This page includes tips on how to increase the effectiveness of your corporate e-mail disclaimer strategy, and lists sample disclaimer statements. Policy Patrol works with Exchange 2003, Exchange 2000, Exchange 5.5, Lotus Notes/Domino and any other SMTP mail server.

Use confidentiality headers
For sensitive emails, for instance emails that the financial or human resources departments send, it is advisable to add a confidentiality header that states for whom the message is intended. This can be accomplished by using a recipient name or email address merge field in your disclaimer. The confidentiality notice should be included at the top of the email, since it will be the first thing a recipient will read. Putting the notice at the bottom of the email will mean that the person needs to read the email first, only after which they are possibly informed that they were actually not allowed to do so.

Add different disclaimers per department
It is a good idea to include different disclaimers for each department since different issues apply. For instance, the sales department would need to include a notice that all quotes are valid for 30 days, and that the company's terms and conditions apply to all orders. For the secretarial department, you might wish to add a footer stating that the sender is acting on behalf of their manager and that the manager must confirm any agreements in writing (preferably name the manager or use a merge field to enter the name). The financial and human resources department on the other hand, will send more sensitive and confidential messages than other departments and would therefore require disclaimers stressing the confidentiality aspect.

Add disclaimers to internal mail
It is important to add disclaimers to internal mail, since many lawsuits have arisen from the internal circulation of offensive emails. The internal disclaimer text should be different from an external disclaimer, since different issues apply to internal mail. For instance, for internal mail the virus and contract issues are not so relevant, but the confidentiality and employer's liability aspects are all the more important to disclaim against. You can include a global internal disclaimer that gets added to every internal email, or you can create user/departmental based internal disclaimers. For instance, you might want to add a different internal disclaimer for internal help desk mails as opposed to emails from the human resource department.

Use personal disclaimers if necessary
Certain users, such as directors and supervisors, might require disclaimers according to their personal job function. For instance, these users might not want a statement added that says that their opinions are only those of the author and that they do not necessarily present those of the company. Also, users that frequently send attachments might need a more pronounced warning about viruses in email transmissions.

Company slogans or messages
You might want to add a company slogan to your emails. This could be a fixed slogan or a message that changes periodically. For instance, you could include footers or headers about:

• New products
• Upcoming events
• Special offers
• Company news
• Reminders

Again these messages could be departmental based and/or be specific for internally or externally sent messages. If you enable multiple prepend and append disclaimers in Policy Patrol, you can specify several global and user based footers or headers. By specifying the order of disclaimers, you can still add the 'regular' disclaimers on top of or below the periodically changing slogan. Configuring your disclaimers in this way saves you changing all disclaimers every time you wish to make a change in the slogan.

Append or prepend disclaimers
Depending on the sensitivity of the emails, you can choose to prepend or append disclaimers. Prepending disclaimers is best for sensitive emails and appending disclaimers is best for 'normal' emails. If you are adding signatures, it is best to place these after the last entered message text.