How much work are you making for your virtual assistant when you task them with setting up an aut...

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Charmy and Jim Show. That's right. Today we've got Charmy Torres who's joining us all the way from the Philippines. And Charmy is our amazing virtual assistant. Hi, Charmy.

Hi, Jim. Good morning. Thanks for having me here.

It's my pleasure. And I've invited Charmy on the show because I've been covering technologies and different ways of working. And the truth is that I find these new tools and then I ask Charmy in the Philippines to help implement them. I thought it may be quite nice to hear from her how easy or difficult it is and the difference that it's making to helping me to get my work done, which is really her job as our virtual assistant. So, Charmi, thank you so much for being patient, for a start, with all the new tools I'm introducing.

No worries, Jim, my pleasure.

She says that through slightly gritted teeth. Now, Charmi, Let's talk about a tool that you've been implementing for us recently, and that is New Old Stamp, the auto signature tool. Do you want to just tell us how long ago we started to implement that and kind of just your initial impressions having set that up?

Sure. I think we set that up around before Christmas time. That was before we had a break. And setting up the new old stamp, the designing and creation of the template was fairly straightforward. And however, the activation or installation of the signature to each employee is time-consuming, and it requires a manual process every single time you need to update the signature.

Now, is that because we are using Zoho Mail and it's not integrated into, for example, the Microsoft Exchange server, do you think? Because we have to cut and paste the signature, don't we, as an HTML file into our auto signature?

Right. No, not at all. I think that's the same process that we will do even if we have— even if we're not using Zoho Mail.

Ah, okay. So just take us through that then. So let's look first of all at the, the design of the email templates for the auto signature. Is there one template or are there many templates? Did you find?

Yes, there are many templates that we could choose from, and the designing is quite easy. You just drag or drop or add lines to your signature. And the creation of the template, as I've mentioned earlier, is fairly straightforward.

Okay, and you could, I think, link all the social media accounts, I think was quite easy to do, right?

That's right, yes. They have all the icons for the social media accounts, and you could just choose from, from which icons would you, you know, you feel like putting in your signature.

And what about the integration of photographs, for example? Was that pretty easy?

Yes, it is. It's just, as I mentioned earlier, it's just like a drag and drop and you just save it in there.

Okay. And then one of the things that we wanted to do was to have, for example, a banner to the newsletter and so on. Is it quite easy to include then some sort of Calls to action.

Yes, all you have to do, just click it and it will automatically go to your template or to your master signature template.

Okay, so that seems— sounds easy enough. Now we've got just a few of us working under the East West PR brand. Tell us, in terms of duplicating the signature to be standard for the team, how difficult has that been?

In regards to, you know, with the standard, it all be there. You could make sure that it is all standard, all the signatures. However, the creation of each signature takes a lot of time.

Why does it take a lot of time? Because if there's a template and there are a bunch of templates, then why is it taking so long to actually make a signature?

In regards to time, Jim, just to be fair to all of your employees, they would save a lot of time. All they need to do is just copy and paste the signature from the link that we sent to their signature settings on their email. However, on the VA side, or whoever, let's say the business owner setting this up, takes a lot of actions to update a single signature because Annual SAM has limited features. Like, like let's say their icons are limited and there were no options to insert a slogan. And then sometimes after pasting the signature The icons are not aligned. And I think that's the main drawback.

Right, right.

So doing it manually eventually is more efficient in the end than using the tool.

Well, okay, that's, that's pretty harsh, isn't it then? So it would have been easier. Okay, so yeah, so okay, so we've used the New Old Stamp and yeah, when we've updated it, I found that I had trouble aligning the text. with the sort of moving it around on the, on the WYSIWYG on the template didn't really move the text as easily as I thought that it would have done. But it sounds as though making the template takes more time, but then you can create the same template for everybody, and for the staff members it's quicker. So it's kind of a centralization of the job. And I guess what we have been able to do is to standardize the Auto signature, haven't we?

Because what happened is I've been playing around it. Like, let's say we— if we need to update a website, or if we need to update one of the social media icons or link that we need to add, what we need to do then is to update it from the master signature, and then it will automatically go to the signature list. However, it will not automatically update the signature that were installed on each team member. So we have to redo it again. However, in fairness to their customer service, which is 5 out of 5, they said that they are still developing their platform.

Okay, because I had thought that if you update the template centrally in the NewOldStamp, that everybody using the signatures would be automatically updated. But you're saying that's not the case. You have to still manually update it, right?

We just have to resend again the signature and have them install it again.

I see.

That's what happened, yes.

And from what I understand, Shami, if we actually had the Microsoft Exchange or the Google G Suite, it would automatically update the signatures. So saving masses of time. So really it's our fault for not having one of the main mail platforms because we've gone with the Zoho Mail instead.

Yeah, in fairness to New Old Town, it will update because what happens is I update it from the department master signature, and then from there I could create each signature of each team member. So I would then have a signature list. And then this signature list, I will send it to each team member that they will install copy paste in the signature settings. So if ever we need to update the signature or we need to update something from the signature, I will update it from the department master signature and it will automatically update all the lists in the signature. But then We need to resend it to each team member.

Okay, we need to find out from Newoldstamp whether if we use one of their sort of the main email exchanges, whether that would automatically update or not. Okay, what about the metrics? Have you had a chance to look at some of the metrics, Charmi, that we're getting?

I did actually. These are one of the best features of Newoldstamp that I, that I think it's really cool. Is the analytics option where you would be able to check the data on the number of clicks, impressions on each variable in your signature, i.e., your Facebook or LinkedIn link or your podcast link. And then what day was that and which country is that from and what device they were using. I think that's the coolest feature of Okay, good.

So that would be the, if you like, the differentiation between just kind of your own auto signature in your own computer. But so we've got a little bit of UI issues would be the negative from what you're saying, but the standardization for everybody on the team having the same signature, or even indeed having a signature, because often People don't make a signature, right? That would be the real benefit. Plus then these analytics.

Plus their customer service, Jim. I must mention that their customer service is 5 out of 5. They walk you through and they reply straight away.

Great. So it's a good company to work with. Now, one of the other aspects that I like about Newold Signatures is that it has a package for just one person at a time at $4.50 per month. But you can also get packages for 3, 5, 10, and enterprise packages. So it really grows as your business grows. And as I say, we're obviously struggling a little bit because we use Zoho, but if we used Exchange 365, Google G Suite, then the integration would be seamless. And it's got to be fantastic news. The bigger your organization The more consistent and the more appealing, but also the more metric-driven your email activities are across the whole enterprise. So really, I think it makes a lot of sense. Anything else you want to tell us, Charmy, about NewOldStamp?

Sure. One of the neat features of it is they have a user-friendly interface. You could create the signature straight away without having tutorial because it's kind of straightforward. And then again, their customer service, 5 out of 5. That's the best thing about And again, the coolest feature they have is the analytics option.

Okay, perfect. So Charmi, thanks for giving us your expert opinion on implementing the Newoldstamp auto-signature.

No worries, Jim. My pleasure.

Perfect. Thanks so much for joining us on the SpeakPR program. Now today we've been talking about whether or not you should use an auto-signature application. We've been looking at Newoldstamp, which is a great up-and-coming company. And our verdict is that it does some nice work, but some of the implementation for the individual could do with a bit of an enhancement. But we like the service and we like the analytics. Thank you so much for listening, and if you'd like more information about SpeakPR, come to the EastWest PR website for our newsletter, or you can come to the speakpr.co website for our 5-stage methodology and You've been listening to Charmy Torres in the Philippines.

Thank you. Thank you, Jim.

And Jim James here in England. Thank you so much for listening.