BrandQuantum - NEWS #Email content

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 Use this season to breathe new life into your brand, update your brand elements and discard outdated branded materials.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Outdated letterheads can often float around an organisation without being noticed.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 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.

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ARE YOUR EMAILS BUILDING BRAND TRUST? LOOKING AT EMAIL CONTENT

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 23:51:01 -0500

While people will notice the visual elements of your emails, from the font type to logo and colour used, it is important that your content is written in a consistent brand voice and tone that aligns with the overall brand. Customers will come to recognise the tone of the emails that they receive from the organisation which aids in establishing trust.

A brand’s voice has to align with the overall image it wants to portray with its customers. For example, Khulula has a fun and quirky brand voice aligned to its brand personality, but if your bank sent you emails that were just as quirky and fun, you would wonder if they were serious about managing your money.

While it can be challenging to train all employees on the correct tone and brand voice to use in all email correspondence, this can be overcome by providing employees with pre-approved content that can be added to emails as necessary.

It is important to note that while pre-developed and pre-approved content can be made available for employees to use, it is important that they have the functionality to personalise the emails they send to their customers. This is particularly valuable for employees that have long standing relationships with their clients and want to ensure that they are providing the correct information without neglecting the personal touch.

In addition to the email content, the correct attachments should always be included with the emails. This means that documents should carry the correct branding and the content should be pre-approved and accurate. Incorrect or outdated documents can be costly to the organisation, have possible legal implications and erode brand trust amongst customers.

With companies using emails as a primary tool to communicate with their employees and customers, it is valuable to use these emails as an opportunity to build brand trust with your recipients. You can achieve this by using tools to help simplify the process and incorporate the branding from email inception to sending.

We will share insights into your email banners in our next post. In the meantime, if you want to overcome brand consistency challenges with a secure, easy-to-use solution read more about BrandMail here.

ARE YOUR EMAILS BUILDING BRAND TRUST? LOOKING AT CONTENT BRANDING

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 23:49:23 -0500

Did you know that the font type and colour used in your emails are one of the first things recipients notice before they begin to read the content? The colour of the font and branding elements used in your email are key to increasing brand recognition[1].

Every organisation should use a specific font for their emails that aligns with their brand. For larger organisations, this may even be a unique font that they have designed to further differentiate and reinforce their brand in the market.

These fonts may need to be loaded on to each employee’s computer to be able to use them, and as such, they may not appear in the same font on your customer’s computer. This primary font should therefore be used in banners and email signatures, and a secondary font should be used for the body copy. Secondary fonts, that are easily available on most computers and are cross-platform fonts, should be used to align with the brand and ensure that the email appears on the recipient’s end as the sender intended. If a font is not available on the recipient’s PC, Windows will default the font to Calibri.

The colour of the font used in your emails is also important. This should align with the overall brand as colour is one of the most memorable components of a brand. The colour scheme used in emails is key to establishing brand trust with your audience as this is one of the first things recipients will recognise from your brand after the logo.

More than the font type and colour, companies should consider the size and spacing of the font, particularly when using a default font as this will help recipients to recognise emails that are sent from your brand. By keeping the font consistent in terms of type, colour and size, customers will quickly recognise that emails come from your organisation. This aids in building brand trust as it demonstrates that you care as much about the smaller details as you do about your client’s needs.

More than this, as fraudulent emails are a concern for many recipients, consistently branded emails give customers peace of mind that the emails sent from your company did, in fact, come from your organisation. Verification tools can help provide an extra layer of security and reassure your customers that the emails they receive from your organisation are authentic.

Our next post will delve deeper into the content of your emails. In the meantime, if you want to overcome brand consistency challenges with a secure, easy-to-use solution read more about BrandMail here.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2013/08/12/16-ways-to-use-color-to-bolster-your-personal-brand/#b1ccfab8026b

ARE YOUR EMAILS BUILDING BRAND TRUST? LOOKING AT EMAIL SIGNATURES

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 05:39:06 -0500

When last did you receive an email and want to phone the sender only to find that they did not include their contact number on their email? Or have you received an email where the signature didn't include sender details or a company name but rather had an image of a hand holding a feather quill and a bible verse? Have you ever received an email with a beautifully designed signature but when you tried to click on it, it wasn’t functional?

To build your company’s brand using email, a standard signature should be used across the organisation. This signature should include visual elements such as the logo and the organisation’s primary fonts which will set the email apart from other brands. These signatures should be consistent across the company and meet the requirements of different business units and regions. For example, the signature could include different contact numbers for different departments so that when customers contact the company they can access the correct details from the email signature such as a PA’s contact number or a specific department’s contact numbers that can assist with their particular query.

The email signature should include relevant information about the company and the sender, such as the sender’s name, title, telephone numbers, the company’s website address, physical address and social media details. These details provide necessary information to the recipient and also add a layer of verification. Additional verification mechanisms could be used to give added peace of mind to the recipient that the email did, in fact, come from the company it says it did. These could include a click-through from the email signature to a page which includes the sender’s picture and relevant experience.

