BrandQuantum - NEWS #Email banners

Employer branding made easy with BrandMail

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 14:13:15 -0500

Employer Branding is growing in importance across the globe, particularly as companies are scrambling to attract and retain the best talent. With remote working being made a reality, in many instances, companies are competing for skills from a global talent pool and offering attractive packages that make it hard for companies to compete. However, companies that have a strong employer brand are likely to win the war for talent in the long run as they offer great employee experiences and create brand ambassadors out of their staff.

To deliver your brand internally, email which is a widely used business tool for internal and external communication can be used to effectively deliver a consistent brand that resonates with employees and contributes to the brand experience. Here are some tips to incorporate your brand into employee emails.

Tip 1: Email signatures are important

Email signatures can be an effective branding tool, building trust amongst recipients. So why wouldn’t you include this valuable piece of branding in your employee branding? Including professionally branded email signatures on internal emails reinforces the brand amongst employees, creating a sense of pride and belonging to the brand. By using an email signature management tool, emails delivered across the company will be on brand and carry the correct email signature every time.

Tip 2: Use email banners to drive employer branding

Email banners provide a platform to highlight the latest campaigns the company is running and to showcase the company’s successes. As an important audience to your company, emails sent internally to your employees should include these banners as much as emails to your customers should. While email banners aid in building the brand it also empowers employees with knowledge about campaigns that the company is running so that they are better equipped to assist customers with queries and can even proactively share information about the latest campaigns with customers.

Tip 3: Rate your employee experiences and satisfaction levels regularly

It is important to measure the pulse of your organisation from the inside as much as it is to measure customer satisfaction levels. Use the BrandMail Rate My Service tools to measure your employee morale, engagement levels and employee experiences throughout the year and determine what is working well and identify areas for improvement.

Tip 4: Use your digital business card as a branding tool

Digital business cards provide a great opportunity to reinforce your brand and to let your employees experience your brand. With BrandMail’s BrandMe page, employee photos can be included along with the brand elements such as the logo, creating an affiliation to the brand for every employee across the company. Further, these digital business cards enable employees to see other employees’ information such as contact details, designation and qualifications, creating a sense of community and pride amongst employees and helping to increase brand awareness and create brand ambassadors for the company. Each BrandMe page carries a unique QR code, making it easy to share and download the information carried in the digital business card.

It is important that your employees trust your brand and are loyal to your brand. As such, while employer branding requires extensive planning and ongoing initiatives to build the brand, email provides a cost-effective tool that can be added to the mix to improve employer branding amongst employees, helping to drive employee retention rates and create brand ambassadors that engage your customers in every interaction. By using an email signature management tool, emails delivered across the company will be on brand and carry the correct email signature, banners, surveys and digital business card every time to enhance your employee experience.

Tips to freshen up your brand this spring

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 08:55:21 -0500

The Southern Hemisphere is enjoying the site of new buds and brightly coloured blossoms as the first signs of spring emerge. This signals the time to spring clean, declutter and reorganise. Use this season to breathe new life into your brand, update your brand elements and discard outdated branded materials. See our tips below to help you through the process of freshening up your brand:

Tip1: Check your letterheads

Outdated letterheads can often float around an organisation without being noticed. Yet in a desperate attempt to send an urgent letter out, these letterheads often end up resurfacing, found in old emails or discovered on individual desktops before appearing in your customer’s hands or inbox.

To prevent letterheads from being sent out with the logo or previous address and telephone number or worse yet, with the former director’s details and no sign of the new director’s details, go through your shared folders and files and remove all these old letterheads.

It is also valuable to check that the current letterhead has the correct logo, make sure it is in the right position on the page and prints out correctly, and check and recheck the contact details and director’s information. Once you are happy with the letterhead, share it with the organisation to ensure that all staff have access to the latest version of the company letterhead and other divisional letterheads.

