Email Signatures: Seven Cases for Change Management

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
Email signatures are an internal communications tool perfectly suited to change management. Illustrated in seven concrete examples.

Any significant change presents a challenge for a business. It's therefore a matter of building a complete strategy with a dedicated timetable and guiding teams through change using well-designed communication.

Email signatures can be a powerful ally for change management—especially since the most advanced solutions (like Letsignit) allow you to create signatures specifically for internal recipients. This makes email signature an additional channel for internal communications, and very useful when a company needs to transition. This is because the signature offers real, editorialized, and visually interesting content that's rich in information. All you need to do is include a CTA directing to a web page—perfect for reaching employees. Here are a few examples of messages that can be presented this way.

Practical Case #1: Announce a webinar to initiate change

Change management is part of a long-term reflection and is deployed through a carefully-planned strategy. To share this vision and convince employees of its relevance, it may be a good idea to organize a kick-off in the form of a webinar. This brings all the company's forces together presents them with the new direction, and outlines the reasons for this choice, the steps that will take place, employee expectations, and support. It's also the occasion to answer questions and reassure in the event of possible objections.

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Practical Case #2: Invitation to progress meetings

Progress meetings are essential to support the change while maintaining team motivation. If announced in advance via email signature, they'll be clearly visible, with objectives known in advancerealistic, clear, and achievable. Ideal for motivating employees to attend!

From Microsoft Teams to Zoom, there's no shortage of solutions for organizing these steps easily at a low cost. Once the platform has been chosen, the content will need to be refined: PowerPoint presentation, live demonstration, participatory workshops, and more. The chosen format will depend on the objective.

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Practical Case #3: Announce training sessions

Supporting employees' skill development, training them on new tools and processes, explaining all the stages of a project, presenting a dedicated space, but also dispelling fears and responding to doubts... Training and change management go hand in hand. The ideal: alternate collective sessions (the whole company watches a presentation) and small-group workshops. This is a big task, but a necessary one to accelerate the transition and changes undertaken.

Announcing this type of training via email signature also helps include remote employees in the company's transformation and can provide them with practical, ready-to-use tips and tricks.

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Practical Case #4: Reminders for important deadlines

Going live on a new platform, switching from one solution to another, relocating teams, launching a new public offer... Certain dates should be marked with a milestone. Email signatures help all employees stay on the same page. Those responsible for the transformation can share scheduled, understandable, and quantified objectives. Removing doubts and dispelling uncertainties helps all employees move in the right direction.

Questions about timing? Just open your email for the answer.

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Practical Case #5: Publish a poll

Collecting feedback is a prerequisite for success to ensure that employees embrace change and have the means to adapt to the new guidelines.

Satisfaction, understanding, specific questions: regular internal surveys provide valuable information and help you tailor a tool's functionality or improve your program based on feedback. There's no need to be too detailed. Sometimes, this can be done in one question ("Are you satisfied with the implementation of our new ERP? YES/NO").

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Practical Case #6: Celebrate milestones…

There's nothing like quick results to transform a business, so it’s useful for change managers to determine intermediate objectives and then announce, via email signatures, that they have been achieved.

Celebrating big and small victories encourages everyone to realize that change is possible for the team and company, and that progress can continue successfully. From preparing for deployment to analyzing results, each element can be a valuable contribution to the project's success over time.

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Practical Case #7: ...And thank team members

Successful turnaround, completed process, customer satisfaction with the new business proposal... Don't hesitate to acknowledge and show appreciation for team members' efforts. If they feel valued and recognized, they will be more likely to maintain their commitment and motivation.

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Companies can make use of a consistent email signature reserved for internal recipients, which is particularly useful in times of change. A simple banner to promote a change? Welcome to the last tool you'll need.

Discover Letsignit

Sources:
https://www.cadre-dirigeant-magazine.com/manager/transformation-digitale-signature-mail-federer-collaborateurs/
https://www.hbrfrance.fr/chroniques-experts/2017/02/14489-conduite-changement-6-conseils-eviter-saturation-de-vos-collaborateurs/
https://solutions.lesechos.fr/equipe-management/c/mener-a-bien-la-conduite-du-changement-en-entreprise-23097/
https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/conduite-du-changement-5-idees-pour-ameliorer-votre-centre-de-contacts-133131
https://gymnasedumanagement.com/la-conduite-du-changement/

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Acquisition at Letsignit! Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the profitability of acquisition channels: SEO, SEA, SMA, SMO... Amandine is also one of the pillars of Marketing at Letsignit! For more than 5 years, she has been participating in and initiating marketing projects and campaigns that systematically reflect her vision, writing style, and creativity (which can also be seen in all of her colorful outfits that brighten up the day of everyone she meets).
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.

Frequently
asked questions

1

Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2

Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3

Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4

Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5

What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6

Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7

Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8

Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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