Email signature branding: What it is and why it’s important

Approximately six out of ten marketers actively use email signature marketing. Sales and support staff alike benefit from the increased engagement it drives. But how can these seemingly simple email signatures accomplish so much? Let’s find out. But before that, let’s talk about what a branded email signature is!

What is a branded email signature?

Simply put, a branded email signature is one that features your logo (or photo), tagline, and any other branding elements that make your business stand out in your recipients’ inboxes. Basically, with a branded email signature, you go from this…

To this:

Do you see how instantly a branded email signature adds personality to your emails? 

An email signature that reflects your brand effectively can establish credibility and professionalism while also promoting your business. It can help you build a positive first impression, connect with your recipients, and earn their trust. Companies actually see tangible benefits from branded email signatures.

Email signature branding builds brand awareness

Your email signature is a great place to start if you’re looking to build brand awareness. Why? Because, when it comes to driving work forward, professionals prefer email. And email signatures are a standard way for companies to share brand identity, company contact information, and other important information with potential customers. All of this equals higher brand awareness. With branded email signatures, you can make your business’s email “touches” 10X more effective.

Businesses all over the world use email signatures for branding:

• Nearly 37% of U.S. businesses use branded email signatures.
• About 30% of Australian companies do the same.
• In contrast, over half (53%) of Canadian companies use emails to promote their brand and boost brand awareness.

Email signature branding generates business

Branded signatures mean more than signing an email as your own or adding your company’s branding. Also, it’s more than just linking to your website or marketing materials. When used as a visual reminder of your expertise and services, email signatures help you generate and retain business leads. At 2POINT, we’re all about bringing business branding to life with animations. Animations are at the heart of what we do, and, of course, they’re a key part of our branded email signatures too:

Email signatures are also a great place to include a solid call to action and encourage your recipients to act:

• Your email signature can advertise any special offers or discounts you may be running. Promotional banners are actually a very trendy branded email signature element.
• Alternatively, you could send a link to a recording of the latest webinar you ran or a link to an upcoming one.
• You can also include a link to book an appointment/call with you.

When you use UTM trackers for your email signature links, you can quickly tell when a lead landed on your website or took action from your email signature! In fact, all the statistics you read in the introduction are from businesses that track the clicks on their email signatures.

Email signature branding personalizes your email communications

Now, when it comes to email signature branding, most businesses help their employees create one. Most, however, overlook the need for a corporate email signature. 

A corporate email signature is simply a sign-off that appears at the end of every email sent from within the organization. Any email a business sends — a newsletter, a promotional email, or any other communication — should have a corporate signature. All one-to-one correspondence uses employee signatures, while everything else can use a corporate signature.

A corporate email signature makes your brand appear more “human.” It makes your messages seem more personal, even though recipients can tell that they are automated and sent in bulk. 

So how do you start with email signature branding?

Various premium and free tools (like WiseStamp and HubSpot) can help you create branded email signatures. There are pros and cons to both.

Some premium solutions, for example, charge you for each signature you create. So if you have, say, ten employees, your email signature tool costs can quickly mount. Furthermore, signatures can still seem “templatic.” In addition, you’ll still have to create a corporate signature outside of your email management software, since these typically only address employee signatures. 

In contrast, free tools come with disclaimers like “This email signature was generated by…” You don’t want that!

The best way to get started with email signature branding

Ideally, it’s best to engage a branding agency like 2POINT to do your email signature branding. 

Besides creating a 100% custom signature for you, branding agencies typically code such signatures in HTML. So you can use them within Gmail and Outlook email services without any problems and without relying on third-party solutions or paying monthly fees. 

Also, branding agencies handle both your employee and company signatures, so you can look and feel consistent across all your email communications!

Wrapping it up… 

Email signatures are an integral part of all email communications. When you use a well-designed signature, you stand out from others, reinforce the message you are trying to convey, and make a lasting impression on the people you’re communicating with.

As you just saw, your email signature does a lot of work. There’s more to it than just letting the recipient know who sent them an email. It’s more like a full-fledged branding, marketing, and sales tool. 

Ready to brand your email signature? Get in touch. At 2POINT, we help businesses stand out in their customers’ mailboxes with beautifully branded signatures.