103 Unforgettable Email Sign offs to Get Your Readers’ Attention

“And that’s the way it is… See you on the radio.”

“Peace.”

“If it’s Sunday. It’s Meet the Press.”

“Good night and Good Luck.”

Famous anchorman have stood out from their counterparts by phrasing their own signature sign-off messages. Instead of the common ‘good night’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ they used endings that left a lasting impression on viewers.

As salespeople, our biggest achievement is when prospects remember us and our emails, apart from, of course, if they actually close a deal with us. But remembering us is especially important in standing out in a sea of cold emails.

For example, here’s sales trainer Anthony Lannarino of The Sales Blog, signing off with something motivational. 

And here’s how Steli Efti ends his email: 

In that case, would you still want to bet on ‘best’ or ‘regards’ or ‘sincerely’ to end your emails? 

Nothing wrong with its usage but you’ll miss out on the opportunity to leave a mark on your prospect with a unique email sign-off.

So, here’s how to write an email sign-off that your prospect will not forget. 

What Should Your Email Sign Off Include?

Your sign off for any kind of email–formal or informal–should be self-sufficient. It should include all the information the prospect needs to identify you, and potentially stalk you to check your credibility. Isn’t that what we all do when we receive a cold email? Try to find out if it’s legitimate, and that it’s coming from someone you can trust. 

So, it should include: 

• Full name 
• Job title
• Business contact information
• Business website link 
• Physical address of the business
• Link to your social media channels

For the extra pizzazz: 

• A call-to-action 
• Link to book a meeting 
• Link to a playlist (if you want to show them your creativity) 

Remember not to clutter this space with multiple links and images that could show up crooked over bad internet connection. 

Example of a great email signature.

A Pro Guide on How to Write a Cold Email in 2023

8 Techniques To Write Memorable Email Sign Offs

1. The Best Sign Offs for Formal Business Emails

There will come a point where you will be unable to flex your funny bones or creativity. That’s when you’re writing professional sign offs to decision makers or C-level executives who may not have the kind of time or comic sense you have. In those moments, stick to the classics, the generations-old ‘Best regards’ or ‘Thanks in advance’. You may also have to stray away from using emoticons here. 

These common sign-offs have attained this status of quotidian because they have proven to be highly successful over time. Also, considered as ‘business email sign offs,’ Boomerang’s research has shown that closing your emails with Best or Cheers or Best Regards has a response rate of more than 51%. And to our surprise, ‘Thanks in advance,’ ‘Thanks,’ have reply rates above 60%. 

💡Here is a not-so-fun fact: Nearly 76% of your prospects won’t even open a cold email if the subject line isn’t appealing; let alone read your sign-offs. So, we did some research and compiled a list of 160+ subject lines to boost your open rates. Download the free e-book.

2. Action-oriented Sign-offs (Best for Follow UPS)

What is the main goal of a sales email that you send to your prospects?

A response?

A link click?

You want prospects to take some kind of action. But don’t go overboard and ask them for multiple actions like asking them to download something, go somewhere, and book a meeting. Use your sign off to serve a gentle reminder to the prospect to perform an action. But using such sign offs are especially useful if it’s a follow-up on a cold email.

3. Complimentary Email Sign-offs

Who doesn’t love a well-timed respectful compliment. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that compliments delighted the receivers much more than what the sender anticipated. The research found that the people who complimented expected the receiver to feel uncomfortable, while the reality was quite different. Compliments and gratitude expressions are most often welcomed warmly and puts the receiver in a positive disposition.  

That’s how you pave the way for a healthy long-term business relationship, by expressing compliments and gratitude. 

Sign off your emails with a compliment or gratitude and let the prospects leave your email on a swell and a happy note.

4. Anticipatory Email Sign-offs

Looking forward to something positive, in other words, positive anticipation, is actually scientifically good for us. When people are looking ahead to positive events, the brain lights up which correlates to human well-being. 

So, remind your prospects of the good things that are coming and spread happiness. It’s quite a powerful way to end your email.

How do you make your prospects anticipate things?

You don’t have to turn into Professor X to read minds, just a little research would suffice. Your prospect may be launching a new product or service, attending an event or a conference, or going on a vacation. It could be anything. The organization they work at may be at a pivotal point of their business. Make them anticipate good things from these moments. If nothing, you could even refer to festive seasons or even a weekend.

5. Gratitude/Warm Sign-offs

Being grateful or expressing gratitude motivates prosocial behaviour, which means that it boosts the chances of key positive interactions like friendly play or peaceful conflict resolutions or altruism. The simple gesture of thanking the prospects assures them that their time is valued and respected. Being acknowledged will make them feel good and will have a positive effect on your relationship. They would have attended a demo or contacted you to learn something or even rejected you after showing interest. Letting them know that you appreciate their time and you’ll always be there if they ever need you is an effective way to keep the door open for future possible conversations. 

And as we saw earlier in the study run by Boomerang, emails that ended with ‘Thanks in advance,’ ‘Thanks,’ and ‘Thank You’ had the highest response rates of 65.7%, 63%, and 57.9% respectively.

6. Motivate/Cheery Email Sign-offs

What is the one thing that anyone would want during both, good and bad times?

Motivation.

It’s obvious that we are driven by our biological needs but we are also influenced by social approval, acceptance, the need to achieve, and the motivation to take or to avoid risks. So, it’s fair to say that we seek motivation. 

The fact that there is someone out there rooting for you no matter what gives you an incentive to work harder and to yield more fruitful results. Relationships between you and your prospect don’t have to be strictly business. You can let them know that you’re there by the side-lines cheering them on.

Finishing off your emails with a motivational line can turn their day around.

