How a Great Email Signature Can Help Promote Your Practice

Why are email signatures so important? Because every time you send out an email you are promoting your practice or brand.

Email branding and one’s email signature has become one of my recent and biggest pet peeves, and has been added to my Management Lecture on “Powerful Secrets to a Super Successful Dental Business: New Patients, Growth and Wealth Creation!”

Email branding and email signatures done correctly, is something I see missing from so many professions, not just dentistry. It is one of the first things people notice about your emails and hence your business and brand. As you will see a great email set-up can help with branding and help make a great first impression. Studies have shown that close to 70 percent of consumers believe a company branded email is more credible than a business using a free or generic email account such as @yahoo.com, @aol.com, @gmail.com, etc.

Which examples seem more professional to you?

• drjones@gmail.com or drjones@westwooddental.com?
• drsmith@aol.com or drsmith@elitedental.com?

The emails on the left are not as professional or branded as the ones on the right, which include the doctor’s name with the branded name of the practice.

A branded email is all about building credibility and your brand. Further, it is the impression your business or practice is promoting to the outside world. It can be a competitive marketplace and branding, especially email branding, can ultimately be how one practice does better than another.

Here are 6 reasons why you should brand your email and have a great email signature, along with some very important dos and don’ts!

One, right off the bat, it gives a great first impression. A branded email shows that your practice is established and professional in nature. A generic email (such as drtodd@yahoo.com), oftentimes can project inexperienced or a poorly branded practice or business.

Two, a branded email and great signature promote brand awareness and this may be the best reason of all. Every time you send out an email you are promoting your practice or brand. Your brand is so important and it is oftentimes something most dental businesses never take the time to establish. If you have not established your Brand (what you and your team do better than anyone else and any other practice/dental business), it should be done at your next office teambuilding retreat (an upcoming article!), or as soon as possible. This will build credibility, trust, and a sense of security about your business.

Three, your email signature is very important. It is a great way to showcase your professionalism and grab some extra attention! By having a great signature, patients or whomever is reading the email can click a link to your website, your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, orYouTube sites, and find out more about you and your practice helping with practice growth. It further helps build your social media presence and following.

Four, here are some good dos and don’ts regarding your email signature. First off, there should be 3 to 6 lines of text. This should include your name, address, telephone number and a link to your practice’s website. Below that can be links via icons to any of your social media accounts including: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You do not want to list too many as that can be overkill. But the above are probably the most important.

Please do not put your email address in your signature. All one has to do is hit “reply” and they will respond to your email and can see where it came from. There should also be your practice logo (very important), and depending, even a picture of you. Always try to use the JPEG format over PNGs. Further, always try to use only one or two font sizes in your email signature. Too many font sizes can overwhelm your signature and actually make it difficult and distracting to read. There should always be responsive design, so your signature and images are adjusted whether they are opened on a computer or on a smart phone. Depending where this is read, some countries have specific legal requirements that all business communications must meet. Check with your attorney to see if the country were your business is located has specific laws governing email signatures. Finally, please use the same email signature template for everyone in your practice. This creates for consistency and again wonderful professionalism and great branding.

Five, generic email addresses may convey that your business is new, or believe it or not, not highly professional. A branded email and great email signature can helps convey a more Fortune 500 image. Also, within your business or practice you should be set up multiple email addresses for different segments of the practice. For example, if your practice is named “Westend Smiles,” then there could be info@westendsmiles.com, billing@westendsmiles.com and each person that works for you should also have a branded email. If your Office Manager is Gail, she should be gail@westendsmiles.com. If one of your hygienists is named Jill, she should be jillrdh@westendsmiles.com. Your assistants, admin team, or any other person working for you should have a branded email. Those emails should also be included on the respective business cards for those individuals. Keeping in in line with the above, if you are doctor Smith, you would be possibly drsmith@westendsmiles.com.

Six, through the wonderful technology we have today, branded emails and signatures can be set up with minimal effort through a domain name provider or web hosting company, usually for free or at a reasonably low cost. You should check with your website developer and host to make sure this happens. Your email address should be specific to your URL and hence specific to your dental business.

Keep in mind that there are companies out there that have email signature templates that make the process very easy to follow. Here are a few examples: www.wisestamp.com, www.newoldstamp.com, https://htmlsig.com, https://mysignature.io. YouTube is also a great resource. Keep in mind all of the big players in the email game (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.), will allow you to send and receive emails from any domain.

In summary if you are not branding your email with a great email signature, make it a priority to do so, as it just might increase the number of new patients you get per month.

Any emails used as an example in this article are for purposes of the article and meant to illustrate the points above only, and are in no way copied from anyone’s email.

Dr. Pick is the CEO of his own consulting and coaching firm, The Pick Group, LLC., He can be reached at 773-402-8933 or by email at drpick@thepickgroup.com. He is also in private practice in Aurora, Illinois.