A Letter to CMOs: Are Employees Ruining Your Brand?

I’m sorry, did someone say the call is coming from inside the house? This common movie trope is a good example of how most brands are sabotaged by their own marketing department at some point in their journey in that sometimes, the people we least expect to be problematic are often the ones powerful enough to truly mess things up. Still with us? 

For most CMOs, having cultivated a powerhouse collection of creative minds is a source of pride. They trust their teams to be forward-thinking, strategic, and always put brand consistency at the heart of what they do. Buuuut…that’s often easier said than done. Unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes we see most teams making is being inconsistent across employee email. It's a shame especially because most companies spend time and money on email marketing but leave this space as an afterthought.

Email signatures are important enough to be distributed in some manner to every employee within your company but where we see the biggest issue is in maintenance and management. Brands often go through rebrands yet many employees continue to sport the old logo. Beyond that, common issues include broken links, stretched logos, cheesy inspirational quotes, unprofessional headshots, outdated campaigns, incorrect contact info, and the wrong fonts. The funny thing about this is that email signatures are the last thing your team thinks about but it's often the first thing your new contacts, customers, partnerships see.

The Power of Email Signature Marketing

Each year, the average employee within an organization sends around 10,000 emails. And depending on the size of your organization, you might be sending even more (1,000,000 emails per 100 employees). You’ll be amazed at just how many recipients click on and engage with your email marketing initiatives by clicking, asking questions, and taking next steps to learn more. This means that you have an incredible opportunity to make a good impression on your network, made up of potential and existing customers, partners, and vendors.

But this impact and good impression comes from more than just the contents of the email. Whether you’re checking in, sending updates, asking questions, or making introductions, each message is accompanied by a signature highlighting the sender and their contact info. What if you could use this space to do more than simply share contact information and a link to your company’s home page? 

By harnessing the power of email signature marketing, you can do so much more than simply share a virtual business card with your network of contacts. Email signature marketing tactics vary in style and goal, but the results are striking, enabling you to drum up engagement and drive clicks through a funnel of your choosing. What would you do if you had the power to ensure that even a fraction of those 10,000 emails resulted in a next step, another click, or an eager response?  There's so much wasted potential in email but it doesn't have to be this way.

Help Employees Prioritize Consistency

Instead of leaving these marketing opportunities to the discretion of each individual employee, we make it easy to create a consistent approach to email signature marketing that results in a unified brand presence across all communications (*mic drop*). How? Our approach to email signature solutions for our clients prioritize a few critical elements, including: 

• Clear, relevant, targeted messaging embedded into email signatures
• Consistent layouts and formatting 
• Engaging tactics to drive clicks and curiosity among recipients
• Organized collection of assets to simplify email signature marketing for CMOs and their teams

Through these methods, we’re able to remove unnecessary variables from the email signature equation and prioritize brand messaging and offerings at every turn. By eliminating the personal expression and inconsistent formatting techniques from employee email signatures, we can help your brand stand out among the competition as a reliable choice in your market. 

By making this change, you and your brand can say buh-bye to self-sabotage by your employees who may in fact mean well, but have no choice but to miss the mark due to a lack of resources like the ones we’re able to provide. When working with CMOs and marketing teams, we have a front row seat (and trust us, we bring popcorn) to the action which inevitably results in increased clicks, engagement, and satisfaction from contacts across tens of thousands of emails each year. 

Ready to see this transformation for yourself? We’re eager to help you - respectfully - keep your marketing teams in-line and on-brand with fully customizable email signature marketing options that help further your brand’s goals and mission.

Request a demo today to get started and learn more!