Time and again, I see too many businesses overlooking their email signatures when communicating with customers. You might think that this small detail at the end of every email you send is insignificant. But just think about it — it’s at the end of every email you send.

And with 310 billion emails expected to be sent and received every day in 2021, you want your emails to stand out from the crowd and make a lasting impression.

That’s why I’m going to convince you that your email signature is the handiest tool you have for boosting customer satisfaction.

#1 Offers easy access to important information

Nowadays, everyone is so busy, we simply don’t have time to trawl websites looking for contact details. Your email signature helps here by acting as a ‘one-stop shop’ for all key contact information and important links.

Since social media is a great place for announcing company news and your latest offers, I’d always recommend you embed your professional social media links into your email signature. It’s an easy way to build connections while driving brand loyalty.

Email signatures are not only excellent for finding contact info; they’re also a convenient way of directing customers to potential deals, news, or unique landing pages.

They’re a subtle way of showing off, without bragging too much…

#2 Gives your customers a voice

If you don’t know what your customers like, how can you expect your business to be successful? Customer feedback is the quickest way to track satisfaction and improve your services.

Email signatures give people the opportunity to leave reviews, ask questions, and raise concerns simply by adding a couple of extra features. Think about adding links to one-click customer surveys, or simple traffic light indicators to gain valuable insight into how well you’re doing.

Customers feel more valued if you allow them to easily have their say.

#3 Lets your personality shine

Consumers are craving more human connection thanks to over a year of reduced social contact.

While emails will never replace good old-fashioned face-to-face chats, you can still create personalized and memorable exchanges through email signatures.

Inject personality into your signatures through clever design. Look at fonts, color schemes, and imagery that reflect your brand’s values.

Putting a face to a name also goes a long way, so think about adding a headshot photo. Why not go that one step further and use your headshot to link back to your company’s ‘Meet the Team’ page?

Remember to err on the side of caution though. While it might seem fun to use your high school yearbook photo for your headshot, complete with an unfortunate hairstyle, any images must really reflect the professional nature of your company.

#4 Builds a consistent brand experience

When it comes to building trust and authority as a brand, uniformity is key.

Think back to a time when you experienced exceptional customer service but then encountered poor quality service from the same company at a later date. How did this alter your impression of that business? It’s likely you felt disappointed and perhaps were even put off from returning to them.

After all, a business is only as good as its lowest common denominator.

The same is true for email signatures; all business emails should be uniform to ensure a professional and consistent brand image.

This means if you do choose to include headshots of your staff, they need to have the same background, filter (black and white is easiest), and please, no weird poses!

Having said that, different departments may wish to tailor their email signatures for legal or marketing purposes. Manually changing each email signature is not only time-consuming and costly but also puts businesses at risk of undermining their brand image.

This is where companies can benefit from using a streamlined centralized solution to easily personalize email signatures without compromising on brand consistency.

#5 Focuses on user experience

Frankly, there’s no excuse for not optimizing your emails, and today, mobile optimization is a must.

No longer chained to the desk, the modern worker can access their emails remotely, with 1.7 billion users checking emails on their mobiles, almost double those that access emails via desktop.

It’s a real pet peeve of mine to open an email on my phone that was clearly designed for desktop, and I’m not alone; 42% of consumers admit they would delete an email that wasn’t optimized for mobiles, meaning your campaign’s engagement rate could be slashed in half instantly.

The same goes for email signatures — a disorganized design that’s not optimized for different devices will only frustrate users and make it difficult for customers to see important information.

Now it’s time to put things into practice. Step up your email game by no longer leaving your email signature as just an afterthought — your customers will thank you for it.

Future-proofing your business isn’t about tech — it’s about these 3 key elements

2020 offered valuable lessons about how and why technology business leaders need to future-proof their business models — whether we liked it or not. The pandemic sent normal operations out the window and forced companies to take huge leaps forward in adopting and advancing new technology.

Now, it’s time to harness the lessons learned from this pivotal year to create lasting changes to strategies and infrastructure.

