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Are you looking to create a free and professional email signature that stands out?
Think about how professionals hand out business cards to their prospective clients…
Basically, email signatures are a modern version of that!
They help enhance your brand, identity, and overall professionalism.
Moreover, email signatures help improve brand recognition for every time you send an email to your leads, clients, employees, contractors, and more.
Email signatures are important for all types and sizes of businesses, so with all that said, let’s go ahead and create yours!
How to Create an Email Signature for FREE?
In this brief tutorial, you’re going to learn How to Create an Email Signature completely for free using two different methods.
How to use Canva (Email Signature Method 1)
The first method to create to create a free email signature is by using a free graphic design tool called Canva.
You can watch our beginner’s tutorial on How to Use Canva for Complete Beginners
What is Canva?
Canva is an incredible online graphic design and content tool that let’s you create stunning logos, marketing materials, social media content, presentations, website, newsletters and more using easy-to-use premade templates.
In addition to all this, you’re also able to create a professional email signature in minutes!
Get started with Canva for FREE here
*The link above is an affiliate link, which means we will get a commission if you upgrade to a paid plan (with no extra cost to you). This helps support our education-based website and we thank you in advance!
Once you’ve signed up and signed into Canva:
- Type in ‘email signature’ in the search bar.
- Select the suggestion below it (400 × 200 px).
Here you have the option to choose one of the thousands of free email signature templates that you see on your screen.
However, for the purpose of this tutorial, we’re goig to click on ‘Create a blank email signature’, then select a premade template within Canva’s designing interface.
Now, to search for a specific template:
- Make sure you have ‘Templates’ selected in the top-left corner.
- Type ‘email signature’ in the search bar again
- Scroll through all the free email signature templates and select the one that best works for your business (we will choose this template, see image below).
Read more: How to Create Video Ads with Canva
How to Customize your Template within Canva
Now you’ll notice there are dozens of different elements on your chosen premade template.
To edit these elements:
- Simply click the text or image element and replace it with your own branded image or business name.
- Additionally, each of these elements can be moved around on the template if you want to change their placements.
- Above the template, you’ll notice a few formatting options including the font color, font style, font size, and more.
For example, if we click on the call-to-action (CTA) ‘Learn more’, we could replace it with ‘Call Us Now’ (or whatever is relevant for your business).
- At the bottom, simply add your business’s website as shown in the template (refer to the screengrab).
If any elements aren’t applicable to your business or if you simply don’t like the look of them, you can delete them in two easy steps.
To do this:
- Right click on the element.
- Click ‘Delete’.
Read more: How to Create a FREE Website with Canva.
How to add Your Business Logo
Okay, so since we deleted the top element earlier, this space is now empty and ready for us to upload our own business logo!
To do that:
- Click on ‘Uploads’ on your left.
- Select ‘Upload media’ and locate your logo in Canva.
- Click ‘Open’.
Your logo will now appear on the left-hand side.
- Use Canva’s drag-and-drop feature of this free email signature maker to place your logo.
Note: If you’ve not yet replaced the image (on the left-hand side of the template), the process is the same as explained for the logo.
How simple is that!
- If needed, resize your image after uploading it to fit your free email signature design.
If you need to add specific elements to your signature:
- Click ‘Elements’ on the left-hand side and pick the appropriate element.
- From the same menu, you’ll find many other options such as photos, text, videos, audio, and more.
For example, navigate over to ‘Text’ to search for a specific text or choose a font combination suggested by Canva.
To add a header:
- Simply click ‘Add a heading’ then change the formatting if you like.
To delete a header:
- Right click on the header.
- Click ‘Delete’.
Read More: Canva Free Logo Maker
How to Add Your Business Phone Number
Let’s not forget about one of the most important components all email signatures should have… your phone number!
This is so important, as it enables your clients and potential clients to get in touch with you via phone call.
To add your phone number:
- Copy the ‘website’ element on your template (because we want the text to be the same).
- Click ‘Paste’ on the element just below it.
- Replace the website with your phone number in that copied element (refer to the screengrab)
- Feel free to change the formatting of this new element if you like.
Read more: How to create QR codes for free with Canva.
How to Download Your Free Email Signature
When you’re happy with the look of your free email signature, you’re ready to download it!
You can do this by:
- Clicking ‘Download’ in the top-right corner.
- In the ‘File type’, make sure you’ve got ‘PNG’ selected (no clickable elements in this email signature format).
