[Update]: The article has been updated to reflect the changes in the presented tools’ user interfaces as well as the latest developments in vCards.
While most people consider vCards as obsolete (or have no idea what they are) others use it on a daily basis in their email communication. So, what exactly are those vCards? Why use QR-coded vCards in email signatures? And how to do that? Read on to find out.
Email signature branding – the thing that gets your company emails to send the message you want them to send. Couldn’t care less? Read on to learn why you should care a lot, especially if you have anything to do with marketing.
Email signature branding is about using your email communication in such a way that each of your messages shows that you care. After all, building and boosting your brand is all about sending a certain message. It’s a part of your marketing strategy you should care about – despite multiple prophecies, email communication is still widely used. Each time one of those millions of emails reaches your recipients, you leave some kind of impression. Each time an email is stamped with a nice, well-formatted signature, a client thinks a bit higher of you. And when there is a problem with email formatting, you send outdated contact info, or a poorly-crafted hand-made signature, your brand takes a hit.
Death of a brand isn’t spectacular or sudden – it’s sad and quiet, and painfully slow.
This one tiny element on the very end of your email you might think everyone ignores, a signature, often decides whether your emails build customer trust or cause a heavy cringe.
REMEMBER: Thinking of email signature branding as a panacea for all possible brand problems is not the way to go. For a brand to truly succeed, you need to ensure professionalism in all business aspects. Email signature branding is incredibly interesting because, on the one hand, it can be extremely easy to manage. On the other hand, there’re a lot of ways where it can go wrong.
Before we get into the list of possible signature troubles, here’s an example of a well-branded email signature.
Clean layout, nice colors, all the information a client might need. You get the idea.
Get more ideas and email signature branding guidelines
Theoretically, it’s no big deal – you don’t really gain anything, but at least it’s not a broken email signature.
The problem is, without a signature, your emails are generic, rarely leave any lasting impression and give the feeling of talking to a bot. Each email sent is an opportunity you lose. You need to decide whether you can afford losing marketing opportunities every single day.
You might not realize this but breaking an email signature design is very easy.
Most noteworthy email signatures are built in HTML. The problem is email clients are not the same as browsers – some add their own formatting to all elements, others interpret code in their own unique way. Some still don’t support HTML, so they simply ignore all images and formatting.
The effects can take your breath away.
Leaving email signature branding to end-users often results in some interesting elements reaching your customers. Examples:
I’m all about a good sense of humor but not in professional communication. It might be funny to someone the first time they see it, but the second time you’ll get more cringes than smirks. And when it comes to disclaimers, they are still required in some cases, so it’s risky to replace them with some funny stuff.
Believe me, it’s better to leave email signature branding to your Marketing Team.
Branding is about trust. If you contact a company and every time you get a different experience, both when it comes to quality and visual experience, something feels wrong. No self-respecting brand wants that.
The saddest option. A must-have for companies that think of email signatures as those annoying thingies nobody ever looks at. Or for pure B2C companies who think that email is passe.
The policy method means that you write down what you expect of users in terms of email signatures. This option is a great unknown. It all depends on how you execute the policy, whether it contains all required information, how it’s written, what email clients are used and so on. It also depends heavily on whether employees care and have the skill to do everything you tell them to.
This one is interesting. In short, manual email signature management means that you get someone to set email signatures up for everyone. The politically correct term is delegation. In the old days, when people believed that IT only sits in the basement and watches as those LED lights blink, companies thought it’s a great idea to send the IT squad to set up email signatures for everyone. Nowadays, some of it can be done remotely, after getting IT and users to decide on a meeting time, or by breaking into users’ accounts.
It’s a bit like you’ve heard the word “management” but didn’t quite get what it means.
There are some DIY methods that let you manage email signatures for everyone without having to move as much as with the manual email signature management I mentioned above.
For example, there are scripts that set up email signatures for everyone in some email clients. Or there are ways to add an email signature automatically after an email is sent (e.g. Set up company-wide email signatures in Microsoft 365). Those methods ensure that each email is stamped with the signature template you set up, but are not limitation-free.
Finally, there are tools that let you manage email signature branding the right way.
Signature managers usually let you control branding for all email communication from one place. The most popular approach works like that:
One of the easiest ways to create a professional email signature design for a single person. You follow a few easy steps to create your own branded email signature and apply it manually in any email client. Makes it much easier to get a well-formatted, professional HTML email signature design.
It’s not a tool that offers email signature management, but it makes email signature branding a lot easier.
Perfect solution for organizations using Microsoft 365. Here’s what it can do:
Look at the video below to see why it’s a good idea to manage email signatures with CodeTwo.
Still not convinced? 9 out of 10 marketers* guarantee that when faced with good branding, clients behave something like this:
*And one of those 10 marketers recently got fired.
[Update]: This blog post was first published on July 13, 2017. It’s been updated to reflect the current steps required for a proper mail flow rule setup in Exchange Online.
