Product
May 27, 2020

New Outlook signature sync feature reveals what’s at stake with email

By
Wassim Achkar
Product Marketing Manager
You and your employees often send emails from more than one device. While your Outlook inbox and contacts will sync across devices, up until now your email signature has not.Microsoft has announced that as of June 2020, Outlook for Windows will be able to synchronize email signatures across multiple desktop computers. But, what issues does this solve and what does this mean for your business?

A Common Issue: Email Signatures Out of Sync

It’s a problem we have all faced at one time or another: you or one of your employees download Outlook onto a shiny new work computer, phone, or home desktop, and everything is there just as you left it: except your email signature.

Naturally, this results in one of three things:

  1. A call with IT
  2. Wasting time setting up the signature (if you know how!)
  3. Sending emails without a signature

For your business, these actions result in lost time, inconsistent branding, or both.

The First Step to a Solution

As a ‘Preferred Microsoft Partner’ we were excited to be asked to assist the R&D teams at Microsoft to solve this issue. We are thrilled that Outlook PC users will now have their email signatures automatically synchronize across any desktop computers they use.

The Bigger Picture: What Your Business Still Needs

Email signatures are more than just contact information, they are part of your branding and marketing strategies.

While this new functionality is a huge step in the right direction from Microsoft, there are still multiple problems your business will face regarding email signatures:

  1. Syncing signatures outside of Outlook for Windows: The new functionality will not yet help users who use Outlook Online, Outlook Mobile, or Outlook for Mac.
  2. Managing your employees: Every time brand guidelines change or a promotion occurs, the new signature still needs to be uploaded manually by each employee.

Letsignit can help!

Discover Letsignit

Through our partnership with Microsoft, we are enabling Microsoft 365 (Office 365) users to take control of all employee email signatures, amplify marketing campaigns, and better manage their brand with our solution 100% secured and RGPD compliant.

Check out our solution if you are looking for a way to save time, have a user-friendly experience, and centralize your email signature management!

About the author
Wassim is a Product Marketing Manager at Letsignit. He ensures that our solution aligns with market expectations and perfectly meets the needs of businesses. He is a fundamental element of the marketing team, ensuring that the product's value is well conveyed across all services and channels. In addition to his marketing role, Wassim also plays a key role in animating the Letsignit football team. He knows how to seize the most opportune moment to make decisive passes!
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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