Signature moves

This is part one of a series of blog entries focusing on spring cleaning – your business that is. Does your business need a tidy-up? Are you paying attention to your one percenters? Is there a few areas you just ‘haven’t got around to doing yet’? Well here’s my nudge in the right direction – this week focusing on email signatures and how important they are in overall business image
and communications.

Let’s get straight to the point! Emails that leave your office must always be identifiable as belonging to your business. This is important for so
many reasons:

Brand extension – Your emails are an external representation of your business and another point of brand exposure to new clients and contacts. Whether it’s just your logo included in your email signature, or a fully designed email template, it’s another opportunity to impress new contacts. Forwarding an email to a contact is as good as a referral – so make sure that new contacts knows who you are! And – while I’m on the subject – your web address should always be included in your email signature! If people want to find out more about you, why not give them the opportunity?

Positioning – Your emails are also an important element of your business positioning. Do you want to be seen as a company that cares about its image? Do you want to be perceived as established and professional?

Identification – If you are using email as a prospecting tool, sending mass emails out to a database of contacts, they need to be able to identify you! If your email does not look like it’s from a legitimate company, it will be deleted or worse still blocked by junk mail filters and not even make it to the inbox.

Legal – If you send an email which includes private or potentially damaging information without an appropriate disclaimer as part of your signature/template, you could remove any chance of a defence if for some reason legal action is taken against you./p>

Another point to consider is consistency in the look and feel of your emails. What typeface and colour do you use? Is it consistent with your branding? Do you have smiley faces or links or anything else in your email that could dilute the strength of your brand or business positioning? Do all emails that leave your office from different people look the same?

Email signatures are a small element in the scheme of things, but simply cannot be ignored. Contact me if you’d like some help in putting one together.

On a final note – there’s a hidden element in all Jack in the box team member email templates – if you can pick it up there’s a bottle of wine waiting for you!