Missouri Real Estate Email Signature Rules — Your Own Name Triggers the Broker's Phone Number
Missouri’s requirement is conditional, and the condition is one a signature block always meets: the moment your name or phone number appears, the advertisement must also carry the broker’s name and telephone number. Missouri also draws a statutory line no other state draws — between “advertising” and “correspondence”.
Step by step
Include the broker's licensed business name
20 CSR 2250-8.070(2): every advertisement “shall contain the broker’s regular business name or the name under which the broker or the broker’s firm is licensed.”
Make clear you are a broker, not a private party
The same subsection requires the advertisement to “indicate that the party advertising is a real estate broker and not a private party”. It also bars an advertisement showing only a post office box, telephone number or street address.
Add the broker's telephone number — your own name triggers it
The provision that always catches a signature. § 8.070(3): “If the licensee’s name or telephone number, or both, is used in any advertisement, the advertisement also shall include the name and telephone number of the broker or firm who holds the licensee’s license.”
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Download freeUnlock Pro — one-time, no subscriptionNote what is NOT required: your own name
A subtlety worth knowing. Missouri never requires the licensee’s own name or phone number. It requires the broker’s name always, and the broker’s name and phone only if you include yours. Several summaries state this the wrong way round.
Skip the license number
Verified across the rules and the licence statutes: no licence-number requirement for brokers or salespersons. Of twenty-four states checked, only California and Nevada require one.
Do not size anything — there is no prominence rule
There is no prominence, size or conspicuousness standard for the broker’s name in Missouri. The only size rules in the whole advertising rule are “in a prominent fashion” for the by-owner label and a one-quarter-size print rule for guaranteed sales plans.
Team name? Check it — then check the safe harbour
§ 8.070(5) bars a team name that could be construed as a separate real estate entity, and (5)(A) names realty, brokerage and company. But (5)(B) is a genuine safe harbour: where the team name “includes or incorporates the name of the broker/brokerage” you are affiliated with, those words are not a violation.
Advertising or correspondence? Missouri is the only state that asks
Missouri does not name email in its advertising rule. But it does something more interesting: its statute defines two terms, and an email can fall into either.
- “Advertising” (RSMo 339.010.6) means any communication between a licensee and the public, “including, but not limited to, business cards, signs, insignias, letterheads, radio, television, newspaper and magazine ads, internet advertising, websites…”
- “Correspondence” (RSMo 339.010.7) means “any written or electronic communication but shall exclude any communication that is ephemeral in nature” — text messages and instant messages being the examples given.
A marketing or prospecting email to the public is plainly advertising: the definition is non-exhaustive, and “letterheads” is the closest print analogue to a signature block there is.
A one-to-one transactional email to an existing client arguably falls under correspondence instead. Missouri has not resolved that line — there is no Commission guidance, FAQ or published decision on it, and email is never mentioned in the Commission’s own audit guidelines, which do explicitly cover websites and internet advertising.
Since one signature serves both kinds of message, the practical answer is to build it compliant.
Where the licence-number myth comes from — and this one is subtle
RSMo 339.527 is titled “Certificate or license number to be placed on report or contract”. It sits inside Chapter 339 — the same chapter as the real estate licence law — so it looks squarely applicable.
It is not. It governs state-certified and state-licensed real estate appraisers and appraisal management companies under §§ 339.500–339.549, administered by a different commission. It requires the number in an appraisal report, adjacent to the appraiser designation.
This is the cleanest example of a pattern we have now confirmed in three states: a real number-in-advertising rule sitting one board over from real estate. Minnesota’s is in the mortgage chapter, Tennessee’s in the auctioneer rules — Missouri’s is in the same chapter number.
The rule's own preamble describes a rule that does not exist
An oddity worth knowing if you read the rule yourself. The PURPOSE clause printed at the head of 8.070 says the rule “defines advertising”, “explicitly prohibits a free offering of any value in promotional material”, and forbids discrimination “because of race, creed, color, or national origin”.
Checked against the operative text: the rule contains no definition of advertising (that is statutory), no free-offering provision, and its discrimination subsection actually reads “race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, handicap, or familial status” — no “creed”, and considerably broader. The preamble is a fossil of an earlier version. Do not quote it as operative.