Tip 2: Revive your email signatures

Approximately 333.2 billion emails are sent daily. These are not all necessarily sent from your company but you wouldn’t want your email to get lost in the crowd. While email signatures carry valuable contact information that recipients may appreciate, they also provide an ideal branding platform to show off your brand. Email signatures also need to be given a fresh new look to continue to grab your recipient’s attention and reinforce your brand in every email correspondence your employees have with your customers. Once you’ve refreshed your company email signature, remember to share it across the organisation and ensure that every staff member is using the same version of the email signature to drive brand consistency.

Tip 3: Clean up your PowerPoint slide decks

PowerPoint decks have an uncanny ability to increase in slide numbers over time. Every employee that has worked on the company presentation slides, has added their own personal touch and flair to provide relevant and up-to-date information to the audience. Often these decks start to carry too much information and the pertinent points get lost. Not to mention that pretty pictures that don’t resemble the brand and strange fonts get added to give the presentation more visual appeal.

Spend some time going through the slides and determine what information is important and what information can be deleted without losing valuable insight. Check the font, font colour and font size across all the slides to ensure brand consistency and remove any images that do not align with the brand. Once the deck is up-to-date, give employees access to the latest versions of the slide decks and remove any former versions that are saved in share drives or folders.

Tip 4: Declutter your templates and documents

Templates and documents can often get tampered with and changed throughout the year. Spend some time going through the sales decks, proposal templates, contracts and other marketing materials and documents to ensure that they are aligned to the brand. Check brand elements from the logo to the font and make sure the font type, colour and sizes are correctly used across all templates and documents.

In addition to checking the brand elements, look for any outdated versions of the company templates and documents and remove them from share folders to prevent employees from accessing and using them in future.Maintaining branded materials is a time-intensive process but it is necessary to ensure brand consistency in all customer correspondence and should be done regularly.

With BrandOffice company documents, templates, presentations and spreadsheets can be compiled, modified and saved centrally before sharing them across the organisation to be accessed via the BrandMail Ribbon in Word, PowerPoint and Excel. With BrandOffice, only the most up-to-date templates and content is available to employees, and it includes added security features such as content locking for specific content parts while expiry dates, audit logs and content owners ensure governance and compliance.

BrandMail helps companies to deliver consistently branded emails across email platforms carrying tamperproof email signatures that link to fully customisable digital business cards. BrandMail allows brand teams to centrally manage the complete email template, including body font, colour, size and colour theme across multiple brands and shared mailboxes.

By using an email signature and document management tool, branding teams can manage their brands centrally and empower employees to deliver a consistent brand, improve customer experiences and help improve brand recognition and build brand trust.

SME TECH GURU | Sustainable technology: small changes for conscious living

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 02:16:01 -0500

Article first published on smetechguru.co.za on 22 April 2022, written by Paula Sartini

We rely on technology daily to improve our lives and workplace efficiencies yet these same technologies have an impact on our environment. Many of the devices we use today from laptops to mobile phones rely on resources and energy that contribute to increasing our carbon footprint and waste.

It is estimated that the carbon footprint of our devices, the internet and the systems supporting them account for approximately 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, similar to the amount produced by the airline industry. Further, these emissions are predicted to double by 2025 unless we do something about it. We can all make small changes to limit the impact of the technologies we use on the environment and work towards more conscious living.

The amount of time spent on electronic devices from laptops to mobile phones all adds up. For example, a study conducted by OVO Energy[2] explains that an email sent with an attachment is estimated to use the equivalent of 50g of carbon dioxide. If you consider that approximately 4.9 billion[3] people have access to the internet and thereby email, the carbon usage of all emails sent by these individuals adds up. According to OVO Energy, if each email user in the UK sent one less unnecessary email daily, it would reduce carbon emissions by 16 433 tonnes which is equivalent to 81 152 flights from London Heathrow to Madrid.

