The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) is a highly recognizable brand that touches the lives of 1.3 million members each week. The vision of the organization and its new CEO was to create a uniform brand and impression for every email going out from the "@realtors.org" domain. Additionally, the NAR wanted its team of 300+ users to be able to add email signature banners on emails for branding and promotional campaigns. “It was part of a project to brand ourselves from the inside out,” explains Laura Vinci, Director of Association Technology Services at the NAR.

That said, Vinci’s team did not want to burden users with constant manual updates of email signatures or signature banners. Nor could they afford to spend significant time and effort managing signatures and banners for over 300 people.  Explains Vinci, “We needed to manage the signatures and banners for our users rather than force them to think about it and spend time on it.”

Further, the NAR used Office 365. So it needed a signature management and marketing product that had a rich set of core functionalities for that platform. The NAR also needed to automatically append a disclaimer to emails, without fail, for legal and compliance reasons. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, all of this needed to work well on mobile devices - including iPhone and Android. This requirement ruled out a plug-in email signature solutions; plug-ins don’t work on iPhone email clients. “Mobile is where our senders and recipients increasingly interact with email,” says Vinci. “It just has to work on mobile.”

Vinci and her team evaluated a number of solutions for email signatures and email marketing banners. She narrowed her search down to three solutions for a trial. One she eliminated due to overseas support, which would not allow for easy communication with her team. Another was scratched due to usability issues and a dated user experience. When Vinci tested Opensense, she found what she was looking for. “We loved the flexibility of the platform. It was very easy to change things on the fly and changes were instantaneous,” says Vinci. “To process a new employee or change someone’s title was simple. Swapping out banners was also easy. And it worked great on Office365.”

The NAR decided to roll out the signatures and email banners quickly as part of its ”call for action for National Flood Insurance Program” promotional campaign in July 2018. “We were on a deadline and had to make it work and look perfect,” recalls Vinci. The Opensense developers helped me configure and test quickly. It took a week to get everything into place. They did an outstanding job on the implementation.” Since then, the NAR has driven significant traffic for event marketing and content campaigns. “Opensense drives people towards our initiatives, our outreach, our ad campaigns and our websites,” says Vinci.

For signatures, Opensense has helped the NAR project a uniform, beautiful brand that markets the organization more effectively and consistently. “The scalability across devices and platforms is excellent. We always know that the person receiving our emails is getting the right signature and seeing a nice banner,” says Vinci. “And it saves many hours of time we would otherwise have to spend distributing and installing signatures on staff smartphones and laptops."

When issues have cropped up, Vinci has enjoyed the rapid responses and U.S-based support engineers. “They get back to me quickly and always take care of the issue,” says Vinci, “One time it was a five o’clock on a Friday and they got right back to me and fixed the problem.” Vinci is now in the process of expanding usage of Opensense to incorporate dynamic signature banner marketing. “There is a lot of room to grow into the platform,“ says Vinci, “Opensense gives us the flexibility to meet our goals and the ease of use that makes managing signatures and banners simple.”

• Fast launch - Email signatures and banners rolled out quickly and smoothly to all NAR employees
  
  
• Simplified and automated management of signatures by IT
  
  
• Provided instant upgrades and revisions to signatures and banners
  
  
• Fully supported, and integrated with Microsoft Office 365 and Active Directory
  
  
• Eliminated manual email signature updates, saving hours of staff time  each week
  
  
• Provided cross-device uniformity (iPhone, Android)
  
  
• Drove significant engagement increases with campaigns and promotions via email signature banners
  
  
• Delivered for quick access to Opensense support experts and rapid resolutions

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Curious how Opensense helps mortgage brands like NAR? Learn more here.