Little Things Can Mean A Lot: Email Signatures

Easily Overlooked Opportunities to Polish your Brand Online

This is the second of a handful of small ways to extend your organization's brand through out your online presence.

As I was trying to come up with a good handful of easy wins I thought immediately of the email signatures. I have seen some great ones on various mailing lists and some that make me cringe. Plus no list like this would be complete without a mention of this free way to improve your branding on a daily basis. So I started with Google, as I always do, to see what the prevailing wisdom is on these - sure enough I found out that I am not alone in my thinking and I found two great articles right away.

After reading through the brief summary below, I highly encourage you to check out Nancy Schwartz's definitive article and Jon Stahl's fantastic real world case study from at Groundwire (formerly One NW).

Make the most of your last word
When you talk about email and nonprofits E-newsletters and donation appeals come to mind immediately, but in this case I'm talking about the last lines in regular day-to-day emails that staff send to each other and those outside the organization. Internally having a set (or set of) on mission and on brand signatures can reinforce professionalism and a sense of unity. And when you communicate with the outside world, the value of these snippets becomes even more apparent in solidifying your identity and purpose in the readers mind.

What should your organization's email signature include?
Obviously you'll want to have your name, position and contact information.

You should keep this under control though and if you find that your signature is regularly longer than the email itself, it's probably too long.

What else?
Add your branding, tagline, website or maybe a tagline and link for your current campaign - action or fundraising.

Think long and hard about adding a logo graphic though - simple and consistent more important than flashy. Think of this as subtle reminder not a billboard because by the 3rd time they get an email from you it can start to annoy people if its too large. Also as you can see in Jon's article its not as easy to implement as text only.

I think developing a set or some really clear guidelines could be a potent tool to allow for personalization while staying on message. If you can offer two or three acceptable styles (short, medium and long or official, colleague and more personal) and make them easy to get into the emails staff will be able to match the signature to the message.

See Nancy's article for a more thorough list of ideas.

Check out what some organizations are doing:

Ask for donations:

Support our efforts for 2010
http://www.1sky.org/donate

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Love us? Support us!
Make a tax-deductible donation to the Office of Letters and Light today.
http://store.lettersandlight.org

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Engage activists:

Sign up to become part of Audubon's E-Activist community
http://www.audubonaction.org/audubon

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Give a description of your organization and the official tag line:

Visit our website: www.policylink.org

PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by Lifting Up What Works.®

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Reinforce your mission:

Several nature and environmental organizations include the line -

"Please consider the environment before printing this email"

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And while those funny quotes that used to be so common probably aren't a great idea for an official organization sign off, I love the use of humor in this one:

http://www.issuelab.org/subscribe/public/index.php
We've got issues. Read all about it in IssueLab eNews!

More tips and ideas on how to do it

From Microsoft - all about using your Outlook signature

A few good thoughts on how to sign off

Thanks for reading,
heather gardner-madras
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gardner-madras | strategic creative
http://www.heathergm.com
[e] hgm@heathergm.com
[p] 541-933-1942
[c] 541-579-6665

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