Advantages and disadvantages of client and server-based email signatures and marketing.

The purpose of this article is to explain the differences between various types of signatures, independent of the software or manufacturer. We will also present a combination of the CI-Sign and CI-Mail-Policy products which will provide you with maximum advantages.

Client-based signature:

Advantages:

1. The user can see what is sent. Nowadays the appearance of an email also has a part to play!
2. Corporate image is kept by using one or more templates (e.g. if there is more than one company under one roof).
3. Central templates offer options that you may (perhaps) not have thought of before ...
   for example, trade fair notifications, short advertising messages or random inserts
4. Statutory provisions and disclaimers (or whatever legislation requires ...) can be implemented 100 %.

 Disadvantages:

1. Users can “edit” their signatures
   (Not always a disadvantage)
2. Users can, in the “worst case,” delete their signature from the email.
3. Internal mails often turn out unnecessarily long.

Summary:

Advantages clearly win out!

Server-based signature:

Advantages:

1. Uniform signature (although this is mostly an extremely rigid solution, so generally only one signature is possible)
2. Central intervention and options for rapid announcements and advertising.

 Disadvantages:

1. Users NEVER see their finished emails before sending!
   (Who would send out a letter like that these days?)
2. Even after sending, the user cannot see the original email in Sent Items.
3. A DIGITAL SIGNATURE would be lost at this stage!
   (The recipient, therefore, will see only the signature. The rest of the email is inserted as an attachment.)
4. Most providers of disclaimer solutions do not support BCC (blind carbon copy) sending. We do support BCC! 

Summary:
Here too it’s clear that client-based solutions have more advantages.

Let’s look again at the greatest disadvantage in detail:
you announce a trade fair or a new product.   Your colleague is then contacted by the recipient with regard to this announcement. Unfortunately your colleague cannot see what has been sent. That is the very opposite of professional. Let’s take a particular advertised item. Perhaps 1 of 100. The only thing left to hope for is that your colleague can somehow provide the information. A tip for this situation: use a defined article or identification number.

A possible solution:

Let’s combine some of the products that can be found at www.ci-solution.com and pick out, along with CI-Sign, CI-Mail-Policy ....  a set of rules for Exchange.

Procedure:
You set the conditions (groups, OUs, masks, users ...)
and the key words that must be met in an email that complies with statutory provisions.
Actions follow. Exceptions are possible for Blackberry etc.
Along with those mentioned above, there are another 4 possible types of dispatch:
sent internally, sent externally, received externally, and for server farms: received internally

Let’s use the advantages of the client-based solution with CI-SIGN.
Let’s eliminate the disadvantages of the server-based solution with CI-Mail-Policy

Example:
Signatures are distributed with CI-SIGN. (This gives you all the client-based advantages.)

On the server, the emails are checked by CI-Mail-Policy by you having entered key words such as “commercial register,” “commercial register number,” “managing director name.”

If the signature is removed (the prior key words are missing) one or several actions can be taken (selection):

1. Delete the email and inform the sender. (Use the learning effect)
2. Send the email but attach a dynamic signature/disclaimer (this can be the same as in CI-SIGN).
   (However, the server-based disadvantage is now back again)
3. Inform Admin (or whoever is responsible) about the wrongly sent email. (Use the learning effect)
4. Many other functions are possible!

 Other functions:

1. If the mail is sent internally, the signature can be cut off at a certain point!
2. Why not comply with the next  statutory provision and send the email to a particular archive? This enables archiving according to groups, OU or user-specific archiving.
3. Certain employees may only send emails to other predetermined employees.
4. If the email comes from a Blackberry server, this can be indicated by a key word and an exception from the predetermined rule can follow. This opens up all your options again, for example adding a disclaimer to this type of email. (Blackberry Enterprise can for instance add such a keyword in the form of a static signature).
5. Logo within the signature.
6. Even if you are server-based, complete lines may be removed if values are empty.
7. Many other functions are possible!

We could write a book about the options available to you. We would be very happy to give you help and advice for any questions you may have in implementing these in your environment!

Kind regards

Manfred Büttner - ci solution GmbH

CI-Sign – Awarded the Industry Prize 2008
CI-Mail-Policy – Awarded the Innovation Prize 2008