It's National Small Business Week!

By Kristin Lukins, Web Marketing Manager, Docusign

This week is National Small Business Week, recognizing the contributions of entrepreneurs and small business owners across the United States. Small businesses are creating jobs, driving innovation, and supporting communities every day, so when small businesses succeed, we all prosper. Here are our top tips to help your small business grow and thrive.

1) Build brand recognition

Odds are, your company has worked hard to create a professional identity that you’re proud of. With Docusign’s Branding feature, you can customize the color scheme and logos your customers see, showcasing your brand and adding professionalism to your envelopes and emails.

Why is this so great? People trust brands they recognize. At the end of the day, many decisions we make are influenced by emotions despite our best efforts to be logical and practical. By surfacing a consistent identity across your customer experience, you are making your brand feel more dependable.

When you set up Branding in your Docusign account, your custom brand will replace the default Docusign signing brand, and applies to all users on your account and every recipient for every envelope sent from the account.

> Learn more about Docusign Branding

> Log in and configure your brand

2) Keep accounts secure

There are reports of data breaches and new phishing scams popping up everyday, and the last thing you want is for your company to fall victim to hacking. One way to keep your company’s accounts secure is to set up minimum requirements for password complexity.

By requiring your users to include capital letters, numbers, or special characters in their Docusign passwords, you can make sure that none of their accounts can be hacked with “123456” (the most common password of 2018). Common guidelines suggest having a minimum of 12 characters, including a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

Set password strength requirements with Docusign Password Rules to make sure all your users have strong passwords to protect your company’s private information. Set password strength requirements for users, including the number of days before expiration, format and more.

> Learn more about Docusign Security Settings

> Log in and set up Password Rules

3) Foster better collaboration

In today’s digital age, there are tools that allow you to work around the clock and around the world. How can you unlock this capability to fuel growth for your business? Empowering your employees to collaborate online using cloud-based tools, like Docusign, is a great first step to increase productivity and efficiency.

Within Docusign, sharing envelopes allows users on the same account to view and take action on shared envelopes. This enables team members and delegates to help each other with management tasks, such as sending reminders or correcting recipient information, so that your agreements are never stuck relying on one person-- because we all have the occasional sick day or vacation!

> Learn more about Shared Envelopes

> Log in and enable envelope sharing

We hope these tips are a good starting point to take your small business to the next level. What are you waiting for? Log in and get started with these new features today, or sign up for a 30-day free trial.