Each day, the average office worker receives 121 emails and a majority (62.86%) of business professionals prefer email to communicate for business purposes.
And email isn't going away anytime soon, according to livewire over half of the world population uses email in 2019 and the number of worldwide email users is expected to grow to over 4.3 billion by the end of 2023.
Each of those emails represents the employee as well as their company.
The importance of email signatures
Email signatures have grown in importance as they accomplish two things:
- They provide valuable contact information in a convenient location for follow up purposes
- They provide a way to brand each email and start to give a glimpse into what the company is all about
The challenge for advertising agencies
Any good advertising agency knows it can be hard to get employee buy-in when a new brand is developed. Old powerpoint templates are stored around the company filesystem and employees often find it easier to start with an older document and duplicate it to begin with.
The same is true for email signatures, few employees think about them often. They are generally one of the last things companies think about during a brand refresh. The agency is pushing hard on all of the surrounding brand materials. HR has other concerns to worry about, IT is too busy, and marketing is trying to push out the new campaign, so who is in charge of the email signature?
Distributing the email signature is a pain too. They get copied from one person to the next like a bad game of "telephone", and slowly the fonts get off and the images stop working, and the colors turn funky. Pretty soon no one's signatures look the same. This reflects badly on the organization and can send a message to their customers that they don't have their act together.
A competitive advantage for agencies
This is the perfect place for creative agencies to step in with a managed solution that is hands off for everyone involved. They can have one of their designers spend a little bit of time incorporating the brand into a kick-butt signature that everyone will be proud of. And then they can send it over to their clients as a nice value added service.
Advertising and Digital Marketing agencies need to continue to find ways to drive consistency in the brand materials and provide long-term value for their clients. And branded email signatures is a great place to start.