During the pandemic, I worked closely with chief nursing officers and healthcare technologists to implement virtual care solutions. As hospitals scrambled to keep up with an unprecedented number of patients and medical staff tried to protect themselves and others from a virus we knew very little about, I watched leaders implement new solutions in a high-stakes environment.

As I’ve observed, I’ve gleaned several lessons about how organizations can look forward and leverage technology to set themselves up for success in the future — whatever it might hold.

Here’s what you, as a technology business leader, need to know to create a truly future-proof business model:

1. Future-proofing doesn’t have to be complicated

The idea of future-proofing might sound intimidating to many because it’s wrapped in troubling notions about long-term commitments. Many leaders hear “future-proof” and envision committing to an entire suite of technology that they’ll have to keep around forever. They think they won’t be able to change the tech to accommodate new business needs, but that simply isn’t true.

There’s really no such thing as a future-proof piece of hardware or software. (Does anyone still own a PalmPilot?) All tech eventually becomes obsolete, which is one reason only about 30% of digital transformations are actually successful.

So what is future-proofing really ? Future-proofing is not about adopting any specific piece of technology. It’s about creating an evergreen business model supported by infrastructure that will not need to be changed significantly as the technology advances.

Thankfully, the basis of a future-proof platform only has two requirements: power and a high-speed internet connection in every room.

Once you have that, you don’t have to be stuck with any specific piece of tech forever. The software should be a service that can evolve, and the hardware shouldn’t be so expensive that it can’t be updated, upgraded, or replaced over time.

2. You’re subscribing to a strategy — not a piece of technology

When organizations set their sights on digital transformation, too often, they become fixated on point solutions rather than platforms or strategies. A point solution is a device; a platform has the ability to add on other components as necessary. This is where I find many organizations falter.

During the pandemic, for instance, I saw healthcare organizations using iPads for virtual care to minimize patient contact. While iPads work great as a stopgap measure, consumer technologies have limitations in a hospital setting.

FaceTime on an iPad is a point solution. What hospitals really need is a virtual-care strategy and a care delivery platform that addresses the entire continuum of healthcare. Deploying iPads is like installing a Ring doorbell when you really need a comprehensive, integrated security system.

If hospitals want virtual clinical services to be a permanent component of bedside care, they have to invest in strategies that drive permanent change. In addition to perfecting their virtual bedside care, they have to be the best place for their nurses to work, they must be the hospital of choice for patients, and all improvements must help them outperform their financial goals. Then they need the platform that best supports that strategy.

These concepts have direct parallels in the wider technology business space. Future-proofing efforts must make work more efficient for employees. The company must be an attractive home for top talent, and business innovations must help the company become more competitive.

3. Future-proofing business strategies must revolve around employee concerns

The two most important stakeholders in any organization are your employees and your customers — in that order. In a world of online reviews, it’s easy to become fixated on your customers and forget about your people. But if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.

The situation in healthcare is a little different, of course. Nurses will take care of patients no matter what. I’ve seen that they will make the best of whatever tools they’re given to provide the highest possible level of care, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to burnout or stress. No one is.

In a recent study , Gartner found that moderately stressed employees underperform by about 5%. This costs the average company tens of millions each year. In 2019, employees saw, on average, 12 changes in their day-to-day work. Now consider how many changes they saw in 2020 and the massive amount of stress essential workers experienced.

Change fatigue can create stress, so any future-proofing efforts should answer the question, “What’s in it for my employees?” Addressing their concerns goes a long way toward building trust and cohesion, which are two key factors in combating employee fatigue and paving the way for change.

The new way of doing things has to be better than the old way — for your employees and your customers. One trend I’m seeing in hospitals and tech companies is a move toward using a combination of in-person and virtual staff. This is effective because employees and customers are better off with a hybrid of physical and virtual services.

Now that more than a year has passed since the beginning of the pandemic, you’ve hopefully had a chance to catch your breath and reevaluate. This is the year when you take what you learned through hard times and use those lessons to create lasting change in your organization.

At its core, future-proofing your business model means laying the groundwork for adaptability. It means improving operations for your employees and your customers — now and in the future.

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