7. Funny and Unique Email Sign-offs

Sometimes it’s good to deviate from the norm – the norm being signing off with ‘Thanks,’ ‘Best,’ or ‘Regards.’ Not that they aren’t good. If you want to be memorable, you have to get those creative juices flowing and make signs offs that climb out your email. But use them wisely on sales emails. If you’re drawing from pop culture references for your cold email sign offs, make sure it’s relevant to the receiver or at least check if they’ll get the reference.

Here are some prompts to be a little funny, a bit clever or even just relatable. 

A clever line or a famous line borrowed from pop culture should do the trick. Signing off with something that’s related to them is a bonus.

Say, for example, your prospect is a Star Trek buff, you can close your email with the iconic Spock quote, “Live Long and Prosper.”

Disclaimer: Use these sign offs appropriately. Some of these options may be outrageous or even gibberish to some. To each their own, so use it right.

8.Personalized Email Sign Offs

There’s nothing more that will get the prospect’s attention than relatable content. It could be a mutual connection or their pain point, a shared interest or anything that the prospect will find relatable. That includes stress-ridden Mondays, too. 

Here’s how to personalize your email sign off:

Check the prospect’s social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter for mutual interests like TV shows, leaders, films, celebrities, sports, a cause or even news. Some are simply news buffs. You could throw a unique news story you saw and sign off with that. Alternatively, if you want to personalize around their pain point, check sales intelligence tools or their LinkedIn job postings to learn more about their business and list down potential pain points. And try to find pain points that your customers 

Match those pain points with your customers’ pain points. 

Worst Email Signatures You Should Stop Using Today

1. Best 
2. Sent from Iphone
3. Yours truly 
4. Yours 
5. Yours faithfully
6. Love
7. Having no sign off
8. Cordially 
9. Sincerely yours
10. Xoxo (Unless you’re messaging a close friend, even in personal emails one can be more creative.)

Other pet peeves in email closings include: 

• Overusing caps lock: Capitalize only the first letter of the first word in your sign off. Not every word. And not every word you want to highlight. Putting words or phrases in caps lock can often be misread as the sender shouting those words, and that can put off a lot of people. 67% of the professionals surveyed by Perbox found that they found capitalizations annoying. 
• Adding too many exclamation points: Use them only when it’s absolutely necessary, like if you’re stating something that they would never in a million years realized. Otherwise, chuck it. Beware of orphaned commas or periods, too. 
• Grammatical errors: Some spelling or grammatical errors are inevitable. Just run your email through the free version of grammarly once before sending it so you don’t miss any typos. 
• Abbreviations: If it’s a popular short form like TGIF, or OMG, go ahead. But don’t shorten your most used words like thank you, best wishes, regards, any of it. ‘Thx’ or ‘rgds’ or ‘sncrly’ conveys that the sender wasn’t bothered to type out the whole word, so, they may not trust you so much. 
• Going overboard with the signatures: The other day we received an email that had three signatures – “Stay positive. Test negative. Thanks, and best regards.” All of it. Stick to a single choice, or if you’ve accidentally added it as part of your automated sign off, keep a note of that next time you type out your email or remove it from the automation if you want to customize it every time. 

How Do You End a Professional Email?

1. Think Human

Best, warm regards, and sincerely have been used to death in emails. So much so that it’s almost impersonal to use it anymore. It’s as if it’s still sticking around even after the passing of the internet explorer. And if you include one of these sign offs in your email, it’s going to end up as just another grain in the sand. 

Think of what connects you and your prospect–coffee in the mornings, lunch breaks, holidays, TGIF energy, popular TV shows or movies, pivotal moments in life like a promotion or a job change, and use them in your sign off.  The best email sign off brings back the human element to the email reading experience. 

2. Pay Attention to the Grammar

If you want to show them that you care about the email you’re sending, and in turn build trust in you and your pitch, the first thing that you can ensure on your part is to write clearly, and with less grammatical errors especially in the closing line. Since it stands separately from the email, people read it. So don’t randomly capitalize the sign offs, or add multiple punctuation marks unless absolutely necessary. The sign off section is crucial real estate; every millimeter of space be used wisely. Use the Hemmingway Editor app or Grammarly to place punctuation marks correctly. 

3. Check Your Sign off Tone of Voice

There is a rule for how we communicate. The 7-38-55 Rule, developed by psychology professor Albert Mehrabian at the University of California. So when we’re talking, only 7 percent of what we mean is put into spoken words. A whopping 38 percent is conveyed through tone of voice and 55 percent through body language. Therefore, what you write, the prospect will read out loud in their head. So, do the same before you send your missive.

That doesn’t mean that your prospects shouldn’t jump up and down when they read your sign off. Read the room. If you’re applying for a job, maybe something warm and formal is your best choice, but if you’re trying to get the attention of your prospect, getting them to crack a smile will be a really good choice.

4. Write Outside the Box

Yes. We see the irony of landing on a page that talks about unique sign offs but is doling out advice like ‘think outside the box’. But, hear us out. Thinking outside the box, as defined by the Interaction Design Foundation, is a thinking style used by a creator when they look outside of the ideas that are commonly used to solve a problem, and instead think of newer ways to find solutions. So, think of sign off ideas that you would usually use, and don’t use it. Think of breaking their email reading pattern. 

In Short

Your email sign off is the cherry on top of your awesome email message. So make it short, sweet and memorable.

But that doesn’t mean you should go overboard and use a P.B. Shelley quote to sound poetic. Make sure it’s a phrase that the prospect connects with or is in popular culture. And using something unique may not work all the time, you have to know your time and audience. Like cracking jokes at boomers may not be the best plan.  Pick your email endings depending on the impression that you want to leave on your prospects.

Leave them with a feeling of motivation, or with a smile, or a chuckle, or even a reminder to take action. But leave a signature for sure.