Overview
Email signatures have become a ubiquitous norm in the business world, often perceived as a symbol of professionalism and accomplishment by the sender. However, recipients’ perceptions of such email signatures remain unclear.
On the one hand, some recipients may appreciate the inclusion of details about the email sender or business, enabling them to reach out with questions or make a more informed purchase decision. On the other hand, some recipients may just view the email signature as a mere facade of professionalism (Harmon‐Jones, et al., 2009).
Thus, it’s an open question how email recipients view the act of including an email signature.
The Experiment
To demystify the perceptions of email signatures, we conducted an experiment with 400 participants from Amazon MTurk. Each participant was presented with a business email from a hypothetical company, ACC Accounting and asked to rate their perceptions of the company via survey scales. We randomly assigned participants to view the email from the sender, a sales representative at ACC Inc., with either an email signature or without an email signature.
The scenario and email that participants read is as follows:
Imagine that you work in the accounting department of a clothing store. Your team is looking for new accounting software, and you have been tasked with helping them identify and rate potential vendors. You receive the email below from one such vendor, ACC Inc.
From: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 11:02 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Accounting Software
Hello,
If you're in the market for new accounting software we have a variety of packages from low-cost to state-of-the-art. Our software has been around for 5 years and is very user friendly.
If you'd like to schedule a demo please let me know.
Thank you,
Andrew
Andrew Miller
Sales Manager
ACC Inc.
www.acc_accounting.com
[email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 11:02 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Accounting Software
Hello,
If you're in the market for new accounting software we have a variety of packages from low-cost to state-of-the-art. Our software has been around for 5 years and is very user friendly.
If you'd like to schedule a demo please let me know.
Thank you,
Andrew
Andrew Miller
Sales Manager
ACC Inc.
www.acc_accounting.com
[email protected]
Participants were then asked “To what extent do you think each of the following words describe this company? (1 = Not at all; 7 = Extremely)” using a 1-7 scale:
The four words included the following:
The four words included the following:
- Professional
- Competent
- Trustworthy
- Friendly
Results
Our analysis revealed that including an email signature had negative, albeit minimal effects on customer perceptions. On average, the presence of an email signature made the company appear 5% less friendly (difference = -0.26 on a 1-7 scale; p = 0.049), 4% less professional (diff = -0.25; p = 0.065), and 5% less trustworthy (diff = -0.27; p = 0.052). Importantly, these effects were quite small and not statistically significant. Nor did we identify any significant interactions with age or gender.
Conclusion
Contrary to popular belief, email signatures may not contribute significantly to enhancing a sender’s or company's image. While they remain a common practice in certain professional circles, their impact on customer perceptions appears to be limited, at least from a psychological perspective. As such, businesses seeking to improve customer perceptions may benefit more from focusing their efforts elsewhere.
References
Harmon‐Jones, C., Schmeichel, B.J. and Harmon‐Jones, E. (2009), Symbolic self‐completion in academia: evidence from department web pages and email signature files. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39: 311-316.
Methods Note
We employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses to test for significant differences in perceived friendliness, professionalism, competence, and trust between the email signature and no signature conditions. For statistically significant results, the difference between the averages of the two groups would be large and the corresponding “p-value” would be small (p < 0.05). This indicates that if we were to replicate the study with the same population, we would likely obtain a similar effect. Additionally, we utilized OLS regression analyses with interaction terms to explore potential significant interactions between the main results and participant demographics.
The survey materials and data for this experiment are available upon request.