Email signatures at work in 2025

How businesses can harness their most overlooked communication asset

The survey confirms that one-to-one email remains the dominant business communication channel, with 89% of respondents ranking it as their most important channel and 92% recognizing its role in marketing and customer engagement. Despite this, many organizations underutilize the channel for brand consistency, campaign promotion, and internal communication.

Key findings include:

  • Responsibility for managing email signatures isn’t consistent across organizations: Marketing (39%), IT (27%), and HR (11%), each with their own priorities.
  • Most important functions of email signatures cited: Brand consistency (78%), marketing messaging (41%) and accuracy of contact information (39%) – with respondents able to select multiple functions.
  • Infrequent updates limit agility: Only 28% update signatures monthly; banner updates are similarly infrequent at 31%.
  • Missed measurement opportunities: 42% of organizations do not track signature performance.
  • High potential engagement: 43% identified banner click-through rates (CTR) above 5%
  • Underused opportunities: Internal banners are used by just 19% of organizations, and only 22% include DEI or ESG messaging in signatures.
  • High-value capabilities are in demand: Centralized control, automated updates, campaign scheduling, compliance management, are increasingly sought.
  • The future is AI-powered: Respondents want AI-generated design suggestions (46%) and banner copy, plus predictive banner performance.

These results highlight the potential to transform routine emails into strategic marketing assets, driving measurable engagement, reinforcing brand and company values, and supporting marketing and HR initiatives.

Recommendation: Organizations should consider a centralized email signature management solution that ensures consistency, enables tracking, supports marketing agility, enforces compliance and prepares for AI-enhanced optimization – unlocking the full value of everyday business email.

1. The enduring dominance of one-to-one email

Survey insight: 89% of respondents ranked everyday one-to-one email as their most important business communication channel.

Opportunity:

Despite the proliferation of chat tools and collaboration platforms, email remains the dominant communication channel for business. With 1200 emails sent by the average employee per month, every email is a brand touchpoint. Optimized signatures and banners can transform this routine communication into consistent, high-value brand exposure and engagement.

Rocketseed helps:

Provide centralized control of signatures, ensuring professional, on-brand consistency and compliance across every employee email, scalable to any business size.

2. Email’s expanding role in the marketing mix

Survey insight: 92% rated everyday email as moderately to extremely important for marketing and customer communication.

Opportunity:

While traditional bulk email campaigns require investment, everyday business emails from sales, service, marketing and leadership can carry branded banners, calls-to-action (CTAs), and promotions – extending reach, impact and engagement at no extra cost.

Rocketseed helps:

Turns every employee email into a measurable marketing asset with interactive banners, targeting rules, and advanced real-time reporting and analytics.

3. Responsibility for signature management varies between organizations.

Survey insight: Responsibility for managing company email signatures sits with Marketing (39%), IT (27%), and HR (11%).

Opportunity:

Each department has distinct email signature management priorities – IT prioritizes time-saving automation and security; Marketing focuses on brand consistency, promotional messaging and performance; HR emphasizes strengthening culture and compliance. The right email signature management solution should meet all departments’ priorities while ensuring unified brand control.

Rocketseed helps:

Provides role-based access so Marketing, IT and HR all achieve their objectives, while central control prevents unauthorized changes.

4. The functions that matter most in email signatures

Survey insight: Respondents identified the most important signature functions as brand consistency (78%), marketing engagement (41%), and accurate contact details (39%)

Opportunity:

Signatures must balance brand trust, marketing effectiveness, and clear communication. Manual management makes it extremely difficult to deliver these consistently at scale, particularly in larger organizations.

Rocketseed helps:

Ensures all core functions are met with centralized control for brand consistency, automated updates for accuracy, and dynamic banners to drive marketing engagement.

5. The features businesses value most in signature software

Survey insight: Respondents ranked centralized control, automated signature updates, campaign scheduling, and legal compliance features as most important.

Opportunity:

These capabilities highlight the need for professional management solutions. Manual processes cannot deliver the agility, compliance, or reliability organizations now expect.

Rocketseed helps:

 Provides enterprise-grade signature management features:

  • Centralized control for company-wide consistency and instant updates.
  • Automated directory syncing for always-accurate employee details.
  • Automated banner scheduling for seasonal and time-sensitive promotions.
  • Centrally-managed disclaimers to ensure legal and regulatory compliance.

6. Infrequent updates reduces marketing agility

Survey insight: Only 28% update signature designs monthly, and 34% update every 6–12 months. For banners, just 31% update monthly.

