Website: www.elvermann.de
Industry: Construction Technology/Formwork Technology
Company Size: Approximately 140 Employees
Email Client: Outlook
Mailtastic Plan: Email Signature Marketing
Elvermann, a provider of formwork products and formwork services, uses Mailtastic to:
How does a family-owned construction company stand out with a professional yet creative appearance?
For Elvermann, a significant part of their customer communication happens via email. However, the email signatures would look different for almost every employee in the company.
We spoke with Ludger Elvermann about how he uses Mailtastic to ensure a professional appearance in every email – and also to improve customer support, simplify their digital invoicing process, and boost sales.
“With Mailtastic, our emails look professional. Moreover, we’re leveraging Mailtastic for marketing purposes too now. The platform allows us to promote relevant events such as trade shows, training sessions, or special promotions. Since implementing Mailtastic, our email signatures always contain relevant banners in our signatures.“
Ludger Elvermann, Sales and Marketing at Elvermann
Before Mailtastic
What problem did you aim to solve with Mailtastic?
“The biggest problem was that our email signatures were not consistent. Everyone used to create their own signature in Outlook. Our IT administrator would send out the logo and remind everyone that we need to include a few important information, such as our trade register number, which is a legal requirement in Germany, in the signature. However, some employees were still using the old logo, some others the new one and everyone had different fonts.
Our external communication was a total chaos which meant we were leaving a poor impression on our customers. It was challenging to recognise that the emails came from the same company. That was our main problem back then – a consistent external appearance that we did not have but desperately wanted.”
What did this mean for your day-to-day-work?
“We had no control over which signatures employees were using. Our administrator had to contact everyone to compare their signatures. This is a time-consuming project with 50 to 60 workstations. We had to check if the signatures were up-to-date. If not, we had to inform the employee: 'You still have the old signature; I'll send you a new one. Please add this.' Then comes the response: 'I can't do that; I don't know how.' The IT administrator then had to go to the person's workstation and manually install the signature or remotely access the computer. It used to cost a significant amount of time to manage people's signatures in that way.”
How did you try to solve the problem before Mailtastic?
“Initially, we tried to solve the problem through the Exchange server. However, we quickly realised that we were extremely limited there – both in terms of the signature design as well as with regard to data protection. It was not an option for us to give everyone in the marketing team access to the Exchange server passwords. It was too risky for us. Overall, the solution via the Exchange server was too complex and cumbersome.”
The solution
What changed at Elvermann with the introduction of Mailtastic?
“Many of our customers print out our emails and take them to their construction sites. You could immediately see that everyone had different signatures. Our technical advisor for examples was using one signature, and then my colleague from accounting had a completely different one – it just doesn't look good.
Since using Mailtastic, our emails look a lot more professional, and we've also started using the marketing features Mailtastic offers. Now we can use our signatures as a marketing tool and inform our customers about relevant events such as trade shows, training days, or promote special offers.
We wouldn't want to miss that any more. Since introducing Mailtastic, we always have banners in our signatures.”
How do you structure your Mailtastic account and your campaigns?
“We set it up directly when configuring our Mailtastic account so that each branch has its own signature. They have their own phone number and directions. We also have the so-called return department, which also has its own signature.”
What are some of your next marketing campaigns ideas using Mailtastic?
“In the next few weeks, we want to further expand Mailtastic for our marketing campaigns. We have a web portal where customers can always see what they've rented from us. Many of our customers are not aware of this feature yet. Mailtastic is the perfect tool to ensure that every time the return department sends an email to customers, a banner appears in the signature directing them to the web portal.
Furthermore, the accounting department recently switched to digital invoicing. Some customers still haven't acknowledged this in writing. We want to insert a banner reminding them to click the link to sign the consent form.”
What campaigns do you currently use Mailtastic for?
“We use Mailtastic to actively provide information to existing customers, e.g., about a product promotion. That is our main use case for our email signature campaigns. But we also want to provide assistance – if you have a problem on the construction site, try this article or specific tips, or even videos, with which we aim to increase the click rate.
Additionally, we have added more customer facing employees to our sales and application technology departments. This means that more employees are using signature banners and we’re updating our content regularly.”
With Mailtastic
What are the results from using Mailtastic?
“When we run our banner campaigns over a period of four to eight weeks, we average between 30,000 and 60,000 impressions. The average click-through rate across all campaigns is approximately 1.3%.”
“Last year, we ran a Mailtastic campaign where we promoted a number of selected products. We chose consumables that every one of our customers really needs. Overall, we had 580 clicks and a click-through rate of 1.54%. It was one of our most successful campaigns.”
“We can assign different access rights without having to provide sensitive data from the Exchange server to marketing. Mailtastic works independently as a web tool.”
2. Change signatures quickly and easily for all employees:
“We can make changes with Mailtastic easily. Employees no longer have to edit their signatures themselves to update them. Contact details, phone numbers, direct lines, and email addresses can all be updated in Mailtastic with just a few clicks. We also like how easy it is to change campaign banners in the signature.”
“In comparison to other marketing activities we tested, the costs are manageable. As our company grows, we can add more users and scale our campaigns and expand our reach even further.”