To help reduce our carbon footprint, here are a few tips that we can use to make a difference to our planet together:

Sending smaller emails can reduce your carbon footprint

While sending emails may not be on the top of the list as a key contributor to CO2 emissions, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at the Environment Centre at Lancaster University, computers use energy when you type up the email, when you hit send they move to a network and then when you store the email to a data centre that uses a lot of energy[4]. Based on this process the average carbon footprint of an email can be anywhere from 0.03g CO2e to 26g CO2e depending on the time taken to draft the email and the content included in the email from the body copy to the images.

Using predeveloping content to draft the email could save time in writing the email copy. By ensuring that the correct email content and attachments are sent in the first email, it prevents the need to send several emails about the same issue to the same person, making a difference in reducing the number of emails sent daily from 333.2 billion around the world and minimising the impact on the environment.

Send only the attachments you need to send

Emails containing attachments can release up to 50g of CO2e. By limiting the number of attachments that are sent via email, individuals and companies alike can make a difference in their carbon footprint.

This is supported by a study conducted by The Shift Project[5] that found that exchanging office documents on a shared platform, rather than emailing them across the organisation led to a 40% annual reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions. In addition to modifying how the files are shared, the number of versions of documents archived was also reduced, thereby reducing the need for increased storage on the servers thereby reducing the impact on the environment.

By giving employees easy access to the latest versions of predeveloped content, brand resources and documents that are managed centrally, employees will no longer find it necessary to save various versions of documents or email multiple versions of documents to colleagues that are struggling to find the right version, thereby minimising the impact on the environment.

Reduce the size of images used in your emails

Email signatures and banners often aim to be eye-catching and reinforce the brand, using logos and images to achieve this. However, in addition to adding to the large size of emails before the body content has even been added, these emails can be blocked by recipient servers, resulting in additional emails needing to be sent. This has a knock-on effect on increasing the carbon footprint of an email.

Companies can reduce the size of emails by lowering the resolution of images used in banners and even compressing the size of the images used in email signatures without compromising the quality of the branding. In doing this, it will reduce the size of the emails and help move a step closer to reducing CO2 emissions.

Today we all need to make changes to the ways we use technology if we are to lower the impact on the environment and help our planet. By making small changes to the emails we send and store, we are already on a path to helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the technology we use daily to improve efficiencies and our lives. Let’s make a change together. To help employees achieve this, software solutions, such as BrandMail, should be used to help eliminate the need to store documents and content unnecessarily, send documents to colleagues that can be accessed centrally, and spend time developing content that is frequently used. At the same time every email should carry beautifully branded and functional email signatures and eye catching banners that don’t add to the size of the email. In doing this, employees will be able to reduce their carbon footprint one email at a time.

BrandQuantum develops software solutions to help companies deliver compliant customer communications and documents. The tamperproof email signatures that are sent out with every single email via Microsoft Outlook have built-in verification tools to give customers added peace of mind that your company emails are authentic. The BrandOffice solution offers permission control to company documents so that only those employees that need access to your documents have it. In addition, access to company documentation and templates is tracked and audited to give companies line of site of document usage and overall documentation compliance.

TECHSMART | Sustainable technology: small changes for conscious living

Sun, 14 Aug 2022 06:38:22 -0500

Article first published on techsmart.co.za on 21 April 2022, written by Paula Sartini

The amount of time spent on electronic devices from laptops to mobile phones all adds up. For example, a study conducted by OVO Energy explains that an email sent with an attachment is estimated to use the equivalent of 50g of carbon dioxide. If you consider that approximately 4.9 billion people have access to the internet and thereby email, the carbon usage of all emails sent by these individuals adds up. According to OVO Energy, if each email user in the UK sent one less unnecessary email daily, it would reduce carbon emissions by 16 433 tonnes which is equivalent to 81 152 flights from London Heathrow to Madrid.

Sending smaller emails can reduce your carbon footprint

While sending emails may not be on the top of the list as a key contributor to CO2 emissions, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at the Environment Centre at Lancaster University, computers use energy when you type up the email, when you hit send they move to a network and then when you store the email to a data centre that uses a lot of energy. Based on this process the average carbon footprint of an email can be anywhere from 0.03g CO2e to 26g CO2e depending on the time taken to draft the email and the content included in the email from the body copy to the images.

