There was a story last week about an American man, Boots Hawks was stood down from his job at a hospital for having “god bless America” on his email signature. This of course caused outrage around the globe and sparked a very important discussion; should employees have control of their email signature? In my opinion, every organisation should be using some sort of email signature software to manage their email signatures to maintain consistency across the whole organisation.
Management
Boots Hawks was not stood down because the hospital was anti-religious, it was because the hospital can not just have everyone sending random messages at the bottom of their emails. Email signature software allows you to chose who has access to the design of your email signatures and no one else will be able to change anything. For example the Marketing Manager might have access to design various versions of the company signature for different departments and the legal team might have access to ensure that the email disclaimer is up to date. When anyone in the organisation sends an email their signature will be automatically appended, see example images below of Crossware Mail Signature.
Mobile
The number of emails sent from mobile devices has significantly increased over the last 5 years. The biggest problem businesses will discover is that their email signature will not be appended to mobile emails. If you chose an email signature software which is server-based, every email which passes through the server will include the appropriate branding, including mobile emails.
Marketing
Marketing departments put a lot of work into creating the perfect business card to make a good first impression, why not have this same mentality for emails? Your email signature is effectively your online business card and most people will send a lot more emails than they do hand out business cards!
There is a huge amount of emphasis on social media in modern day business, a lot of organisations tend to forget how important email is. There is still 4 times as many emails sent per day compared to social media updates, email is still the most common and professional way of corporate communication. Having a poorly designed or non-existent email signature is hugely detrimental to your brand, this is why every organisation should be using email signature software.
- When the email arrives, my signature is included
Legal
Because millions of emails are sent everyday, it is very important to include a legal disclaimer, another thing that email signature software allows you to automatically include on every email. The laws and regulations regarding email disclaimers are tightening around the world. For example, in Europe there are a number of countries that have laws stating that every no-compliant email can result in a fine of up to 750 Euros.