Tips and tricks for successful email invitations and best practices for signatures and professional messages.
The email messages that you send from your buffalo.edu account come from you, but they also represent the University at Buffalo. As part of the university's identity strategy, a consistent and cohesive approach to email signatures is essential to projecting our institutional excellence. To help maintain consistency and professionalism in the email signatures used by faculty and staff, please adhere to these best practices and standards.
- Think of your email signature as a digital business card that provides relevant contact information, ideally in fewer than eight lines. Name, title(s), department or unit, university name and telephone number are appropriate items to include. Use simple URLs, if any, without “http://www”.
- Include as part of your email signature only those web links that are directly related to your professional role within the university (e.g., “socialwork.buffalo.edu/”).
- Choose appropriate text styling to ensure readability. While plain text is ideal in most instances of casual communications, if you choose to use rich text (to bold, italicize, underline, etc.) use Arial or Georgia.
- Include information for relevant social media and/or instant messaging accounts in text only, without icons. Include only those accounts that are affiliated with the university as a whole or with your school, unit, department or professional role. Include a personal social media account only if it is used primarily to promote your academic and/or professional expertise and contains a disclaimer in your profile that states that your opinions are your own and do not express those of your employer.
- Include your pronouns to demonstrate our inclusive environment.
- Do not use quotations, aphorisms or other personal statements. Such statements may be objectionable to some recipients and may be misconstrued as the university’s official position. Use of officially sanctioned university statements or slogans (e.g., “Go Bulls!” or “New York’s Public Powerhouse”) is permissible.
- Consider including a brief confidentiality clause if warranted by the nature of your communications, for example:
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The contents of this email message and any attachments are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information and may be legally protected from disclosure.
- Graphics or stationery backgrounds should not be included in your email signature. Unless placed within a stylized email (using HTML), these elements are often inaccessible for individuals relying on assistive technology to read its contents, and are often treated as attachments and can clog a recipient’s inbox or cause email to be filtered as spam. Furthermore, images may not display properly in some email programs, resulting in a distorted or confusing image that is not consistent with the university’s image.
Examples
Victor E. Bull, PhD (he/him/his)
Assistant Dean for Alumni Engagement
School of Social Work
University at Buffalo
716-645-0000
Victor E. Bull, PhD (they/them/theirs)
Assistant Dean for Alumni Engagement
School of Social Work
University at Buffalo
office: 716-645-0000 | cell: 716-645-0000 | fax: 716-645-0000
Follow us: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn
[social media accounts as hyperlinked text]
Victoria E. Bull, PhD (she/her/hers)
Assistant Dean for Alumni Engagement, School of Social Work
University at Buffalo
685 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
office: 716-645-0000 | cell: 716-645-0000 | fax: 716-645-0000
ap.buffalo.edu
Facebook: @ubssw
Instagram: @ubssw
WeChat: victorebull
[social media accounts as text only]
Victoria E. Bull, EdM (they/them/theirs)
Student Services Advisor
School of Social Work
University at Buffalo
office: 716-645-0000 | fax: 716-645-0000
socialwork.buffalo.edu