Send only the attachments you need to send

This is supported by a study conducted by The Shift Project that found that exchanging office documents on a shared platform, rather than emailing them across the organisation led to a 40% annual reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions. In addition to modifying how the files are shared, the number of versions of documents archived was also reduced, thereby reducing the need for increased storage on the servers thereby reducing the impact on the environment.

Reduce the size of images used in your emails

Today we all need to make changes to the ways we use technology if we are to lower the impact on the environment and help our planet. By making small changes to the emails we send and store, we are already on a path to helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the technology we use daily to improve efficiencies and our lives. Let's make a change together. To help employees achieve this, software solutions, such as BrandMail, should be used to help eliminate the need to store documents and content unnecessarily, send documents to colleagues that can be accessed centrally, and spend time developing content that is frequently used. At the same time every email should carry beautifully branded and functional email signatures and eye catching banners that don’t add to the size of the email. In doing this, employees will be able to reduce their carbon footprint one email at a time.

Sustainable technology: Small changes for conscious living

Sun, 15 May 2022 07:45:09 -0500

We rely on technology daily to improve our lives and workplace efficiencies, yet these same technologies have an impact on our environment. Many of the devices we use today from laptops to mobile phones rely on resources and energy that contribute to increasing our carbon footprint and waste.

It is estimated that the carbon footprint of our devices, the internet and the systems supporting them account for approximately 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, similar to the amount produced by the airline industry . Further, these emissions are predicted to double by 2025 unless we do something about it. We can all make small changes to limit the impact of the technologies we use on the environment and work towards more conscious living.

To help reduce our carbon footprint, here are a few tips that we can use to make a difference to our planet together:

Sending smaller emails can reduce your carbon footprint

While sending emails may not be on the top of the list as a key contributor to CO2 emissions, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at the Environment Centre at Lancaster University, computers use energy when you type up the email, when you hit send they move to a network and then when you store the email to a data centre that uses a lot of energy. Based on this process the average carbon footprint of an email can be anywhere from 0.03g CO2e to 26g CO2e depending on the time taken to draft the email and the content included in the email from the body copy to the images.

Send only the attachments you need to send

Reduce the size of images used in your emails

Today we all need to make changes to the ways we use technology if we are to lower the impact on the environment and help our planet. By making small changes to the emails we send and store, we are already on a path to helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the technology we use daily to improve efficiencies and our lives. Let's make a change together. To help employees achieve this, software solutions, such as BrandMail, should be used to help eliminate the need to store documents and content unnecessarily, send documents to colleagues that can be accessed centrally, and spend time developing content that is frequently used. At the same time every email should carry beautifully branded and functional email signatures and eye catching banners that don’t add to the size of the email. In doing this, employees will be able to reduce their carbon footprint one email at a time.

BrandQuantum announces Dynamics E.V. Sponsorship for email signature consistency

Sat, 07 May 2022 14:38:57 -0500

BrandQuantum sponsors BrandMail Web to Dynamics E.V. to deliver consistent email signatures

BrandQuantum is delighted to partner with Dynamics E.V., Formula Student Team of the OTH Regensburg, by sponsoring its email branding software solution BrandMail Web, to help the university deliver consistently branded emails.

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, “Brand consistency is key to reinforcing a company’s brand values, establishing a relationship of trust, and meeting customer expectations. In the case of Dynamics E.V., brand consistency is fundamental to its ability to gain support and funding from the community as well as attract new students to the university.”

Jakob Nirsch l, sub team leader sponsorship at Dynamics E.V., says, “When the Covid-19 pandemic hit we needed to move our business online, introducing Teams and email to our students and team members. As we didn’t have an email signature, I also needed to find a sponsor that would be able to offer an easy-to-use solution for Webmail. I was delighted when BrandQuantum responded to my request for sponsorship within five minutes of sending the email.”

