Start here
What Exclaimer is #
Exclaimer applies your email signature centrally, to every message your organisation sends, from every device. Nobody has to set one up and nobody can get it wrong.
The problem it solves is a familiar one. Left to their own devices, a team of twenty ends up with twenty different signatures: three different logos, two of them stretched, an old phone number, someone's inspirational quote, and four people with no signature at all. Every rebrand means emailing everyone and hoping.
With Exclaimer:
- Everyone gets the correct signature, built from your template and their own details.
- It works everywhere. Outlook on a PC, a Mac, webmail, an iPhone, an Android. Even mail sent by a system that has no concept of signatures.
- Changes are instant. A new logo or a moved office is one edit, applied to everybody's next email.
- Nobody has to do anything. New starters get the right signature on their first email without being told.
- Legal footers are consistent. If you need a disclaimer or company registration details, they are actually on every message rather than most of them.
- You can run banner campaigns, turning ordinary email into a marketing channel.
Staff do not need to know any of this. They need to know that their signature is added automatically and they will not see it while typing. There is a short guide for exactly that: Your email signature. Send them that one.
Background
How it actually works #
This is worth understanding, because it explains nearly every question anyone will ask you about it.
Exclaimer does not put a signature into Outlook. It sits in your mail flow. When someone sends an email, the message leaves their mailbox, passes through the Exclaimer service, has the correct signature applied, and then continues to the recipient.
Because the signature is applied in transit rather than in the mail client, it is impossible for someone to edit it, delete it, or forget to set it up. That is the whole point, and it is also the source of the one piece of confusion you will hear about.
“My signature has disappeared.” It has not. They are looking at the compose window, where it has not been added yet. Point them at Your email signature and it goes away.
What we do to set it up
The technical side is ours. We already hold your Microsoft 365 administration, so we handle connecting Exclaimer to your tenant, configuring mail routing, granting the service the access it needs, and testing that mail flows correctly before anything changes. You do not need to do anything technical.
Your part
What we need from you #
Design and content. That is genuinely it, and the more precise you are the fewer rounds of revision we will both go through.
Branding
| What | What we need |
|---|---|
| Logo | The highest resolution version you have, ideally PNG with a transparent background or SVG. A logo pulled off your website is usually too small and looks blurry on a modern screen. |
| Brand colours | Hex codes if you have them. If not, send us your brand guidelines or a piece of print and we will match. |
| Fonts | Tell us your brand font and we will pick the closest thing that renders reliably in email. |
| An example you like | Genuinely useful. Forward us a signature from another company that looks how you want yours to look. |
What goes in it
Tell us which of these you want, and in what order:
- Name, job title, department.
- Direct dial, mobile, main switchboard.
- Email address and website.
- Office address, and which one if you have several.
- Social media icons, with the links.
- Accreditation or certification logos, such as Cyber Essentials or an ISO mark.
- A legal disclaimer or company registration details.
- An awards or membership badge.
The most common mistake is putting everything in. A signature with a logo, five social icons, three accreditation badges and a nine line legal disclaimer looks like clutter, and on a phone it takes up more space than the message. Pick the things a recipient would actually use.
Legal wording
If you need a confidentiality notice, company registration number, registered office or regulatory statement, send us the exact wording. We will reproduce it as given rather than paraphrasing, since it is usually there for a reason.
Long email disclaimers have limited legal weight in the UK and take up a lot of space. Some organisations genuinely need one, particularly in regulated sectors. Many have simply inherited one. It is worth asking your accountant or solicitor rather than assuming.
Your part
Where the details come from #
The template is the same for everybody. The details in it come from each person's own record in your Microsoft 365 directory, which makes that directory suddenly rather important.
When a signature is built, Exclaimer reads fields from the sender's account: display name, job title, department, phone, mobile, office. It puts them into your template. That is how twenty people get twenty correct signatures from one design.
Most organisations have never had a reason to keep job titles and phone numbers accurate in Microsoft 365, so they are frequently blank, out of date, or full of things like “Manager” and “TBC”. The moment signatures go live, all of that appears on every email your company sends.
We will send you a list of what is currently held for each person before we go live. Correcting it is a one off job and it is the single biggest factor in whether this goes smoothly.
Worth deciding in advance
- Blank fields. If somebody has no mobile number, the template can leave the line out entirely rather than printing an empty label. We do this by default, but tell us if you want something different.
- Job titles. Decide whether you are using formal titles or something looser, and be consistent. Signatures make inconsistency very obvious.
- Who updates it. Once live, a promotion or a new direct dial means updating the directory rather than editing a signature. Tell us and we will make the change, or we can show someone on your side how to do it.
Getting your directory tidy pays off well beyond signatures. The same data drives the address book in Outlook and Teams, so accurate job titles and departments make it much easier for people to find the right colleague.
Your part
Deciding who gets what #
Rules decide which signature applies to which message. Most organisations need one or two. Some need more, and the system copes with all of it.
