No business message is complete without a signature. While most people already use signatures for their professional emails, you can also benefit from signing your text messages. Signing off your business texts is a good habit to ensure your contacts know who you are and how to reach you, especially when texting someone for the first time.
Although many smartphones allow you to add a signature to your messages, you need a texting app to get the most out of this feature in a professional context.
What Is Text Signature?
A text signature is a template that can be automatically added to the end of your texts. They work a little differently to email signatures as they form part of the main text instead of a separate footer section. Because of this, signatures count towards the character limit of your message.
Potential Uses
Businesses and professionals can use text signatures to enhance their SMS communication in several ways:
Extra Info
Besides letting your recipient know who texted them, you can include other helpful details they might need. For example, put your contact availability and response times in your signature, so contacts know the best time to reach you.
You can also include a shortened URL link to pages a contact might need, such as linking to your FAQ or self-service pages when replying to a customer support message, or linking to a recent blog post or store page when talking to leads.
Per-list Signatures
Apply unique signatures according to the mailing list you are contacting. The availability, response times and links you send might need to change based on who you are messaging or why.
Reinforce Your Brand Message
Add some personality to short messages by including your business motto, tagline, or a helpful tip. These can give brief messages like updates and reminders more of human touch.
Setting Up Text Signatures Using TextMagic
Using TextMagic, you can create text signatures easily from the Templates section of the app:
- Click New template.
- Enter a name for the template and add the signature in the Message field.
- Use the Insert tag button to add mail merge tags to the message if needed.
By default, your mailing lists will have Name, Mobile Number, Email and Company as mail merge tag options. You can create any extra tags you need using custom fields for contacts.
To send text messages with a signature, go to the Compose section of the app:
- Select the mailing list you want to message from Lists, or an individual contact from Contacts.
- Select the number you want to send from.
- Enter your message into the Message field, or select an existing template using Insert template.
- When you have finished creating your text, click Insert template and select your text signature.
- Click Send to text immediately or Schedule message to send it at a later time.
Text signatures can also be added to SMS Autoresponder messages as a template in the same way.
When you send a text using Email to SMS, your email signature might be included. TextMagic will automatically find and remove footers from most email apps.
However, if you need to do this manually, add a cut-line at the end of your message. A cut-line is a new line comprising at least 5 hyphens, like this:
The cut-line and everything below it will not be included in your text.
Why Use Texting App for Text Signatures?
Without a texting app, you would need to rewrite manually and personalize your signature every time you wanted to change it, costing time and the potential for mistakes. Using TextMagic to build a list of signatures and message templates makes it easy to have the right sign-off ready at the tap of a button.
A texting app is also the only way to send a signature with personalized elements, using mail merge tags.
This means you can personalize signatures even when texting entire mailing lists. Furthermore, you aren’t limited to signing texts sent from your phone. TextMagic can also apply signatures to email-to-SMS messages and texts sent via the web app.
Best Practices
Because of the character limit and lack of formatting options, be selective about what to include in your text signature. These best practices will avoid confusing your message or cluttering the text:
Keep it short
Adding a long list of details to your signature usually isn’t needed and could make your message harder to read by turning it into a wall of text. Just make sure recipients know who contacted them, and how they can get in touch or act on your message. Giving contacts a way to take immediate action is one of the best ways to improve SMS marketing engagement.
Send the right details
Simplify your signature by removing the unnecessary info. For example, your first message should always include your name and company, but your contact usually doesn’t need to know your job title, so this is wasted space.
Switch to an informal signature
It is a good idea to include your company name and availability the first time you text. However, once the conversation has started, adding all this extra information to each message makes the discussion harder to follow. Switching to just your first name helps streamline client communication and set a more personal tone.
Text Signatures Improve Communication
Including a text signature helps ensure contacts get all the information they need from your message. It reduces the unnecessary back-and-forth to check simple details like your contact information and can set the right expectations by sharing your availability and response times.
Additionally, your text signature also provides opportunities to give SMS messages a more personal touch and even promote your marketing content. Creating a set of text signature templates for every situation doesn’t just save you time, it also helps your messages stand out.
Alexa Lemzy
