If you have an online business, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. You can use email campaigns to drive subscribers to your website and boost conversions. However, in order to run successful campaigns, you’ll need a strong email branding strategy.
Proper email branding makes it easier for existing customers to understand what your business is about and what it can offer them. What’s more, if you build brand awareness through your marketing emails, users will be able to recognize your company faster, and hopefully develop a connection with it.
In this article, we’ll start by talking about why email branding is important. Then, we’ll go over four tips to help you create an email branding strategy. Let’s get to it!
Why Email Branding Is Important
More than 300 billion emails are sent and received each day, and this number just keeps on growing. If you regularly use email, this statistic probably doesn’t surprise you, as many of us get dozens of messages per day.
If you have any sort of online presence or shop online, many of these emails are probably marketing communications:
This is probably because businesses know that marketing emails have high open rates.
But, with so many emails floating around, it can be easy for them to get ignored. Users might click on an email message only to close it immediately if nothing jumps out at them.
That’s why email branding is critical if you want your campaigns to make an impact.
Branding involves making design and copy choices that signal your company’s personality, visual identity, and overall mission or goals. Ideally, all of these things should come together to form a unique style and voice.
With email, you have less space to convey your brand. But, once you know some simple email branding strategies, you’ll be able to spruce up your campaigns to more effectively reach customers.
For instance, adding a brand logo will instantly improve a drab marketing email:
When your logo is the first thing your customer sees, it immediately reminds them of your company and everything they associate with it.
What’s more, if you run a small business and you’re still building that awareness, being consistent about this in your email marketing campaigns can help improve brand recognition.
4 Email Branding Strategy Tips to Boost Your Company’s Image
If you’re not sure where to begin in terms of improving your email branding, these tips will help you elevate your campaigns through brand consistency. This way, subscribers will have an idea of what to expect when they open an email message from your business.
1. Place Your Company Logo Front and Center
Logos are perhaps the most essential element when it comes to brand identity. That’s because a logo is the main visual representation of your business. If you use a logo consistently, it can help boost brand recognition.
With this in mind, every time you send a marketing email, it should include your company logo at the top. To make this easier, it’s a good idea to create a branded email template with your logo in the header:
Your templating options will depend on which email marketing software you use, but usually it’s pretty easy to save and reuse an email header.
It’s also a good idea to add a smaller version of your logo as the image for your business email account’s profile. When you do, the email client will show your logo as the sender’s thumbnail (like in the above example).
This can boost your credibility and increase customer trust, which is crucial. Email phishing attempts can be a big problem, so consistent branding can help reassure people of your legitimacy.
2. Use Consistent Brand Colors
Most companies stick to a unique color scheme. When it comes to visual marketing, that’s called a brand palette. Over time, it can become just as recognizable as a logo.
For instance, when you think of Facebook, you probably also think of blue. Meanwhile, Netflix uses a red and black color palette:
To put it simply, colors are a huge part of a brand’s visual identity. Therefore, when creating content for your email campaigns, you’ll want to use consistent brand colors:
You can incorporate your signature colors in design elements like social media buttons and graphics. Additionally, don’t be afraid to use color for the text itself. As long as there’s enough color contrast (making it easy to read) this can help add some personality to your campaign.
Most email marketing tools come with intuitive editors that enable you to choose custom colors for your email templates. Depending on the provider, you’ll also be able to save these designs to reuse them for future emails.
If you want to successfully implement your color scheme across your company’s marketing materials, it’s also a good idea to include them as a part of your brand guidelines. You’ll probably need to know the custom RGB or HEX codes for your unique company colors. This will be especially helpful as your business and team scales.
3. Develop a Brand Voice
Another great way to improve your email branding is by developing and maintaining a strong brand voice in your emails.
Your brand’s “voice” refers to the tone and writing style that you use for its copy. Some brands like their emails to be playful and funny, whereas others opt for a more serious approach:
While you’ll mainly convey your brand voice in the body of an email, it can also shine through in email subject lines:
There’s no optimal voice or tone that suits most brands. This is a choice that will depend on what type of audience you’re targeting, what their needs are, and how you prefer to communicate with them.
What’s important is that once you find a tone that resonates with your audience, you stick with it. Over time, that brand style will become synonymous with your company and it will help boost its recognition.
4. Close With a Branded Email Signature
Branded email signatures should be another key component in any campaign you send. These signatures can act as a Call to Action (CTA) and drive readers to click on important links for your business.
One great approach for a branded email signature is to include your business logo alongside social media links:
Other companies use their email signature to share links to critical pages. HBO Max, for example, provides links to their terms of use, contact details, and an unsubscribe link:
What links to include in your email signature will depend on where you want to drive traffic. Links to your company’s site are always welcome, as are those to social media. Once you settle on an email signature formula, it’s best to keep it consistent for future campaigns.
Use NameHero to Create a Branded Business Email
By now, we’ve covered some of the most essential tips for improving your company’s brand and image via your email marketing strategy.
However, there’s one more crucial branding element left to cover – your business email address. To show readers that your emails are legitimate, this should be a custom address that includes your company name.
To create a custom email address, like [email protected], you’ll need an email domain from an email host like NameHero:
NameHero offers several different email hosting plans, so you’re sure to find one that matches your needs. All plans include at least one email domain, multiple email accounts, and 50 GB of email storage (minimum).
Additionally, NameHero email hosting is highly secure, offering superior spam protection and regular backups. It also uses the latest email authentication protocols, including POP3 and IMAP.
In terms of performance and useful features, you’ll also get premium email deliverability, an integrated calendar, and more.
Moreover, NameHero is that it’s a one-stop shop. That means you can purchase a site domain, web hosting, and a custom business email all from the same provider.
Conclusion
Email branding plays a critical role in how people see your company. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you’re being consistent in terms of email design and copy. This way, your audience will come to associate your brand with specific traits, and know exactly what to expect when your latest message hits their inbox.
If you want to create quality branded emails, here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Place your company logo front and center.
- Use consistent brand colors.
- Develop a brand voice.
- Close with a branded email signature
Do you have any questions about how to follow email brand guidelines? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
Sophia is a staff writer at WordCandy.co, where she produces quality blog content for WordPress plugin and theme developers, hosting providers, website development and design agencies, and other online businesses.
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