It’s hard work building up a company’s brand. Left to marketing alone, it can take years to grow a brand into something valuable – not to mention a significant amount of resources.
How many individuals work at your company? Whether your company has 10 employees or 10,000 employees, each of those unique individuals have their own voice, their own audiences, and their own preferences and interests. Especially in today’s technology-filled world where work and personal lives intersect, your employees want to feel empowered to use the resources available to them to be an advocate for their company or brand and help it grow. In today’s world, this is a new concept called “Employee Advocacy”.
In a recent post by Convince and Convert, the article entitled, “7 Ingredients for Employee Social Advocacy”, explains that employees are great advocates because they:
- Genuinely love your brand (hopefully)
- Are trusted far more than the company
- Are not filtered by social networks the same way that corporate messages are
Thus, according to the article, employee advocacy gives you Authenticity, Trustworthiness, and Reach.
Employee Advocacy and Social Media
Companies often think of social media as a way to achieve employee advocacy. Social media is all around us and employees engage in social media activities (whether it’s work related or not) all throughout their days. In fact, according to a survey shared by Forbes, 64% of employees visit non-work related websites every day at work.
Companies like Oktopost have built a B2B social media management solution because of these statistics. According to a recent blog post on the Oktopost site,
“It can take months, or even years, for a marketing team to build up a company’s presence, reputation, and credibility online. This is exactly why employee advocacy is so powerful. Every post published by an employee on social media reaches hundreds of new connections, which the marketing team would not be able to gain exposure to on its own. While helping your employees become thought-leaders within their communities, by sharing insightful and educational content.”
The Oktopost article goes on to say, “The opportunity to engage so many fresh audiences is unparalleled, and of course, can either be immensely helpful – or hurtful, to a brand. It’s the responsibility of a company’s leadership to create a culture, environment and projects that employees will want to favorably post about.”
Going Beyond Social Media
At Sigstr, we use a saying around the office that goes like this: “Every one of us is a marketer”. Not just the marketing team or the sales team or even the customer success team. No, everyone in departments from product to administration to sales is a marketer, each with a different voice and different audience, as we discussed in the beginning of this post. Companies that haven’t realized that their employees can be their company’s biggest brand building asset (beyond actually just doing their jobs well) are missing out on a giant opportunity for their employees to be huge advocates in their respective circles.
But does it stop at social media? Absolutely not! Sigstr’s email signature generator was built upon the idea that each employee sends approximately 10,000 emails annually, each including a simple email signature. So for a company of just 100 employees, that’s 1M unique emails sent to an engaged audience of prospects, customers, partners, thought leaders, potential employees, and so on.
What if every single one of those employee email communications from across all company departments contained a unique call-to-action pointing the recipient to an important marketing or company message? Just like employees can be an advocate to your brand via social media sharing, a simple email signature can present a similar opportunity (if not greater because of the huge volume of emails sent each and every day).
Employee Email Signatures
Your employees send thousands of emails each day. Similar to social media advocacy solutions, an email signature creator like Sigstr ensures that company branding is consistent, and the most relevant campaign across all employees is highlighted in every email sent.
High-Impact Campaigns
Easily add clickable call-to-action banners to your simple email signature. After initial setup, these banners update automatically across your entire organization anytime a new campaign is activated.
Centrally Managed Signatures
Updating employee email signatures is notoriously time-consuming and unpredictable. Sigstr helps companies maintain consistent branding, manage contact information and ensure compliance within the simple email signature.
Without an email signature generator in place, your employees will create their own email signatures, attach ad hoc PDFs of marketing materials, or include off-brand invitations to events, webinars, or product demos. Why not use a solution that empowers your employees to share exciting company or marketing updates without the hassle, and relevant to their own department or group?
Start Empowering Employees to be Email Advocates
Ready to start distributing content through your employees’ email signatures? Start a free trial today and give Sigstr a whirl.
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