Email signatures should be tamperproof to prevent employees from making changes to any of the details without authorisation, such as the job title. However, it should allow for some flexibility to make changes to signatures as necessary, for example, if an employee is promoted and wants to update their title, this should be easy to implement. While HTML signatures are often used by businesses, they can present a security risk for the company and recipients. Further employees can change their details, which can be a risk for the organisation.

As many people access emails on various devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, email signatures should display consistently across devices and platforms, ensuring the recipient gets the same experience regardless of how they receive and view the email. It is important to note that in instances where someone sends an email on behalf of someone else, that it is disclosed upfront as this also helps to establish trust with recipients.

While it is a great branding tool, an email signature also provides additional value to recipients and should be included at the bottom of every single email for both internal and external audiences on original emails and replies. Including the email signature on every email is the first step to establishing trust with your customers when using email communication.

We uncover the role of the email disclaimer in our next post. In the meantime, if you want to overcome brand consistency challenges with a secure, easy-to-use solution read more about BrandMail here.

ARE YOUR EMAILS BUILDING BRAND TRUST?

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 03:02:37 -0500

HOW SECURE IS YOUR COMPANY DATA DURING A LOCKDOWN?

Wed, 06 May 2020 09:51:47 -0500

Article first published on Bizcommunity.co.za, written by Paula Sartini, 04 May 2020 | see article here

Many businesses have developed business continuity plans (BCP) to mitigate risks and reduce the impact of a crisis. Further, they would have conducted a business impact analysis (BIA) to determine which functions are critical for the company to remain in business. However, the Covid-19 lockdown is the first time that many companies will be implementing a work-from-home contingency plan and putting their BCP and BIA to the test.

To equip employees to work from home, many companies have put fundamentals in place, arranging laptops, providing connectivity for employees and access to virtual private networks (VPN) to continue with business-as-usual. These are the basic tools that employees need to conduct their daily tasks and meet the business needs but employees will need additional tools and resources if they are to succeed in working remotely at this time.

INCREASED DATA THREATS

With many employees sent to work from home during the Covid-19 lockdown, this is a prime time for hackers to target businesses. Employees have been given tools and access to secure company data without the stringent security in place or necessary training to prevent data breaches. This is supported by various reports stating that hacking attempts surrounding the coronavirus are on the rise.

According to Wired, coronavirus phishing scams already started circulating in January, preying on people’s fears about the virus. This is supported by Cnet which reported that the coronavirus is one of the fastest-growing tactics used for hacking attempts with phishing attacks and malware campaigns being the main categories of attack.

While companies strive for business, as usual, they need to have measures in place to protect their employee and customer data. Customers have taken precautions to safeguard their personal information and verify the companies they provide personal information to, trusting that these companies have measures in place to keep their data secure.

Whether employees are working from home or the office, customers expect them to keep their data secure at all times.

SECURING DATA

There is no single solution to keeping data secure, particularly with a remote workforce as often homes have fewer security defences than that of an office. Hackers are aware of this. Further, they prey on the vulnerability of employees and customers that would be distracted by the circumstances surrounding them and more likely to fall for a scam.

To help prevent employees and customers from falling victim to these scams companies should incorporate layered security measures to boost security and add extra peace of mind. Many companies have VPN access as a security mechanism for employees to access company information. For companies that do not have a VPN or those looking for added security for their VPN, a cloud network should be used to keep company documents and data secure.

SECURE ACCESS TO RESOURCES

To perform their jobs effectively, employees will need quick and easy access to the most up-to-date company resources. They will also need relevant content that is consistently branded and compliant that can be shared with customers timeously.

This content should be housed securely on a cloud platform to allow easy access to relevant documents via the internet. Access should be restricted to those departments and individuals that need access to perform their job function. In addition, access should be tracked to monitor which employees access what documents and when.

All company documents should also be saved and managed centrally to allow for changes to be made and shared rapidly and easily with employees, ensuring that all employees use the most up-to-date and relevant documentation. To prevent non-compliant documents from being sent to customers and prevent possible fraud, no employees should be able to save documents to their desktops for future use as these can easily be tampered with or shared with employees that do not need access to them.

SECURE EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS

Emails solutions used by the remote force should be designed with the segmentation of risk in mind. This means the solution uses independent silos to safeguard the content of the email as the content is not associated with the context of the email. This is key to preventing security breaches and keeping employee and customer data secure.

To give the recipient’s peace of mind that the emails are authentic, emails should have built-in verification that allows users to verify the emails sent from one user to another with a pass/fail verification report. In addition, users can check if the content of the email has been tampered with when receiving replies to emails. To prevent false reports, emails should have email signatures and banner applied during the drafting of the email to prevent the need for system intervention as this could impact on emails reaching recipients and being flagged as spam.

By putting your customers and employees security needs at the fore, companies demonstrate their commitment to their customer’s safety, building brand trust and establishing the foundation for a long-standing partnership.