52 e-Branding 4: Email signatures

52

E-BRANDING 4: EMAIL SIGNATURES

As long as people continue to send emails, inside the organisation as well as externally, there’s a place for your brand identity on each one of them.

The idea Your email signature is the bit that gets added to the bottom automatically each time you send out an email.

The best ones give contact details and show the company’s strapline or logo. They’ll also probably have a link to their website, and perhaps the company’s Twitter feed and Facebook page too.

Some organisations’ email signatures are obviously written by the legal department as there is a huge block of small disclaimer text explaining that if this email hashas gone to the wrong place then you must delete it and inform the sender immediately, and that all information contained in this email is confi dential. No one reads it. Email signatures written in legalese make brands look boring and pompous, which can give the opposite impression from the one you want to give your customers. (Unless of course the email comes from a legal company.)

You can also make your “I’m away from my desk” emails

interesting to read. Take any opportunity you’re offered to say something about your brand.

In practice • You can change your organisation’s email signature as often as you like, so if you have news, you can let everyone know it with a short line at the end of your emails. • Sometimes organisations do get carried away and make their email signatures longer than the message. Others come across as rather boastful. Make sure yours matches your brand values.