Do your email signatures pile up at the bottom of your conversation threads? Well, I have bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that this is the default setup for Microsoft 365 / Office 365 email signatures. The mail flow rule responsible for appending email signatures can insert them at the very top or at the very bottom of the entire email thread. The good news is that there are ways to work around this. Let’s get right into the details.
Microsoft Outlook is the go-to email client for most businesses and enterprises. This is no surprise, as it has been around for decades and managed to become the ‘gold standard’ of this software category in the meantime. Outlook has evolved a lot since its first appearance, leading to its supposedly final form, “Outlook 365”. In this article, I’m going to quickly explain what Outlook 365 stands for and how to set up email signatures in this Microsoft-365-powered email client.
It might come as a bit of a surprise, but officially, there’s no such thing as “Outlook 365”. There are two Outlook versions which this name may relate to: Outlook for Microsoft 365 and Outlook on the web. Both come as a part of the Microsoft 365 subscription, which is probably the reason why so many users came to name them “Outlook 365”. This can be very confusing, especially since the name doesn’t explain whether the user means the app installed locally or the webmail version. The name stuck nonetheless and nowadays can be found all over the Internet, including tech community forums and specialist websites.
To be precise, Outlook for Microsoft 365 is the version of the app installed on desktop or laptop computers. It’s the most recent iteration, originating from a long line of apps included in Microsoft Office suites and standalone programs, so you might say it’s the longest known, as it brings to the table all the features and improvements implemented over the years.
Outlook on the web, on the other hand, is the webmail version of Outlook, allowing you to access your email account through your web browser. Besides being part of a Microsoft 365 subscription, it’s also available for organizations using on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 & 2019. By the way, the name “Outlook on the web” is being used interchangeably with “OWA”. The abbreviation actually stands for “Outlook Web App”, which was the official name of the app used with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 & 2010, formerly called “Outlook Web Access” in case of Microsoft Exchange Server versions older than 2010. The biggest difference in comparison to Outlook for Microsoft 365 is that you don’t have to install anything on your computer or mobile device to use Outlook on the web.
Learn more about the differences between Outlook versions on this Microsoft’s site
Now, let’s dive in and have a look at individual processes of setting up email signatures in Outlook for Microsoft 365 and Outlook on the web.
Follow the steps below to set up an email signature in the desktop Outlook 365:
Note: Another way to start configuring your email signatures is to go to File (on the ribbon) > Options. Next, in the Outlook Options window, select the Mail tab and click Signatures in the Compose messages section.
Note: The formatting tools offered in the Outlook signature editor are quite basic. If you wish to achieve a more sophisticated and polished design, you can use a free email signature generator to create an advanced signature template. Simply choose Outlook as the target email platform, select one of the many available templates, adjust it to your needs and there you go. Your signature is ready to be copied and pasted into the Outlook editor.
Note: If you didn’t select your signature as the default one, you will still be able to add it manually every time you write a new email. It will be available after clicking the Signature button in the Include group.
That’s all there is to it. If you wish to create more Outlook signatures, simply follow the steps from point 3 onwards. You can create as many of them as you need – they will appear on a list visible after clicking the aforementioned Signature button.
The steps required to configure email signatures in the ”Outlook 365” webmail client are a bit different than in case of the desktop app:
Note: If you wish to achieve a more refined appearance, you can use a free email signature generator with lots of advanced signature templates that you can fill in with all the necessary details and copy into the editor box in Outlook on the web.
Note: It is possible to create and use multiple signatures for a single mailbox – similarly to the Outlook desktop client. Just click the New signature button after you have saved your first signature to create another one.
Once you are done, save changes and close the settings window.
As you can see in the above guides, setting up a professional email signature is a fully manual process. From the company’s viewpoint, it comes with some limitations and risks:
Being aware of those limitations, you may want to change the way email signatures are managed in your organization. Instead of leaving this task to users, many companies decide to manage email signatures centrally.
Building and promoting a company’s brand is a continuous process and every employee interacting with customers or business partners needs to be seen as a brand ambassador. Email correspondence takes up a considerable part of that professional interaction, therefore email signatures should not be underestimated. They are a powerful way to convey the sender’s professionalism and tell the recipients whether the organization cares about its image.
Managing email signatures centrally ensures that they are kept under control and stay up-to-date, consistent in design and aesthetic and are personalized across the whole company. This way, email signatures can be carefully crafted (and implemented organization-wide) to send a strong message that helps the brand, promotes offers and supports the business.
It also allows for automation of a rather unexciting task, letting employees focus on their own work instead. Not to mention getting rid of issues connected to user carelessness or lack of technical skills.
Exchange Online allows for central management of email signatures and disclaimers for the entire Microsoft 365 organization. It is possible to set up email signatures and legal disclaimers, which are added to email messages that enter or leave your organization. To achieve this, it is necessary to create a mail flow rule (with the Append the disclaimer action specified) that adds the required information to email messages. And since mail flow rules may include many different conditions and exceptions, it is also possible to create separate signature templates for different departments or even specific users.
