The design phase of an email signature program is of critical importance, not only by way of the initial project’s success but in addition because oversights/mistakes at this stage can have serious opposed consequences down the road.
On the low end of the continuum, these can manifest as increased complexity and difficulty in managing this system, and on the high end, in an outright inability so as to add features on account of database “dead-ends”…
A mess of things should be considered when designing an email signature program – things akin to:
- Should users be allowed to edit their signatures?
- Should a more streamlined signature be utilized when replying to messages?
- How will the signature appear when displayed in dark mode?
- Should there be an option to incorporate the user’s headshots?
- Which social media platforms needs to be featured?
- How will the “plain-text” version of the signature be prepared and installed?
- Which data fields needs to be mandatory and which of them needs to be optional?
- What’s required to create a visually outstanding, but in addition reliable, design?
- and plenty of more…
It’s easy to get so wrapped up within the near-term project requirements that the long-term implications are missed. As good as your program could also be on day one, if it becomes increasingly difficult to administer over time it’s possible you’ll end up needing to return to the drafting board to begin over. So, how can the down-the-road “gotcha” problems be avoided?
These two easy rules will prevent a program from getting out of hand:
- Avoid excessive “user-specific” customization.
- To the extent possible, minimize the variety of templates you’ll have to support.
Avoiding excessive “user-specific” customization can be discussed in a future post, here we’ll give attention to minimizing the variety of templates in use.
Avoid Unnecessary Templates
Generally speaking, the quickest and easiest approach to satisfying diverse requirements is thru the development of a recent template option – little thought is required, just clone your existing template, add (or remove), some content options, and voila, job done! Creating two “single purpose” templates is normally the quickest way of meeting dual requirements.
Take heed though, you’re prone to pay repeatedly over, down the road, for this quick shortcut taken today.
Why? Because your email signature program may have a lifespan measured in years, and over these years, maintenance can be required. This maintenance can tackle many forms:
- Changes to branding – recent logo/colours.
- Changes to social media presence – a call to remove Twitter, etc.
- Changes inside social media presence – Twitter becomes X, and Instagram updates its icon.
- Technical changes to email – “dark mode” emerges / O365 web drops support of “nowrap”.
- Changing legal requirements – corporate attorneys require updated confidentiality language in your signatures.
- Changing external landscape – fax becomes obsolete, online meeting scheduling becomes ubiquitous.
- And many, many, others…
While these changes are generally easy to execute, they require a number of touchpoints on every template in use. So, when you’ve built your program around a minimal variety of multi-function templates, you’re golden. Conversely, when you’ve allowed your template library to grow unnecessarily large and end up needing to update ten or twenty different templates, even the smallest of changes can develop into aggravating. Larger changes, that require testing, can develop into downright daunting.
Think “Swiss Army Knife”
To minimize future maintenance efforts, use the “Swiss Army Knife” approach – create one (or simply just a few), massively flexible, template(s) to accommodate all user requirements. This will be done by providing users with a set of options in whatever signature configuration portal you utilize. These typically cover items akin to:
- Inclusion of a headshot
- Location
- Logo (if the signature program is for multiple brands)
- User-customized social media links
Let’s take a take a look at just a few of those, starting with a multi-brand example:
In this case, a substantial amount of programming went into the event of a single drop-down menu to regulate not only the brand but in addition the font color of the user’s name, phone number labels, linked text, and the colour of the social media icons. The results of that is that what would have normally been six templates to keep up, has now develop into one.
Because this signature program required an option for users to incorporate either an oblong or round headshot, this was programmed into one template (on the configuration level), relatively than splitting the template into two:
Regarding locations, there are multiple approaches that will be used – often the best is to only provide fields for users to enter their location – street, suite #, city, state, and zip code. However, this results in potential inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and sometimes just generally bad data entry (caps lock was left on, Los Angeles is entered as “LA”, etc.). To create the most effective results, it’s best to pre-code the address information for the user to pick out from, relatively than asking them to type it in themselves. This is best done as a “locations” feature within the signature configurator (relatively than creating and having to keep up multiple templates).
This company has 50+ locations, so clearly the menu select feature is smart in comparison with the choice of a particular template for every location.
In some cases, it’s possible you’ll find that individual users have to feature their very own social media, relatively than to company’s social media (very true in the actual estate industry). By constructing options into the template, this will be completed without the necessity for a customized template for every user.
The 4 screenshots above illustrate using a single template, covering all of the needs of a fancy signature specification for a multi-brand, multi-state, mortgage broker. While the initial programming required to establish a template like that is considerably more complicated, the down-the-road maintenance is massively simplified. This pays off in 3 ways:
- Less time is required for maintenance tasks.
- Less stress every time template maintenance is required.
- Reduced possibilities of mistakes (and the opposed impact they’ve on users).
Unless you specifically give it some thought, it’s likely that you simply won’t notice the upside of minimizing the variety of templates in your program. Conversely though, when you allow your template library to grow unnecessarily large, you’ll absolutely notice the downside – over and all over again!
If you’re undecided learn how to construct this kind of flexibility into your program, using an email signature service like Dynasend is a straightforward method to be sure that the platform you’re providing is designed for efficiency, stress-free, and maintainability. The Digital Agency Network’s Email Marketing Blog can be an ideal resource for locating tips about learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your email signature program.
Read the complete article here
