Your brand is your most powerful marketing asset. Your everyday email is your #1 business communication channel. Put them together and you’ve got a brand-boosting match made in heaven!
Why is email signature branding so important?
Put simply, a signature brands email. Email signatures can raise brand awareness, promote your brand values, increase engagement with your branded content and build and protect your brand reputation to drive real business results.
So while the importance of email signature branding is clear, here are 15 practical ways you can use email signature branding to boost your brand…
1. Add to every email for maximum brand exposure
It’s all about the numbers. Say your business has 100 employees, each sending 1,000 emails a month (which is the accepted average). That’s a total of 1,200,000 emails a year. With a 99% open rate (remember, these are everyday business emails not bulk marketing emails), that’s a huge 1,118,800 annual brand impressions your email signatures are making. But are they making the right impression?
2. Design to deliver the most professional brand image
When you design email signatures for brand boosting, every element – your logo, colours, fonts and images – all need to meet your exact brand identity guidelines. It’s your employees’ digital business card and needs to make the right impression. Will an email signature template achieve this for you? Safer to opt for professional email signature design for the perfect, professional brand image.
3. Centrally control signatures for company wide brand consistency
Consistency is key to strong branding. Whether your business has 10 or 10,000 employees, you need all their emails to be on-brand. How? Choose email signature software that puts you in central control of ‘tamper-proof’ employee signatures. Make updates to all signatures in an instant, prevent employees getting ‘creative’ with their own signatures and eliminate any chance of brand damage.
4. Ensure your brand displays correctly every time on every device
It’s all about consistency again. Don’t let different email clients and devices damage your brand. Your brand identity needs to look the same on mobile as it does on a desktop. And whether you’re branding Outlook 365 email signatures or need a G Suite email signature manager to brand your Gmail emails, make sure you choose email branding software that’s completely compatible with your email client and ensures signatures display correctly on all devices.
5. Add interactive icons to boost your brand’s social engagement
Make your email signatures a key part of your brand’s social media marketing strategy. Simply add interactive social media icons to your signature, linked to your branded social media profiles. To ensure recipients clicking through get your latest brand messaging, only feature the social media platforms that you actively manage.
6. Drive click-through to your branded content: Add an email marketing banner
Interactive banners make every email a brand marketing tool. Use your best branded eye-catching imagery, a compelling email banner headline and a clear call-to-action to get recipients clicking through to your website, blog, case studies, ebooks, explainer videos, latest branded promotions and even your sales platform.
With real-time click alerts your service and sales teams can respond immediately to any recipient engagement. To see the different ways email banner marketing campaigns can drive brand engagement, take a look at our 33 great email signature banner examples.
7. Create signatures that reflect your brand structure
Does your business have constituent companies or established sub-brands for certain products or services? Then add an email signature sub-brand alongside the master brand. A dual brand email signature or endorsed branding on email signatures can also be designed to show your brand hierarchy whilst maintaining your business’s brand integrity.
8. Link to reviews to show and boost your brand’s reputation
Online reviews can make (or break) your brand reputation. So if your brand has a 5-star rating, show it on your email signature and link to the full reviews site so recipients can click-through and see for themselves. You can also boost your brand by adding a call-to-action in your signatures requesting a review from recipients. More reviews will boost your brand’s online reputation and search ranking!
9. Build brand trust with a client testimonial
Nothing builds brand trust like a client testimonial. Reassure recipients by featuring a customer quote in your email banner design. Add a clickable call-to-action button that takes them directly to the full testimonial or client case study, showing the real business results they can expect to achieve by engaging with your brand.
10. Showcase brand accreditations and awards
In some industries (legal, financial, medical) professional accreditations are essential and expected. Reassure recipients by featuring yours on your signature, linking to any detailed descriptions on your website. You can also give your brand some star-quality by including any awards (as long as they are current or very recent), again linking through to full details and even coverage of the awards event.
11. Show your brand’s social responsibility
Want to promote your brand’s eco-credentials or social initiative sponsorship? Do it in your business email signature. Simply add the icons or logos of your chosen charities and initiatives and link them direct to supporting social responsibility content on your website so recipients can find out more.
12. Protect your brand with an email legal disclaimer
It’s just as important to protect your brand proactively as it is to promote it. On email that means adding a signature disclaimer statement. Designed to meet company, industry and wider legal compliance regulations, having the correct disclaimer can ensure that – from codes of conduct and copyright to contracts and confidentiality – your business and brand are covered.
13. Boost brand loyalty with a ‘sign up’ in your signature
Use a simple ‘sign up now’ call-to-action on your email signatures to grow your brand’s newsletter or loyalty programme database. By actively opting in, your audience are directly engaging with your brand and you can keep it top of mind with regular newsletter, promotion and loyalty programme updates, increasing the chance of future sales and customer lifetime value.
14. Strengthen corporate brand culture with internal email signature branding
Want all your staff to live and breathe your brand? Simply add branded signatures and banners to your internal email and increase interactive engagement opportunities, from social event sign-ups and satisfaction surveys to promoting new company policies and training sessions. Everything, in fact, that will strengthen your company culture and keep everyone ‘on brand’.
15. Track all engagement to measure signature branding success
Who in your team is sending out the most branded emails? Which recipients are clicking through to your branded content? To understand how successfully your email signatures are driving brand engagement, you need email signature management software with reporting and analytics, tracking every branded email and recipient click-through.
Need help with your email signature branding?
For an effective branding strategy, email signatures are essential. However, these 15 brand-boosting tips can sound like a lot to squeeze into your business’s email signatures. You need to prioritise what has the most email signature branding importance to give you the perfect on-brand professional image and protect and promote your brand.
We can help. With Rocketseed it’s easy to create your own branded email signature or you can simply discuss your email signature requirements with us and we’ll create the most professional, engaging, on-brand email signature for you.
Laszlo Ujj | VP Client Solutions
Connect with Laszlo on LinkedIn
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