Opportunity:

Signature marketing works best when it is agile and current. Infrequent updates mean missed chances to align with product launches, seasonal promotions, or events. Signatures and banners should evolve in step with the marketing calendar.

Rocketseed helps:

Enables frequent centrally-controlled signature and banner campaign updates company-wide, with targeting and automated scheduling, ensuring campaigns reach the right recipients at the right time to maximize engagement, with minimal IT effort.

7. A major blind spot: lack of tracking

Survey insight: 42% of organizations don’t track email signature performance. Of those that do, the most common metrics are click-through rates (CTR) and banner impressions.

Opportunity:

Without measurement, organizations can’t prove ROI or refine future campaigns. Tracking is essential to optimize email signature and banner design, messaging, and targeting.

Rocketseed helps:

Automatically tracks every signature and banner interaction in real time, with advanced reporting, click alerts, A/B testing, and CRM integrations to attribute conversions directly to email signature campaigns.

8. Email banners deliver high engagement

Survey insight: 43% report banner click-through rates (CTR) above 5% – far exceeding many digital advertising benchmarks.

Opportunity:

These results prove that email banners are a high-performing engagement channel when measured and optimized. Adding banners to the marketing mix offers a strong, low-cost complement to other digital campaigns.

Rocketseed helps:

Enables banners at the top of emails and below signatures, with targeting rules and A/B testing that consistently deliver strong engagement and measurable ROI.

9. Internal banners are underused

Survey insight: Survey Insight: Only 19% use internal email banners, and 33% aren’t interested or haven’t considered them.

Opportunity:

Internal banners can support HR initiatives and company culture – promoting policies, onboarding, training, events, and employee engagement. With hybrid and remote working, this channel is more relevant than ever.

Rocketseed helps:

Makes it easy to centrally manage targeted, measurable internal banner campaigns, giving HR a new tool for culture-building.

10. Companies’ brand values are missing from signatures

Survey insight: Only 22% include DEI or sustainability elements in signatures. 41% use only basic company details.

Opportunity:

Customers and employees expect companies to reflect values consistently. Email signatures are a visible, everyday platform to reinforce DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusivity), ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance), and compliance commitments.

Rocketseed helps:

Centrally manages consistent inclusion of approved DEI/ESG elements across all signatures, ensuring compliance with company policy.

11. The future is AI-enhanced

Survey insight: 46% express interest in AI-driven functionality such as optimized design suggestions, predictive banner performance, and AI-crafted copy.

Opportunity:

AI offers smarter optimization of design, targeting, and messaging, making signatures more adaptive and impactful. By automating design suggestions, predicting banner performance, and generating copy, AI can save time and ensure every email delivers maximum engagement with minimal effort.

Rocketseed helps:

Is developing AI-powered enhancements to help clients stay ahead with predictive, automated signature marketing.

Conclusion & next steps:

The survey confirms that one-to-one email remains the most important business communication channel – and one of the most underleveraged. Employees send thousands of emails every month, and organizations consistently identify three email signature functions as most valuable: ensuring brand consistency, driving marketing engagement, and maintaining correct contact information.

At the same time, the results highlight opportunities that many businesses are yet to fully embrace:

  • Agility in updates – signatures and banners are often refreshed too infrequently to maximize relevance and engagement.
  • Performance insights – with nearly half of companies not tracking signature impact, there’s untapped potential in using reporting to guide strategy.
  • Showcasing brand values – signatures can spotlight DEI and ESG commitments, reinforcing external brand perception.
  • Strengthening culture – internal banners are underused tools for increasing staff engagement and strengthening company culture. 

At the same time, the results highlight a strong appetite for enterprise-grade tools – centralized control, update automation, banner campaign scheduling and compliance features – along with growing interest in AI-driven optimization.

Next steps for organizations

  1. Audit your current signature use – assess allocation of signature management responsibilities, frequency of updates, and whether signatures reflect your brand, campaigns, and company values.
  2. Introduce centralized management – eliminate manual processes, ensure compliance, and give IT, Marketing, and HR role-appropriate control.
  3. Start tracking performance – implement reporting on clicks, impressions, and conversions to prove ROI and optimize campaigns.
  4. Expand use cases – leverage banners for both external marketing and internal communication to maximize reach, engagement and strengthen company culture.
  5. Prepare for AI-enhanced signatures – new capabilities will automatically optimize design, targeting and messaging, ensuring every email drives maximum engagement with minimal effort.

With the right platform in place, everyday emails can evolve from routine correspondence into a strategic communication channel – one that builds brand equity, drives measurable marketing engagement, and strengthens company culture.
Rocketseed is positioned to help organizations take these next steps today – and prepare for the opportunities of tomorrow.

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