By now most B-to-B marketers know the lowly email SIG (email signature) can be one of their best online marketing tools. Smart companies require all employees -- especially customer service, tech support, sales, PR and marketing -- to append an approved SIG to all outgoing email. These SIGs can include a link to a special offer such as an opt-in newsletter, a link to significant company news, links to white papers, or other hotlinked offers.

However, few marketers today are tracking their company's SIG-effectiveness. After all SIGs are "mini-advertisements" so they should be tracked as such. William Bontrager, who leads the B-to-B site Willmaster, recommends using the Prolinkz, one of several link tracking programs on the market, both to track SIG results and to conduct tests of varying SIG creatives and offers. Marketers can use Prolinkz to assign a unique URL to each SIG. The program automatically counts and sends click throughs to whatever end-destination you'd like visitors to land on. (Yes you can have many Prolinkz URLs all tracking different SIGs leading to the exact same Web page, so your Webmaster doesn't have to create a bunch of different landing pages.)

BTW: Our nomination for this month's most effective SIG goes to Liquidation.com's Director of Online Marketing Asad Haroon. After Haroon noticed his most successful banner campaign included a "Search" box in the banner, he decided to add the same search box to all Liquidation.com's employee SIGs. Want to see a sample? Email him at asad.haroon@liquidation.com and ask him to hit "reply."