“Since the first email response from BrandQuantum to the initial meeting and the subsequent BrandMail Web solution roll-out, we have thoroughly enjoyed our interaction with the team. Not only was BrandMail Web quick and easy to implement and use across the company, but the email signatures also look great and the animated banners are eye-catching and getting a lot of attention from our recipients.

“We believe that the work that Dynamics E.V. does for the community is invaluable and we are thrilled that we can assist the organisation in delivering consistently branded emails which are so important in helping the university to gain trust and support from its sponsors and attract new students,” concludes Sartini.

More about BrandMail

BrandQuantum achieves Microsoft IP Co-Sell status

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 07:19:35 -0500

BrandQuantum, a South African-based software company that delivers a cloud-based, secure and modular platform to help companies achieve brand consistency across all Microsoft programmes, has today announced that it has achieved Microsoft IP Co-Sell status. In addition to this, BrandMail is a Microsoft Preferred Solution, which is identified by the Preferred Solutions Badge in the Microsoft AppSource, which means that it has been certified according to specific criteria and has been vetted against controls derived from leading industry standard frameworks, to ensure that strong security and compliance practices are in place to protect customer data.

Microsoft IP Co-Sell is an initiative that allows eligible partners to reach more customers and accelerate the extent of their products and services to a broader market. As a Microsoft IP Co-Sell partner, BrandQuantum’s BrandMail and BrandOffice solutions can now be sold directly and marketed by Microsoft resellers targeting enterprise clients across South Africa and America and is available via the Microsoft AppSource store.

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, “We are delighted to be a Microsoft IP Co-Sell partner and believe that the partnership provides a great opportunity for us to help more companies overcome their brand consistency challenges by using our solutions within Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook.”

BrandOffice seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office to empower every employee across an organisation to deliver brand consistency in all documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The offering provides:

Easy access to templates and content through BrandOffice toolbars inside Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Permission-based access to documents, ensuring only employees that need access can access certain documentation and templates
Centrally manage brand standards including fonts, colours, style sets and multiple brand themes
BrandOffice inserts provide added security features such as content locking for specific content parts
Expiry dates, audit logs and content owners ensure governance and compliance and are ideal for contract and proposal management.

BrandMail seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Outlook to deliver consistently branded emails via a single toolbar across an entire organisation. This includes:

Consistently designed and professional email signatures which are rolled out and managed centrally
Email banners that can be edited internally to promote the latest campaigns
Rate My Service which allows customers to provide immediate feedback on the customer experience from within the email signature
BrandMe page which provides a digital business card, carrying all the company information customers want and acts as a verification tool to ensure that emails are authentic and originated from the sender’s organisation; and
BrandInsight provides real-time analytics on email usage across all BrandMail users, providing meaningful business insights.

“By being a Microsoft IP Co-Sell Partner, we can extend the reach of our BrandMail and BrandOffice offerings to empower companies to manage their brand, adhere to brand governance standards and enhance brand trust which are all critical to a company’s bottom line in today’s competitive, global marketplace,” concludes Sartini.

BrandQuantum updates BrandMe pages to allow for greater customisation

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 12:25:46 -0500

3 April 2021 - BrandQuantum today announced updates to its BrandMe page solution within BrandMail. The BrandMe page, which is opened by clicking on the sender’s email signature and acts as a digital business card, now includes a header banner feature and additional fields that allow for greater customisation and personalisation for companies and their employees.

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, “Companies are looking for ways to showcase and reinforce their brands amongst their customers. With the latest updates to the BrandMe page, marketing departments have greater control over the branding elements within the page and the fields that they would like to include such as links to social media pages or calendars to book appointments as well as biographies and accolades. In essence, the BrandMe page is a fully digital business card with so much more information about the sender and the company.”

While branding is important for customers, employer branding is an important component to attracting and retaining the right staff. This is supported by LinkedIn research which found that over 80% of leaders acknowledge that employer branding has a significant impact on a company’s ability to hire talent.