However, the process might turn out to be troublesome for someone doing this for the first time. That is why we’ve prepared a short video guide explaining:
Besides the Exchange admin center, it is also possible to achieve similar results using PowerShell and VBScript. The immediate drawback of these two methods is that the former only works for Outlook on the web (OWA) and the latter only for the desktop client.
Although those management methods are better than setting up all email clients separately, they are still not perfect. They come with a lot of limitations:
The above list is intended to highlight the constraints most commonly faced by businesses and as such is not exhaustive. Read this article to learn more about the limitations of native functionalities
While the above list seems a long one, overcoming all those limitations is easier than you might think. Although they cannot be fixed natively, a dedicated tool, such as CodeTwo Email Signatures 365, can solve all related issues and do much more for your Microsoft 365 email signatures.
The service reinvents handling email signatures in Microsoft 365 organizations:
See the product’s page to learn more and test the tool for free or watch the following short video to learn why companies choose our software:
Microsoft 365 lets you set up email signatures and disclaimers for the entire company. The setup process includes the native mail-flow rule mechanism and the Append Disclaimer option. As a result, your company can centrally manage message footers, legal disclaimers, and email signatures in Microsoft 365. The problem is, the process includes a few steps which aren’t exactly intuitive if you are setting them up for the first time.
That’s why we’ve created a step-by step video guide, which shows you how to easily set up email signatures in the new Exchange admin center.
And if you’d like to learn more about central management of email signatures in Microsoft 365, read on.
Mail flow rules used to set up an organization-wide email signatures are applied to messages when they are sent from your Microsoft 365 organization. Here’s how it works in practice:
The video shows how to add a unified email signature to all emails, but you can adapt the solution to your needs. Since mail flow rules include many different conditions and exceptions, you can use them to create different signature templates for various teams or even specific users.
So, how is this better than letting users set up email signatures on their own?
Building and promoting your brand is a continuous process. Each interaction with your customers, leads or partners is an opportunity to promote your products and services or simply make a good impression. Unifying your email signatures helps you make sure that no such opportunity is lost due to user carelessness or lack of technical skills.
Learn more about the potential of your email signatures
Unless you leave the management of email signatures to your Marketing or Communications Team, you will not achieve consistent results. Some users will stray from the template you provide, while others will not set up the signature at all. There will also be those who encounter various technical problems during setup.
And even if all users manage to create their email signatures successfully, they will remain in charge of keeping everything up to date and updating them whenever needed. As a result, manual email signature setup becomes a major, extremely time-consuming distraction. Learn more
Managing email signatures in Microsoft 365 centrally allows you to turn every user into a brand ambassador. It also allows you to automate a rather uninteresting task, letting your employees focus on their own work instead.
Using mail flow rules to manage email signatures and disclaimers is better than letting users handle them on their own. The problem is, using mail flow rules to manage email signatures is not the perfect solution. There are numerous limitations of this native mechanism, for example:
Read more about those limitations
You can overcome the native Microsoft 365 limitations and do much more by managing your email signatures via a dedicated service such as CodeTwo Email Signatures 365. See the product’s page to learn more and test the service for free or watch this short video to learn why companies choose our software:
See also:
Email signature management – sounds a bit technical. Simply speaking, it is a perfect way to make sure every email sent outside the company is professionally branded and gets just the right promotional content. The problem is that corporate identity, marketing campaigns, promotional banners – those aspects are typically handled by the marketing team. At the same time, Microsoft 365 management, by default, is an IT-handled task. Global email signatures fall into this category. How is this a problem? Normally, central email signature management means that either:
That is why I would like to present a simple method to manage Microsoft 365 signatures behind IT’s back. Don’t worry, although the title sounds a bit like a hacking tutorial, there is no nefarious activity included. In fact, it is a win-win situation for both the marketing and IT team. The solution is defining access rights to the Microsoft 365 email signature tool. But before showing you how it should be done, I’ll first show you how the Microsoft 365 signature management looks like when the problematic, native, approach is taken.
Email signatures have always been there, along with problems connected with using them. Ensuring that all users have the same signature and disclaimer template requires some effort. Fortunately, Exchange 2010 enables central management of signatures and disclaimers. This option makes the task of unifying signatures much easier. However, you have to keep in mind that you cannot do everything using native tools only. Here is the list of drawbacks that Exchange 2010 centrally managed signatures have:
[Update]: This article was updated on March 23, 2021
In this article I discuss how to work with email signatures in the Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) webmail client. To learn how to set up server-level email signatures for an entire Microsoft 365 organization see this article.
1. Open your Outlook on the web either by clicking the Outlook App in your Office 365 home page, or by using this direct link.
2. Click the Gear icon in the upper-right corner and scroll down to select View all Outlook settings.