Signatures can vary by:
| Vary by | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Department or team | Sales get a booking link, support get a portal link, everyone else gets neither. |
| Office or location | Different addresses and phone numbers for each site. |
| Brand or trading name | Two companies in one tenant, each with its own look. |
| Individual | Directors with something slightly different, or a specific person's exception. |
| Internal or external | A short signature internally, the full branded one to customers. |
| New email or reply | Full signature on a first email, something briefer on replies within a thread. |
Two decisions worth making properly
Internal email. A full branded signature with a logo and a legal disclaimer on every internal message gets tiresome quickly, and makes long threads unreadable. Most organisations use a short internal version: name, title, extension. Some turn it off internally altogether.
Replies within a thread. The same logic. A full signature on every reply produces a chain with your logo repeated eleven times. A shorter reply signature keeps threads readable.
Start with one good signature for external mail and a short one for internal. Live with it for a month. You will then know exactly which exceptions you actually need, rather than guessing up front and building rules nobody uses.
Exceptions to tell us about
- Shared mailboxes. Should
info@andsales@get a signature, and if so whose details go in it? - No reply addresses. Usually excluded entirely.
- Automated systems. Invoicing, booking confirmations, alerts. Decide whether these should be branded or left alone.
- Anyone who must not have one. Rare, but occasionally there is a reason.
Getting more from it
Banners and campaigns #
Below the signature you can run a banner: an image with a link, shown for a set period, to a set group of people. It is the part most organisations forget they have.
Your team already sends a large number of emails to exactly the people you most want to reach: customers, prospects and suppliers who already know you. A banner turns that into a channel with no extra effort from anyone.
Things businesses actually use it for:
- An event you are exhibiting at or hosting.
- A new service, a new location or a new accreditation.
- Seasonal opening hours, especially over Christmas.
- A recruitment drive.
- A link to a review page or a customer survey.
- A notice about a change customers need to know about.
What we need for a banner
- The artwork. We will confirm the right dimensions. It needs to be legible on a phone, so a busy image with small text will not work.
- The link. Where clicking it should go.
- The dates. Start and finish. Campaigns can be scheduled in advance and end automatically, which is the feature that stops a Christmas banner still running in March.
- Who it applies to. Everybody, or just one team.
Always give a campaign a finish date, even if you think it will run indefinitely. An out of date banner is worse than no banner, and the one thing nobody ever remembers to do is turn one off.
Ongoing
Who manages it #
We manage Exclaimer for you as standard. If you would rather your marketing people could change banners themselves, that is easy to arrange.
The default: we manage it
You email us what you want changed and we do it. A new banner, a template tweak, a change of address, a new rule for a department. Most changes are quick, and this suits the majority of customers because signature changes are not frequent enough to be worth learning a system for.
If you want direct access
Plenty of marketing teams would rather schedule their own campaigns than send us a ticket every time. We can grant access to named people, and it does not have to be all or nothing.
| Level of access | Sensible for |
|---|---|
| Campaigns and banners only | Marketing. They can schedule and swap banners without being able to alter the signature template or the rules. This is the one we recommend. |
| Templates as well | An in house designer or marketing manager who wants to adjust the signature layout itself. |
| Full administration | Rarely needed. It includes the rules and the tenant connection, which is where a mistake stops signatures appearing at all. |
Send us the names and email addresses of the people who should have access, and what you want them to be able to do. We will set it up and let them know. Equally, tell us when somebody leaves that role and we will remove it.
If more than one person can change the template, agree who owns it. Signatures are one of those things where two people with good intentions and different opinions can produce a fortnight of small changes going back and forth.
Support
Common questions #
Will staff need to do anything?
No. Nothing is installed and nothing needs configuring on their side. The one thing worth telling them is that they will not see the signature while composing, and to remove any signature they have set up themselves so they do not end up with two. That is what Your email signature covers.
Does it work on phones?
Yes, and this is one of the best reasons to use it. Because the signature is applied after the message is sent, mail from an iPhone or an Android gets exactly the same signature as mail from a desktop. No more “sent from my iPhone”.
How quickly can a change be made?
Template and banner changes are usually quick, and once made they apply to everybody's next email. There is no waiting for people to update anything. If you have a deadline, tell us and we will work to it.
Can different companies in one tenant have different signatures?
Yes. Rules can apply a different template based on the sending domain or the group someone belongs to, so two trading names in one Microsoft 365 tenant can look completely separate.
What happens to emails our systems send automatically?
It depends how they send. Anything going out through your Microsoft 365 tenant can have a signature applied, which is often desirable for booking confirmations and undesirable for alerts. Tell us which systems you have and what you want, and we will set the rules accordingly.
Does it read our email?
The service processes messages in transit in order to add the signature. Exclaimer is a well established provider used widely in UK business, and we will happily share their security and data processing documentation if you need it for a due diligence or certification exercise.
What if it stops working?
Tell us straight away. Signatures either apply or they do not, so it is very visible. Mail continues to flow either way, so the worst case is unbranded email for a short period rather than anything being lost.
Getting help
Send us your logo, your brand colours and a note of what you want in the signature, and we will come back with a design to look at. If you would rather talk it through first, or you want marketing given access to campaigns, just say.