5 Mistakes to Avoid with Email Signature Marketing

Email remains popular for both personal and business uses, even with the rapid rise of social media, chat, and text messaging. And, when it comes to digital marketing, email still brings businesses the greatest ROI.

Business emails are used for many different purposes during the workday, which means email signatures must reflect each of those purposes for maximum impact. You know managing email signatures is important (we've talked several times about email signature marketing and email signature management - for example, here, here, and here). So now that you're managing them, you need to make sure you're using them effectively.

Here are 5 mistakes to avoid with email signature marketing:

1. Not adding value to the email message

Promoting an event, product, service, webinar, person, idea, or whatever, is something email signature marketing is great for indeed. Yet when it's overly promotional or doesn't add value to the email, it can take away from the message. While some marketing campaigns are more bold and outrageous by nature, often a subtle banner with simple text is sufficient to get the message across.

Email signature marketing works great when the signature adds real value to the email's subject matter. Promoting a product that relates to the email is great, as long as it aligns and adds value to the topic. For example, sending an email to clients about GDPR with a signature that includes a flashy banner showcasing the latest company product is probably not the best idea. Instead, maybe a plug about the new training class available or a free ebook about expanding to global markets would work better. 

2. Too much personal information

One mistake people should avoid is including too much personal information in their email signature. In today's world, people are busy and in a hurry. It's best to keep the message succinct and to the point, which means including only the necessary information. For example, a recent survey explored what annoys people the most in email signatures and found:

"Personal Address 52%

Awards you've won 49%

Home phone number 49%

Facebook link 42%

Instagram handle 39%

Head shot 38%

Higher educational degrees 33%"

3. Inconsistent brand image

Although emails are used for many different purposes during the workday, email signatures should be consistent when it comes to representing the company's brand. This inconsistency comes in the form of different signatures across the department, team, or company, or in some cases, completely misrepresenting the brand with outdated taglines, logos, or campaigns. Either way, these inconsistencies can confuse recipients about the company's values and overall brand image.

Colors, images, and messages need to align with the core values and brand. If disparate signatures are used, recipients will have trouble identifying them with the same company. This doesn't mean every signature needs to be exactly the same; however, using similar patterns, colors, and themes will provide consistency.

4. Not doing it at all

According to a recent article found on Marketing Technology Insights:

"...59% of B2B companies do not send out email marketing campaigns to their subscribers."

What we can gather from this finding is that they're not using email signature marketing either, which equates to lost opportunity (in customer satisfaction, revenue, and more).

5. Misaligned targeting 

Everyone talks about targeting these days. It's important. We want personalization. And the email signature is a great spot for this effort.

For example, if you're emailing prospective customers about a new service you want them to try, it would not make sense to include a signature that invites them to an exclusive company event. Or if you send an email to new clients, you don't want to include a signature banner meant for those who've recently received tech support.

The common way this mistake is made is when companies use the same email signature for every employee and department, or ask employees to manually update their signatures. The mistake may be subtle or overt, yet the impact will be negative either way. Personalizing signatures -- and having the ability to target and deploy signatures based on department, team, individual, geography, etc. -- can have a huge impact on your business.

So where do we go from here?

Email signature marketing can be very effective if used correctly. The best way businesses can take advantage of using email signatures is to utilize the right tools.

Opensense's email signature management platform gives businesses the ability to effectively create, deploy, and manage email signatures and email signature marketing campaigns -- including the ability to:

• automate campaign scheduling
• segment campaigns for various departments, groups, individuals, or geographies
• design signatures with universal configuration across all platforms
• gain deep analytic insights
• centralize management through one dashboard interface 

Using the right tools drastically reduces the time and effort spent creating, deploying, and managing email signature marketing campaigns, while improving their quality and effectiveness at the same time.

Opensense makes this process super easy and efficient. We'd love to show you how.