10 Reasons Why Email Signature Branding Is Important

A company’s brand represents who it is and what it does. After all, your brand is the total of your customers’ perceptions, notions, and experiences. It is the face, personality, and values espoused by your business. It goes far more than just a logo or graphic element.

Therefore, branding must be used and displayed correctly in every possible medium, including corporate email.

Why is email signature branding important?

Corporate email is often a medium where branding goes amiss, despite being the most common business communication method. Consistent branding is essential, and conforming to brand guidelines impacts the design of your email signature. This is from your company logo to the color palette and font size.

These then need to blend with the rest of the signature design, such as the contact information, display banners, social media icons, and the actual contents of the email to achieve the desired impact. You’ll also likely need to include a legal disclaimer under the primary signature in line with brand guidelines.

Here are ten key reasons why email signature branding matters regarding a company’s identity.

1. Promoting recognition

People prefer to do business with companies they are familiar with. If your corporate branding is consistent and easy to recognize, it helps people feel more at ease purchasing your products or services.

Conforming to brand guidelines is essential when designing a professional email signature. Your company logo and brand colors are what inform the overall design. Using your company’s guidelines will ensure your brand is always presented correctly.

2. Sets you apart from the competition

Standing out from the crowd is critical in today’s marketplace, particularly over email. Many companies are no longer competing just on a local stage but within a global economy. This means you must make sure you stand out from thousands or potentially millions of similar organizations around the world.

In the context of email, your brand needs to stand out in crowded inboxes to have any impact. An email that conforms to a company’s brand guidelines has a much higher chance of doing so.

3. Tells people about your mission and values

Your whole brand experience, such as the visual elements of your logo, tells customers what kind of company you are. You must ensure that everything you do accurately reflects what your organization says and does.

Branded email signatures do this whenever someone sends an external email from your organization.

4. Provides motivation and direction for your employees

A clear brand strategy provides the clarity your staff needs to succeed. It tells them how to meet your organization’s goals and act as brand representatives.

Providing all employees with an internal email signature or different templates for different responses helps solidify this motivation.

5. Generating referrals

When someone has a great experience with a brand, they love to tell others. According to Adweek, 76% of people say they’re more likely to trust content shared by “normal” people. This makes your brand advocates one of the most credible forms of advertising. Brand advocates share your message with natural passion.

When using professionally branded email signatures, you can exploit the high visibility of the email signature touchpoint. The information provided with a targeted message naturally generates additional referrals without interrupting an email conversation.

6. Helps customers know what to expect

A consistent and clear brand lets customers know what to expect when interacting with a company. There is no uncertainty, which is vital.

Branded email signatures create a sense of trust. If an email recipient recognizes your brand, they’re more likely to reply or engage.

7. Represents you and your promise to your customer

Your brand represents your company across everything — your staff, marketing materials, and corporate email signatures. Your brand needs to be clear regarding what you’ll deliver to customers. It also needs to state what it says about you as an organization.

Not using consistently branded email signatures can hurt a company’s reputation. It simply comes across as unprofessional. Do you want your customers to think badly of your company because of a poorly branded email signature?

8. Create clarity and stay focused

Moving away from your original goals and plans is surprisingly easy. That’s why a clear brand strategy is designed to keep a company’s vision as focused as possible.

Being strategic with your brand will guide your marketing efforts. This includes using email signatures to present your brand consistently in corporate emails.

9. Connect with your customers emotionally

A good brand connects on an emotional level, making customers feel positive when they interact with the brand. The strongest brands make people feel good on an emotional level.

When this branding is presented repeatedly over corporate email, the recognition created helps build these positive emotions.

10. Provides your business value

A strong brand provides value to an organization far beyond its product or service. The most famous brands like Microsoft and Google are not just what they sell; their value goes far beyond that.

Summary

The importance of email signature branding cannot be overstated. All employees must use an email signature design that correctly displays your company’s brand on every email they send.

However, without an email signature management policy in place, presenting consistently branded email signatures is all but impossible.

Employees will more likely use their own personal email signature branding over the corporate one. Mobile devices will often remove HTML that renders correctly on desktops. Email clients will not display email signature branding consistently. Marketing campaigns cannot be run effectively through email signatures. And updates become too time-consuming to manage at a corporate level.

That’s why many companies deploy a third-party email signature management solution to ensure consistent email signature branding on all devices.