- Click ‘Download’ below.
Your free email signature will then be downloaded to your system.
Next, you’ll need to actually add this to your email, depending on which email service provider you use.
- To add your signature on Gmail, watch this tutorial.
- To add your signature on Outlook, watch this tutorial.
How to Resize Your Email Signature
If you feel that the signature is too small, follow these steps below to resize it:
- Head back to Canva.
- Highlight your entire email signature (refer to the screengrab).
- Click on the three dots next to ‘Animate’.
- Select ‘Group’ to group all of the items on your signature together.
- Right Click.
- Click ‘Copy’.
- Head back to the Canva dashboard.
- Click on ‘Custom size’ on the far right-hand side.
- Enter ‘1280’ in the ‘Width’ field and ‘720’ in the ‘Height’ field.
- Make sure that ‘px’ (pixel) is selected from the drop-down menu next to the dimensions.
- Click ‘Create New Design’.
- Right-click on your blank page and select ‘Paste’
- Drag your email signature so that it takes up the entire blank page
You’ll then notice the background of this new email signature is different.
- Make sure you copy the background of your original signature and paste it into the new one to make it identical.
Again, you can reformat each element of your new, free email signature.
Once you’re happy with your email signature:
- Proceed to download it.
Now, if you’re after a more responsive and dynamic email signature, where you can click on the email, website, phone number and call-to-action buttons (that take you to specific links or pages), then you’ll need another free email signature creator.
If this is you stay tuned…we’re going to cover exacly that in the second method!
Read more: Top 10 Must Have Digital Tools for Small Business
How to use Designhill (Email Signature Method 2)
The second method you can use to create your free email signature is through another popular design tool called Designhill.
What is Designhill?
Designhill is a platform for creators to essentially..create!
With this platform, you’ll have total creative freedom to able to design anything from logos, magazines, blogs, clothing, powerpoints, newsletters and more.
In addition to this, they also offer an easy to use email signature generator!
Get started with Designhill here
Once you’ve arrived at Designhill, follow these steps below:
- Click ‘Create Your Free Email Signature’ on Designhill’s home page.
- Fill out the details under ‘Your Information’.
- Add a profile picture or logo to your free email signature.
- Make sure your image is 500 × 500 px.
If it’s too big or too small, you can always resize it using Canva as we explained in the previous method.
- Choose a theme for your email signature (refer to the screengrab).
It’s important to note that some of these themes (with multiple social media links for instance), are not free. Hence, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
- Select ‘Social’ next to ‘Main’ on the left.
- Add your social media links and buttons in this step.
Again, some of these require a paid plan (for example, LinkedIn and Facebook). For now, only the Twitter Handle is available for free.
- Select ‘Style’ next to ‘Social’ to customize the look and feel of your free email signature.
For example, you could copy a ‘Link Color’ and paste it in the ‘Feature Color’ to ensure you maintain cohesive branding (that we talked about in the beginning).
- Feel free to change the avatar size, font size, text color, and more using the options given.
- Select ‘CTA’ next to ‘Style’ to add a call-to-action button at the bottom of your email signature.
- Add your CTA text, CTA link and change the background color, text color, text size, etc.
- Under ‘Add-ons’ next to ‘CTA’, you can add a disclaimer, if needed.
However, we’re not going to do that in this how to create a free email signature tutorial.
When you’re happy with your signature created using this powerful free email signature maker:
- Simply click ‘Create Signature’.
- Answer the questions and click ‘Download Your Signature’.
- Now, add your email.
- Select ‘Sign Up’.
- Click ‘Copy Signature’.
Depending on your email service provider, you’ll see a brief description (provided by Designhill) for the steps that you need to follow to add your signature.
Or you can simply watch our tutorials for adding signatures on Gmail and Outlook.
There’s one final step that you need to take care of:
- When you paste your free email signature in Gmail, make sure you delete the Designhill branding before saving changes.
This will add to the professionalism of your email signature!
How to make an email signature? (Video Guide)
Now that you’ve learned how to create a free email signature using Canva and Designhill, you’re on your way to building more authority and credibility in the eyes of your customers.
Disclosure: Some of these links on this page are affiliate links, meaning we will get a commission if you buy through them, this helps support our education-based platform – thank you in advance.
If you’re interested in following our more in-depth and visual video guide, you can do so below. Enjoy!