The Commission's own index points at the wrong subsection
Missouri is the ninth state in this series where the regulator’s published material diverges from its own rules — and here the rulebook contradicts itself.
The Commission’s official Statutes and Rules book reproduces 8.070 correctly in the body, but its index lists “Guaranteed Sales Plan, 20 CSR 2250-8.070 (5)”. Guaranteed sales has been (6) since 30 October 2022, when the team-name rule was inserted at (5). Anyone following the index lands on the team rule.
The same index cites the definition of advertising to “339.010.5”, which is the definition of real estate. The definition of advertising is 339.010.6 — as the rulebook’s own reprint of the statute shows.
Two citations that are simply dead
- “4 CSR 250-8.070” — superseded when the code was renumbered to 20 CSR 2250 on 28 August 2006. Twenty years stale, still circulating.
- “20 CSR 2250-8.060” (Display of License) — rescinded effective 30 July 2023.
How current is this?
The advertising rule was last amended effective 30 October 2022 — the amendment that added the team-name provision and pushed guaranteed sales from (5) to (6). No change since, and no Division 2250 rulemaking is pending. The licence statute was amended effective 28 August 2026, but the advertising paragraph is character-for-character unchanged; those amendments concerned criminal-offence terminology.
State law vs. the NAR Code
Missouri’s statutes and rules say nothing at all about REALTOR®, ABR, GRI or any designation — and the words “MLS” and “multiple listing” do not appear anywhere in the compilation. Every attribution and trademark obligation you may be operating under comes from NAR or your MLS by contract, not from Missouri law. The one place “Realtor” appears in Chapter 339 is a provision about who nominates candidates for Commission vacancies.
Sources: 20 CSR 2250-8.070 (Advertising, last amended eff. 30 Oct. 2022); 20 CSR 2250-8.060 (rescinded eff. 30 July 2023); RSMo §§ 339.010(.1–.3, .6, .7), 339.020, 339.100.2(13), (14), (24), 339.120, and § 339.527 (appraisers, for contrast); Missouri Real Estate Commission Statutes and Rules book (June 2023) and Audit Guidelines (rev. Oct. 2021); NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the Missouri Secretary of State's published Code of State Regulations and the Revisor of Statutes, September 2026. The currency of the advertising rule was additionally confirmed by searching every issue of the Missouri Register for 2024, 2025 and 2026 (65 issues through 1 September 2026): Division 2250's only rulemaking in that period was a licence-fee amendment, and 20 CSR 2250-8.070 had no proposal, order, withdrawal, rescission or emergency rule of any kind.
What does your state actually require?
Pick a state. Every answer is taken from the current rule text and checked against that state’s own statute and regulations — not from a template, and not from the regulator’s summary of its own rules, which is wrong in twenty-six jurisdictions.
Broker's name and number, automatically
In Missouri your own name in a signature is what triggers the broker’s name and phone number — so every signature needs them. Autograph builds it once, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code so the mobile version carries them too.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
When does my Missouri signature need my broker's phone number?
As soon as your own name or telephone number appears in it — which is always, for a signature block. § 8.070(3) requires that where “the licensee’s name or telephone number, or both, is used in any advertisement”, the advertisement must also include the name and telephone number of the broker or firm.
Does Missouri require my license number in advertising?
No. The requirement people are thinking of is RSMo 339.527, which sits in the same chapter but governs real estate appraisers and requires the number on an appraisal report. It has nothing to do with an agent’s advertising, and there is no licence-number requirement for brokers or salespersons anywhere in the rules.
Can a Missouri team name include the word “Realty”?
Usually not — but there is a real safe harbour. § 8.070(5)(A) names “realty”, “brokerage” and “company” as terms that may construe the team as a separate entity. But under (5)(B), where the team name “includes or incorporates the name of the broker/brokerage” you are affiliated with, using those words is not a violation.
Is a routine email to a client “advertising” in Missouri?
Genuinely unsettled. Missouri defines both “advertising” (communication with the public, including letterheads and internet advertising) and “correspondence” (any written or electronic communication other than ephemeral ones like texts). A prospecting email is clearly advertising; a one-to-one email to an existing client arguably is not. No Commission guidance resolves it, so build the signature compliant and the distinction stops mattering.
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