Marketing
September 26, 2023

ADVERTISING VALUE EQUIVALENCY or Ad Equivalency: How to calculate the real value of email signatures

By
Wassim Achkar
Product Marketing Manager
With media noise becoming ever more omnipresent, marketing experts are gradually turning to subtler and less intrusive channels in the hope of achieving results. Among these channels, the most promising is the email signature. Linked to employees' emails, the email signature offers a genuine guarantee in terms of information dissemination and feedback.

Unlike email marketing, your employees' emails reach and invariably get more responses from customers, prospects, colleagues, and partners. Being more authentic and personal, they instill a sense of trust and commitment rarely achieved in digital marketing.

Therefore, the email signature is an ideal advertising space to reach a target audience and avoid the saturation of traditional channels.

By integrating communication banners into your signatures, the target audience is far more likely to buy or act when presented with offers, product information, content, webinar invitations, demonstrations, etc.

In this article, we explain how to determine the real value of email banners and your ROI by calculating the advertising equivalency of your email signatures.

email signatures : ADVERTISING VALUE EQUIVALENCY

Ad Equivalency: Definition. 

While there are similarities in terms of contacts, clicks, and impressions, it's crucial to acknowledge the differences. The value of your email signature marketing campaigns may be higher than that of other digital marketing activities. Thus, it's essential to apply the correct calculation method to know your actual costs and returns.

So, what is ad equivalency?

Advertising value equivalency (AVE) quantifies the value of advertising placed in a company's email signatures across all professional emails.

Simply put, the value of your communication banner'sad equivalency is calculated by multiplying the number of emails sent by your company by a determined CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions or views).

How to calculate ad equivalency for IMPRESSIONS of your email signatures

To apply ad equivalency relative to the number of impressions (views) of your signatures, this is calculated based on:

  1. Average number of emails sent per day per employee
  2. Cost per thousand (mille) impressions (CPM)
  3. AVE multiplier (CPM/1,000) 

Let's take an example: we will determine the weekly AVE of email signatures for a company with 1,000 employees.

Average emails sent per day per employee: 33 (Radicati Email Statistics Report, 2015-2019)

CPM: $8.00 (Global social media ads CPM 2022 |Statista))
AVE multiplier: 0.008 (CPM/1,000) 

Formula:
AVE multiplier x (# of emails X # of employees X # of days) = total AVE value
($8/1,000) x (33 x 1,000 x 5) = $1,320 ad value equivalency from your employee email signatures.

We used the $8 CPM figure as a default value(worldwide average across various channels), but you can adjust it to match your company's averages.

We strongly recommend evaluating the AVE multiplier sat a higher level than standard advertising CPMs. Keep in mind the dual advantage of trust and deliverability brought by person-to-person email communications.

The AVE multiplier could potentially be set around$0.08. Using the above figures, the total AVE value would be $13,200 per week.

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How to calculate ad equivalency for CLICKS on your email banners?

Following the previous calculation, we can determine the AVE for clicks on your banners.

As mentioned earlier, the value of your communication banner's ad equivalency is calculated by multiplying the number of emails sent by your company by a determined CPC (cost per click).

Example:

CPC is $2.50 and the CTR is 3.17% (average observed on Google Ads in 2023) for 33 emails sent daily by employees in a company of 1,000employees.

(# of emails/day X # of employees X # of days) = total impressions (as calculated above)


Total impressions x CTR % = total clicks per week

Total clicks per week x CPC = total weekly AVE value
We've designed a user-friendly calculator


Example with the above scenario:

(165,000 x (3.17/100) = 5,230 clicks per week

5,230 x $2.50 = $13,075 AVE value


Thus, by equipping all its employees with communication banners in signatures, the company could generate $13,075 of advertising value.

If we finally combine the ad equivalencies (impressions + clicks) for this example company, then we can estimate the total media value of email signatures at $14,395 in just one week.

Automate your email signature management for better AVE. 

To optimize the advertising value equivalency of your email signatures, it's crucial to give them some attention. Indeed, for a significant impact, it's imperative that your employees have:

  • Consistent brand identity (logo, colors, etc.).
  • Updated personal information
  • Relevant CTAs (social network icons, appointment booking buttons…)
  • Clickable communication banner

Without a tool for centrally harmonizing the email signatures of all employees, it's challenging to implement these features in all your company's email signatures.

This is Letsignit's promise: to allow communication marketing departments to regain control over all employees' email signatures and turn them into a powerful engagement and broadcast medium.

From a single platform, managed by an administrator, the communication & marketing departments can control the visual aspect sand information in all email signatures, while setting up communication campaigns according to the company's news.

It's all automated, simple, and offers unmatched ROI.

About the author
Wassim is a Product Marketing Manager at Letsignit. He ensures that our solution aligns with market expectations and perfectly meets the needs of businesses. He is a fundamental element of the marketing team, ensuring that the product's value is well conveyed across all services and channels. In addition to his marketing role, Wassim also plays a key role in animating the Letsignit football team. He knows how to seize the most opportune moment to make decisive passes!
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.
Frequently
asked questions
1
Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2
Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3
Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4
Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5
What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6
Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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Looking for a tool to manage your email signatures?

Letsignit allows you to create, manage, and deploy email signatures for all your employees in just a few clicks.
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