signature.
- It is best to limit your signature to no more than 5 or 6 lines of text.
- Include the standard signature delimiter (it does not count as a line of text).
- You can use the Font… and Paragraph… buttons to format your text, but if you want to use links, fancy formatting and images even in your signature, you can do so more easily via a different route.
- Click Finish.
- Now click OK.
- If you have just created your first signature, Outlook has automatically made it the default — automatically inserted — for new messages. To use it for replies as well, which I recommend, select it under Signature for replies and forwards:.
- Click OK again.