Brand
September 1, 2020

The cost of an inconsistent visual identity

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
Your visual identity is the first interaction your customers have with your brand. If it is unique and bold, it will differentiate you from your competitors and stick in your customers’ minds. If you fail to keep it consistent, you can risk the loss of trust from your customers, create confusion, or worse! Discover the costs of an inconsistent visual identity and how to avoid making this mistake.

A problem many companies face  

Creating a logo and graphic charter is only the start of your visual identity.

The heavy-duty work comes in implementing it across all channels, in every project, and having every employee use it properly.

We have all seen it:

  • A company changes its logo, yet your monthly newsletters still have the old colors.
  • You go to a store and cannot tell the associates from the other customers apart.
  • You receive an email from customer service, but the company name is misspelled in their signature.

Seemingly small details that have huge impacts on your perception of them.

What are the costs?  

1. Create confusion for your customers 

Your visual identity is the best way for your customers to recognize you. If it is constantly changing or not up to date on all channels, how can your customers be sure that it is really you?

Imagine being contacted by a sales member from a company you have worked with before. The logo in their email signature does not match the logo on their website. Would you think this person is a fraud? Not only are you confused with who is emailing you, but you are not sure if this person is authentic.

And, it is worth noting that a brand that is perceived as authentic is more likely to be recommended and customers are 2.4 times more likely to purchase a product from it.

email signature brand identity

No matter where your customer encounters your brand – email, website, in-store, billboard, or other – it should be 100% aligned. No detail or moment is too small, and no touchpoint should go without a thoughtful integration of the visual identity.

2. Damage your public reputation 

Not only does inconsistency lead to customer confusion, but it also negatively impacts public perception. Every decision a company makes is highly watched and scrutinized. One mistake and you can spend years trying to win back your customers.

Companies such as Gap and even Coca Cola have experienced backlashes when they were inconsistent with their visual identity. When customers already love your product, inconsistency equals a drop in quality in their minds. This is the case when Coca Cola tried to make their famously dark-colored drink into a clear liquid substance. Shocked customers boycotted Coca Cola, which subsequently resulted in the company spending years to win back their good reputation.

New coke brand failure

When a company is inconsistent with its visual identity, this appears as a lack of effort and care in its reputation. Customers will wonder why they should even purchase from you in the first place.

3. Experience financial loss 

The financial impact of having an inconsistent visual identity can be severe as well. The way your customer perceives your brand influences purchasing decisions. In fact, a consistent and strong visual identity outperforms weak-perceived ones by 20%. If you are not being consistent, your customer will be persuaded to go with your customer instead.

When a customer can easily recognize your brand, that creates reassurance in their mind and reduces risk. If they associate your visual identity with quality and all the other great promises you make to them, then you can be sure they choose your product every time.

4. Lose trust with your customers  

Customers crave consistency, especially when purchasing a product. Every detail in their buying journey should be aligned from A to Z. If you cannot stay consistent with your visual identity, then the customer is left to wonder if you can really deliver on your other promises.

Imagine having an excellent interaction with the sales member of a product you are purchasing. Then, when you go to use the product you discover an error. You contact the customer service who is rude, puts you on hold for an hour, and makes no effort to solve your problem. You would feel pretty let down, wouldn’t you? The promise of a great product you received from the sales member did not follow through in every step of your journey.

The best way to build trust with your customer is to be consistent. Your visual identity should be recognizable on every platform just as your product and service should follow through on the promises made from start to finish.

email signature exemples ebook

How to avoid inconsistency? 

  • To start, make your graphic charter, typeface, brand color, templates, and all rules for cohesion available to your employees, both digitally and physically. Keep in mind that your team members are your best ambassadors when it comes to conveying your brand. Thus, the information should be easy to access and updated regularly as your brand evolves.
  • Next, stick to the same components when creating campaigns or sending out emails. Be sure to use images from the same source or ones that are similar in appearance.
  • Using the same designer to create your visuals guarantees that each new campaign and chapter of your brand follows a strict code. Also, it is extremely useful having a brand manager oversee it all and put in place procedures for the company to adhere to.

Make every touchpoint count  

People need to see your logo more than 5 times to connect it with your company. Therefore, every interaction your customer has with you should be fully optimized.

Think of the touchpoints between your customers and your brand. For example, the email, an often-overlooked channel, is sent on average 30 times per employee per day. For a company of 100 employees, that is 3,000 opportunities for your customers to interact with your visual identity every day!

Branding those emails with consistent signatures that display your company logo, brand color, and vital information is a non-intrusive way of communicating your brand.

brand identity email signature

Solutions to help you stay consistent – Letsignit 

Letsignit is a solution that easily automates the diffusion of the company’s visual identity into every employees’ email.

With its centralized platform, your only task is to simply upload your logo and choose a pre-made template with your brand color already integrated into it. Your employees have nothing else to do but to enjoy their email signatures.

Furthermore, if your visual identity evolves or your company moves to a new address, it only takes one click to update the signatures for the entire company. This eliminates the stress of becoming inconsistent and helps you in the daily defense of your visual identity.

The once painstaking task of controlling your brand on this touchpoint is reduced to only minutes and saves your IT time. Additionally, you turn every email sent by your colleagues into a targeted marketing opportunity with the inclusion of campaign banners.

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Acquisition at Letsignit! Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the profitability of acquisition channels: SEO, SEA, SMA, SMO... Amandine is also one of the pillars of Marketing at Letsignit! For more than 5 years, she has been participating in and initiating marketing projects and campaigns that systematically reflect her vision, writing style, and creativity (which can also be seen in all of her colorful outfits that brighten up the day of everyone she meets).
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.
Frequently
asked questions
1
Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2
Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3
Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4
Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5
What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6
Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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Looking for a tool to manage your email signatures?

Letsignit allows you to create, manage, and deploy email signatures for all your employees in just a few clicks.
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