Newsletter #2 - E-mail Signatures Might Actually Kill Your Company

Your email signature could be destroying your company.

This isn't a joke.

Recently was with a CEO of a mid-size SaaS.

He knew my story.

He had heard about my commitment to always being in the primary inbox.

I knew that I had challenged the status quo a few times on this topic.

Professionally respectful. But scientific about the problem.

Current Situation:

• Pain: CEO can't get term sheets to new investors. SDRs can't get emails to new prospects.

• Impact: Potential timing issues on funding. Pipeline decreasing.

He asked for help. The problem was the same as I've seen at a few orgs.

Easy to fix, he asked me to meet with Ops, IT, and Security to get it resolved.

What was the problem? 🤦‍♂️

Rich text can look like weaponized HTML for email delivery when copied and pasted repeatedly. In addition, new employees were copying and updating ad-hoc and new images, and trackers started creating new issues.

Seen the movie before. 😀

Copy and Pasting this text creates:

• Dangerous links

• Open trackers outside your domain

• Hosted images outside your domain

These can bring you down a few extra points and block you with new or recent senders.

Be careful.

Challenging the status quo is also dangerous. But it would help if you always had resolve enough to talk openly about this problem in your organization.

The good ones will partner with you and form committees. It can be a company-wide pandemic and happen quickly.

He asked me to share this with people so others could learn.

Great leaders blame the process. Others blame people. Great example of why you should always look at the process and conditions the accidents happened in.

The impact was significant:

• 10x response rate with their SDR Team (still working on this)

• Term sheets signed and delivered (they got their round of funding)

• Term sheets signed and delivered (they got their round of funding)

Email is not social media, and it's been around since the 70s. Images, links, and files inside an email are dangerous to newer domains.

Spam protection systems are blocking a lot more now due to the widened attack surface from remote workers. But unfortunately, email is one of the best ways hackers will make it into your organization.

Check your delivery often. Signatures can be a lot of work for someone to maintain.

By the way, there is a small group of people my newsletter is going to spam on. Haven't had time to fix it. My apologies. 😂

Let's get back into the primary inbox together!