Marketers of all kinds – don’t overlook the power of email signatures

Amandine Fernandez

Head of Acquisition

Marketing is a highly specialized function these days. Many organizations feature a plethora of roles with titles like brand managers, digital strategists, ABM specialists...the list goes on. With so many job functions relying on the same marketing channels, there can be a waiting list just to get your message out!

We’ll let you in on a secret – the email signature can be your unique channel. Marketers of all kinds are under pressure to get best-in-class results from every campaign. Brand managers need to rank higher than competitors for favorable brand recognition, digital strategists need to create automated funnels that generate a high volume of leads at an ever diminishing cost, and ABM specialists are tasked with maturing sales qualified leads to measurable revenue outcomes. So how do these individual marketing functions succeed against their myriad objectives when they’re all competing to get the word out across the same core channels of search, social, print, and email? We’ve got an idea for you…

**Reality: Marketers are competing for channel access inside their own organization**

Competition between departments like marketing and people & culture, and competition within those departments between the specific roles, means communication channels are in fierce internal competition and often overwhelmed with messages for different goals and purposes. While each specialized marketing function often has its tool of choice like marketing automation for digital strategists – Hubspot, Marketo, and Pardot to name a few – and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for account-based marketers, every marketer knows campaigns need to be omni channel to be successful. So what channels aren’t already over saturated and taken? What else can we do as marketers? We’ll let you in on a secret – the email signature.

The search for a new channel to break through the clutter

We believe the email signature is THE new channel. Small and often overlooked, it is a powerhouse when it comes to impressions and click-thru rates. Plus – it’s completely unobtrusive and a natural part of everyone’s business behavior. Here’s why we love the email signature as a channel -

Empowering - email is not dependent on an algorithm selecting what is viewed (except for spam filters)
Connecting – email, in most cases, is building from an existing relationship where a degree of trust exists
Relevant – email typically conveys information that is contextual to the recipient and hence, more valuable
Unobtrusive – email can communicate key marketing messages within the signature without being overt or annoying

Remember: a message sent by an employee is considered much more credible than when it is sent by a corporate entity. In the typical day, with an average employee sending 40 emails, there are 40 one-to-one opportunities to convey your marketing messaging in the email signature.

The email signature: uses for all marketing roles

If you do feel like sharing the goodness of this new discovery with your colleagues, here’s how the power of the email signature can be unleashed across various marketing functions: Brand Manager - ensures that the email signature, which embodies the organization’s brand, respects and disseminates a consistent visual identity in every single email. This helps achieve the goal of enhancing brand recognition within key stakeholder groups. Digital Strategist – utilize email signatures for promoting current marketing campaigns and initiatives. This bolsters the impact of their campaigns, generating more leads at a more affordable cost – email is free. ABM Specialist - email signatures are the perfect tool for account-based marketing because it’s a channel that facilitates one-to-one communication and is a key part of the selling process. Signatures can even be customized to the specific account you are targeting. With Letsignit, email signature management is centralized and therefore simple to activate across the organization. Use one cohesive signature for the entire company, or personalize to various groups, locations or functions. The email signature is here as a channel that empowers your marketing to do more with less.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

An English, Spanish, etc. version to adapt it to your audience
A signature template with timely promotional banners.
Use different formats of your logo according to your subsidiaries.
A signature for each of your branches.
Signature banners created especially for internal exchanges.
A simplified version for reply/forward of emails.

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

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.