How much does an uncontrolled brand image cost
Confused customers, damaged reputations, and misaligned employees
Your brand identity is a must to allow your company to be recognized. People need to see your logo more than 5 times to associate it with your business. Therefore, each of your interactions must be optimized.
According to a study by McKinsey & Company, a coherent and strong visual identity exceeds that perceived as weak by 20%. Consequence: Your customer will pick your competitor if he beats you at this level.
On the employee side: They are the best ambassadors of your brand identity. In case of inconsistencies, they will not be perfectly aligned with the company’s strategies and less invested around your project.
Pay attention to the appropriation of your identity
Without precise guidelines, your employees as well as your partners interpret your brand. This is the very reason for the existence of branded posters, press kits or graphic papers. Their goal? Let your internal and external audiences follow your directions.
These guidelines are often very clear when it comes to the most democratized communication channels. However, and still too often, one of them – and yet the most used in the world – is often overlooked.
Your 1time showcase (internal and external): your email signatures
Whatever their situation, their market and their strategic positioning, all or almost all companies have one thing in common: they send emails, with a professional email signature.
On the scale of a company of 500 employees, that’s about 400,000 emails per month on average. A figure that, by itself, proves that email signing is truly a marketing channel in its own right.
Still, we are all familiar with the anarchy that reigns in companies when it comes to managing email signatures. With no rules or governance, you come across a multitude of disparate signature models among your employees. In addition to distorting your brand image, these signatures often contain outdated, outdated, or incomplete information.
By ensuring that each of your signatures bears your visual identity, your prospects, clients and collaborators have a direct view of your identity, on a daily basis.
Furthermore, your brand image is strengthened, protected, legitimized with all your interlocutors, on your first communication channel!
4 decisive moments in which respecting your brand identity and your email signature is particularly important
Every interaction of a company must be taken into consideration because it builds its reputation. While some may go unnoticed, there are 4 defining moments for your brand. Moments that can be easily supported email signature.
And that, To collectoperator of the main relay network in France, he got it right.
When editing your graphics card / during a capture, etc.
The Le Groupe La Poste branch (through its subsidiary GeoPost / DPDgroup), which has 16,000 relay teams and 600 lockers in France, has recently made public its new brand identity. If the challenges were numerous, the plurality of the company’s interlocutors was one of the main elements to be taken into account.
“The main challenge was communicating this change in visual identity to a wide variety of targets: internal employees, Group partners, representative agents and e-merchants / resellers, obviously not forgetting the final customer! We had to quickly make this new identity visible to each of our audiences, because they are the ones who make our brand shine every day. ” explains Naïri Ployé, Pickup’s Marketing and Communications Director.
It was therefore quite natural that the email signature update project became an integral part of this redesign project.
“Mail signatures are considered an external communication channel with us. It was therefore normal to integrate updating our signatures and banners as a step in this project. We were able to easily rework our signature from the editor Letsignit. All we had to do was change the logo, color, size and arrangement of the different elements to make sure the rendering matched our new graphic codes. continues Naïri Ployé.
During your business dealings.
If your email signatures are like virtual business cards, their usefulness goes further. Both a guarantee of credibility and legitimacy for your audience, they have the advantage of being able to convey different messages through the banners that accompany them – if you choose to automate their management through a dedicated tool.
In a world where communication channels are oversaturated, email signatures are truly a way to pave the way for your audience. All this in a non-invasive and personalized way: that is, without cluttering the mailboxes with yet another often impersonal newsletter.
“With us it is the Communication team that manages email signatures and banners. We produce specific creations to communicate our different novelties. Signatures such as banners also allow us to redirect our audience to our site, to our social networks and thus generate traffic. “Says Naïri Ployé.
While some companies choose to broadcast promotional offers, specific content or even surveys, Pickup focuses its banner communication more on its news, events and highlights of the year. The company also capitalizes on its banners to remember the strengths of its network, to communicate its competence and legitimacy.
- Flag of the logistic withdrawal teams
- International team flag
When you hire: a strong image, employees united.
Employee engagement starts with hiring. Visual identity is a true indicator of the culture that reigns in your company.
No element of your visual identity should be pushed aside throughout the process. This specifically involves optimizing your signatures, because email is one of the main channels of communication with your future new recruits.
It is therefore in your interest to harmonize your visual identity on this channel to:
- Strengthen your employer brand when recruiting,
- Better integrate your new employees as soon as they arrive, thanks to the automatic assignment of a standardized email signature, with the right information. The little extra? The systematic integration of a photo that allows the new employee to be humanized and presented to the rest of the company;
- And post-employment, to enhance thedefense of employees turning your employees into ambassadors!
Before, during and after your events (external and internal)
Before, during and after your physical or digital events, your visual identity must be harmonized at every stage of the customer, employee and partner journey.
Having a complete and uniform email signature will only reinforce the 1 to 1 character of your initiative. Your interlocutors will feel privileged and will welcome your invitation in the best possible way.
Your email signature banners will also be an opportunity to send them key information before your events, during and beyond, to gather feedback.
As you understand, you have the ability to turn every email sent by your employees into a powerful 1-1 engagement medium for your brands and campaigns. However, it is necessary to equip yourself correctly thanks to an email signature management solution like Letsignit to fully exploit the potential you can draw from it.