Sartini adds, “Employer branding is becoming more important for companies to attract and retain the right employees. At the same time, companies are realising the benefits of allowing employees to personalise details and showcase their individuality within the parameters of the brand they represent.”

With the BrandMe page, marketing departments can manage the BrandMe page fields and content centrally, giving them full control to upload header banners, visually bring the page in line with their brand, or change content as needed. Employees also have the flexibility to manage and control elements within the BrandMe page such as including a personal biography or demonstrate social diversity by listing the pronouns they identify with.”

“With customer’s expectations evolving, people want to know who they are speaking to and an email signature provides a simple and affordable mechanism to make this happen,” adds Sartini. “By adding more detail to the BrandMe page, there is greater transparency about the sender of the email which gives the recipient more information to establish a relationship of trust in the brand.”

BrandMe pages provide more information about the person and organisation an email recipient is interacting with, ensuring greater transparency and peace of mind. Organisations can allow employees to add a personal bio and image, qualifications, awards, maps, as well as easy access to book a meeting. The BrandMe page is a full digital business card which easily downloads into any device.

BOOK A DEMO

CUSTOMER PRIVACY IS PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND IS CRITICAL TO BUILD TRUST

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 23:38:52 -0500

Customer privacy is under the spotlight as South Africa follows in the footsteps of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as other privacy regulations that have come into effect across the globe, says Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum International.

The newly implemented Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act) aims to govern how organisations collect, store and use personal information. While compliance and governance have traditionally fallen under the legal department's domain, this is changing.

Marketing departments can no longer ignore their role in adhering to the requirements of the POPI Act. Privacy management is critical, not only as a compliance tool for legal and compliance practitioners but also as a tool for building trust with customers.

As such, marketers have to be involved in privacy programmes to establish trust and deliver the best user experience to meet customer expectations, which include treating customers in a manner in which they feel respected and valued.

While customers are willing to disclose personal information and have this information used by an organisation, they want to know that the company has procedures in place to protect their individual privacy.

According to Deloitte, data privacy is about more than keeping hackers at bay; it is also about assuring consumers that the trust they place in a brand is warranted.

WHAT IS PRIVACY WORTH?

Customer privacy and its importance for business and profitability is gaining attention as consumers are increasingly aware that companies are collecting their data and do not know what it is being used for.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy with the PWC Consumer Intelligence Series Protect.Me citing that as many as 85% of consumers will not do business with a company if they have concerns about its security practices.

Furthermore, if companies have privacy scandals associated with them, it eliminates the potential brand from being considered during the selection process of the buyers' journey, thereby decreasing the chances of being chosen for purchase.

However, as many customers are not experts on data privacy, they expect the brands that they trust to put their privacy at the centre of all decisions they make. In other words, the trust that consumers place in brands trickles down to the privacy measures they believe the brand has in place to keep their data secure.

Trust and customer privacy go hand-in-hand and companies need to live by their brand promise and protect their customer's data if they are to meet customer expectations and establish a relationship of trust.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BUILDS TRUST

Although marketers have traditionally used customer data, gained either directly or via third-party sources to develop targeted campaigns, consumers needs have changed. While customers want personalised experiences and targeted campaigns, this needs to be balanced with compliance and privacy requirements.

Transparency is critical to this process. Customers are more likely to give companies their data if they know that they are collecting it and what they will be using it for.
This is supported by Deloitte's 2019 US Retail Privacy Survey, which reports that investing in building trust through consumer privacy can deliver a measurable return with 73% of consumers. The survey says that customers are more likely to share data with companies that have privacy policies in place and advise how their data will be used.

To achieve this, the customer has to be central to the business strategy, which includes the marketing and technology strategies that need to drive brand security.

In essence, the customer experiences develops trust and the data companies collect should add value to the consumer. Consumers want customer-centric user experiences that deliver on the brand promise while adhering to privacy policies.

To achieve this, the customer has to be central to the business strategy, which includes the marketing and technology strategies that need to drive brand security.

