How to get started with using ChatGPT for email signatures

Before we get started, here are some things to think about to get the most out of ChatGPT for email signatures.

Understand the purpose of your email signature

Before making any changes, decide what you want your email signature to achieve. Think about the teams in your company and the stakeholders they email. This’ll help you create a segmentation map, and brainstorm messaging for each of them.

Think about the details

What do you want your signature to include? Will a name, job title, and phone number be enough? Is there anything else you’d like to include in your email signatures like preferred gender pronouns? And remember an email disclaimer, and what you need to include to be legally compliant. This might differ for each country you operate in.

Gather inspiration

Look for examples of good email signature designs for inspiration. You can search for email signature ideas using Google Images, Canva, or Pinterest.

7 ideas for creating ChatGPT email signature magic

As you think about your email signature, you’ll naturally come up with ways ChatGPT can improve each element. But to get you started, we’ve come up with seven oven-ready ideas, plus prompts, that you can paste directly into ChatGPT.

1. Come up with messaging to add to an email signature banner to promote something

The great thing about using ChatGPT for email signatures is that it can analyze text. So, if you’re worried about it sounding generic or gleaning information from other sources, you can use your own content as the basis. Just paste the text in or include the link you want it to use.

In this example, we’ve used text we created for a piece of content or event, and asked ChatGPT to repurpose it for the email signature:

Prompt: Create copy for an email signature to promote this [blog/event/white paper] including a CTA (call to action). The copy should be no more than 10 words and the CTA no more than 2 words. Here’s a link to more information about the [blog/event/white paper]: [Insert link]

2. Create messaging to add to a banner as part of another campaign

As with the first suggestion, we’re using copy we’ve already created for a promotional campaign and asking ChatGPT to repurpose this for our email signature:

Prompt: Create some copy for an email signature to promote [company name]’s [insert promotion name] with a CTA (call to action). The copy should be no more than 10 words and the CTA (call to action) no more than 2 words. Here’s a link to more information about the promotion: [Insert link]

3. Tweak banner messaging to use as an A/B test

Another benefit of ChatGPT is that it’s a chatbot. That means you can ask it to change or expand on previous answers it’s given you, just like in a conversation with a human.

So, as an example, you could ask it to tweak the wording it’s created to appeal to a specific audience. Let's say you’ve asked it to come up with some email signature banner text for you.

In this example, we’ve asked it to create another version of that email signature banner text for you to use in an A/B test:

Prompt: Write another version of this banner message that I can use in an A/B test: [Insert original text and CTA]

4. Help you write an email to colleagues to get buy-in to add their gender pronouns

You can also use ChatGPT to help improve your HR and internal email signatures. You can get more tips here on using your signatures to celebrate diversity within your organization, but with Exclaimer, it’s easy for staff to add their preferred pronouns.

But there’s no point getting enthusiastic about this functionality if your staff don’t use it. This is where ChatGPT comes in. You can ask it to help you write an email to ask them to add their gender pronouns to their email signatures:

Prompt: Create an email I can send to my colleagues in the [insert industry] industry to persuade them to add their gender pronouns to their email signatures.

5. Use ChatGPT to identify good articles or books to share internally on internal signatures to inspire your workforce

Any department can use this idea for any topic. HR could share books on wellbeing and mental health. Other departments could share resources to help develop their staff.

Here’s what we’d put into ChatGPT to fire up some ideas:

Prompt: Can you recommend some books I can share with colleagues, on the topic of [mental health at work / insert other topic]?

6. Use ChatGPT to test your email signature HTML or weed out any bugs

Something that ChatGPT is really useful for is testing code. In this case, we’re using ChatGPT to check our HTML before we test the email for ourselves.

Alternatively, if you’ve noticed something wrong with how your email signatures display, you can ask ChatGPT what’s wrong. Here’s a prompt you can copy and paste:

Prompt: Can you check for any possible issues with this email signature HTML code? [Paste HTML code]

7. Help you pick out relevant laws that you need to cover in your email disclaimers in your region

Adding disclaimers to corporate email signatures is incredibly important and shouldn’t be left to chance. Different industries and countries require certain legal disclaimers to be included in all email signatures. ChatGPT can help shape your disclaimer if you tell it which industry and country you’re in. This is useful when entering new markets where you have no local knowledge.

Note that ChatGPT is no substitute for legal advice, and you should always get help from a specialist lawyer if unsure.

Prompt: What legal disclaimers do I need to include in my corporate email signature, based on the [insert industry] industry, in [insert region]?

As a bonus, try pasting your email disclaimer into ChatGPT, and asking it to assess if you’ve adequately covered all the required laws.

Concluding thoughts

You now have seven prompts to copy and paste into ChatGPT to fire up your email signatures, and a logical process for your email signature segmentation. This will spark ideas for using ChatGPT for email signatures in the future.

And if you like the idea of segmenting and managing multiple email signature banners for different campaigns, it’s time to check out Exclaimer.