The average contract takes 4.7 days to be signed when sent as a PDF attachment by email. With Signovio, that number drops to under an hour. Here are five tactics that make the biggest difference.

1. Use Templates for Recurring Documents

If you’re sending the same NDA, service agreement, or employment offer repeatedly, create a template once and reuse it forever. With Signovio templates:

Signer fields are pre-positioned on the document
Your standard clauses are always correct
You can send a new envelope in under 30 seconds

Templates save an average of 8 minutes per document send. If you send 10 contracts a week, that’s over an hour saved weekly.

How to do it: Upload a document → place fields → click “Save as template”. Your template is available instantly for your whole team.

2. Set the Signing Order Strategically

If a contract needs two signatures — say, your legal team approves it before the client signs — set up a sequential signing order so signers are notified automatically in the right sequence. Nobody sits in someone’s inbox waiting.

For contracts that don’t need a specific order, use parallel signing — all parties get the link at the same time, and whichever signs first doesn’t block the others.

3. Enable Auto-Reminders

The biggest delay in contract signing is forgetting to follow up. Set Signovio to send automatic reminders:

First reminder: 2 days after the initial invite
Follow-up reminder: every 3 days thereafter
Expiry reminder: 24 hours before the signing deadline

You’ll never have to manually chase a signer again. On average, documents with auto-reminders are signed 2.1 days faster than those without.

4. Reduce the Number of Signers Required

Before sending, ask: does this person actually need to sign, or just see a copy? Every extra signer adds friction and delay. Common offenders:

Witnesses — not legally required for most commercial contracts
Multiple internal approvers — consolidate to one signatory where possible
CC-only recipients — use the “receive a copy” option instead of requesting a signature

Cutting one unnecessary signer can reduce turnaround time by an entire day.

5. Use Bulk Send for Volume Agreements

If you’re sending the same contract to multiple people — onboarding agreements, policy updates, consent forms — use Bulk Send. Upload your recipient list as a CSV and Signovio creates personalised envelopes for each person automatically.

What would take hours of manual work (uploading, addressing, sending one by one) takes less than two minutes with Bulk Send.

The Result

Teams that implement all five practices consistently sign contracts 3–5× faster than those using manual email processes. Start your free trial and see the difference on your very first document.

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Contract Signing Process