IMPLEMENT PRIVACY BY DESIGN

Legal, marketing and IT departments need to work closely together to ensure that the proper privacy standards are adhered to, brand experiences delivered according to the brand promise and customer data is secure all times.

As such, marketing departments are becoming more reliant on IT departments to gather customer data and implement technology solutions to deliver on-brand experiences that adhere to brand security standards and maintain relationships of trust with customers.

Companies stand to benefit from using technologies that have been independently tested and align with European security standards, as it will give customers and employees peace of mind that data is gathered and stored securely.

Further solutions that have been designed with security upfront to include segmentation of risk, ensure that content is safeguarded and secure throughout the data storage and usage processes.

CONSISTENCY GIVES PEACE OF MIND

The increased focus on customer privacy means that marketing departments need to keep customers informed that they are collecting their data and how they are using it. They also need to ensure that they are engaging customers on their terms according to the data they have collected.

It is equally important that marketing departments pay close attention to brand consistency across all company platforms, such as websites and emails, as this reassures customers that the company takes their privacy seriously.

When companies pay attention to the smallest details in their branding, it gives customers peace of mind that they take their brand seriously and will have put thought into the brand security, privacy policy and strategy.

TRUST IS MARKETING'S RESPONSIBILITY

Customer privacy can no longer fall solely in the domain of the legal department. Customer privacy has to move beyond checking compliance boxes to ensure that the company adheres to privacy regulations that have been stipulated by the government. Rather, it is about focusing on the customer and prioritising trust.

To enhance customer experiences and build relationships of trust, marketing departments need to play an active role in establishing privacy or trust policies, implementing brand security measures and putting the customer at the centre of these strategies.

Overall, marketing departments need to invest in privacy and take it seriously. From the newsletters companies send to pop-ups on websites and the technology solutions they implement to help deliver customer-centric experiences, customer privacy and brand security needs to be at the core.

Customers seek transparency and confirmation that companies will protect their data, while balancing this with personalised customer experiences.

Overall, marketing departments need to invest in privacy and take it seriously. From the newsletters companies send to pop-ups on websites and the technology solutions they implement to help deliver customer-centric experiences, customer privacy and brand security needs to be at the core.

ARE YOUR EMAILS BUILDING BRAND TRUST? LOOKING AT EMAIL BANNERS

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 23:35:38 -0500

What was the last campaign you found out about in an email banner? When used correctly, email banners can help to build trust with recipients while keeping them informed about particular campaigns and promotions that could be of interest to them.

While email banners aim to be eye-catching to alert the recipients to specific information, banners must adhere to the brand standards to deliver a consistent brand experience.

One of the biggest challenges of email banners is keeping the information current and relevant to particular audiences. Things can change rapidly within organisations, campaigns can be revised or even cancelled and yet as changing the banners often requires third-party assistance, outdated banners can be sent to customers. To ensure that these banners stay relevant they should allow for changes to be made quickly and easily by the marketing department and shared with relevant departments immediately. This could be achieved by having a bank of beautifully designed editable banners on hand.

Another challenge is that while banners aim to add value to recipients by informing them of new campaigns and promotions, often they are irrelevant and annoy recipients. To overcome this, employees should be able to view the banners on their end and even select a relevant banner to send to customers. For example, a relationship banker could personalise the message and the banner to make a greater impact on their customer.

By personalising email banners according to customer needs, companies demonstrate an understanding and awareness of their customer’s needs and further build relationships of trust.

BrandMail is an email solution that helps companies to overcome brand consistency challenges with secure, tamperproof email signatures that are sent out with every single email, to both internal and external recipients. The click-through verification via the BrandMe page provides additional peace of mind for recipients and helps to establish brand trust with customers as they have a clear view of the sender.

With BrandMail, email content can be predeveloped and approved for easy inclusion and the latest company documents can be attached from within the Outlook ribbon. Banners can be changed and managed internally and viewed on the sender’s email to ensure that campaigns are tailored to specific recipients.

If you want to overcome brand consistency challenges with a secure, easy-to-use solution read more about BrandMail here.