Brands surround us, from the hair products we use and the drinks we drink, to the computers we work on and phones we use to communicate. If you pay attention to successful brands, you will notice that they have something in common: consistency. Their brand is the same whether you see it on a billboard, catalog, web ad, t-shirt, or yes, even an email! This means that your emails really DO matter and that branding behind them can help your campaign perform even better!
Here are our top tips when branding an email campaign:
Imagery
Email campaigns are highly visual and often incorporate custom graphic elements. Brands must make an effort to stay true to their branding imagery in an email. Consistent visual messages, fonts, and logos seen across multiple marketing channels will reinforce the memory of your brand in someone’s eye. Picture the Facebook logo in your mind. Do you have it there? Can you picture the shade of blue that Facebook uses? Can you picture what the “F” in the icon looks like? It has a specific font and shape. You want your customers and prospects to be able to conjure up your logo and branding identity in their mind just as easily as they can brands like Facebook. Make sure your email is true to your brand, relates to the customer, and is easy to navigate to find the call-to-action!
Links
So many times, we see email graphics with a teensy tiny “CLICK HERE” to get more information button. The vast majority of emails are opened on mobile devices and tablets but study your own email behavior. If you have to scroll through an ad on your phone to find where the spot is to get more information, you are less likely engage that brand. Why not make the entire email a series of easy to use links and when you do your analytics, don’t forget people have fat fingers like us! Email campaigns with their call to action button in the top right of the email will outperform emails with buttons in other locations of the email.
Voice
The language you use in an email should match the language you use in your marketing materials, your website, your social media, and your day-to-day conversations. Is your “voice” colloquial? Is it instructional? Perhaps it’s edgy. Whatever voice your brand has make sure you are staying consistent in your emails so that consumers instinctively know what brand is speaking to them in the medium of email marketing.
Value Offer
People love to buy and hate to be sold to. So be sure your offer provides a solution to your customer’s problem. 10% off a weight loss program is not likely to be a solution that is meaningful to someone who is overweight. Great tasting food, not feeling hungry, testimonials of weight loss are a much better approach. Make sure you are adding value to your audience’s life.
Format
We see clients run email campaigns and retargeting campaigns that may include multiple streams of emails. In fact, it’s usually encouraged to run a series rather than a stand-alone email. When you do a multiple-email campaign make sure that the template stays consistent. You train your viewers to know where the key pieces of information lie in your emails when you stay consistent. Consistent formats with templates give viewers the order they need to see the message easily, as opposed to searching and digging to find the nuggets of important information in an email. If a consumer can’t find the information easily they won’t spend the time. Make it simple for people to see and know what’s important in your email campaigns.
Preview Screens
Understand how email programs work and what the preview section is for most viewers. Make sure to maximize this valuable piece of email real estate by having a consistent brand image and message. Many people will only view the preview section, rather than open the email completely. You have to make it count!
From Line and Sender Credentials
Make sure the technical side of your email marketing campaign is branded as well. When an email shows up in an inbox, who it’s from should make sense. An email labelled as being from “Smith Athletics” makes more sense than from “Joe Smith,” especially when you are targeting new people. If it looks like spam, expect that it will be routed to the spam folder and never opened.
Landing Pages
Opens and click throughs are what you’re looking for in email campaigns. The emails have done their job in directing email recipients to engage the advertiser on their website. Now that prospective customers are on your site continue to talk to these prospects working toward converting them to customers. However, if you have a horrible landing page that doesn’t reflect the brand, your audience will either think it is a scam, not professional enough, or just an amateur marketing attempt. Yet a landing page that reflects the consistent branding to everything they’ve seen of your brand before, will convince viewers that they’ve made it to a safe, good place to do business with. The landing page will feel the same as the email, which should feel the same as your website, and your newsletters, and your social media, and on and on!
The Right Audience
A high-converting email campaign is going to occur when you’re employing the tactics listed above but only if you’re targeting the right people. The right audience will know and relate to your brand immediately because interest has already been established via proper audience segmentation. How can you know you’re targeting the right people? Using Deterministix data graphing we can pinpoint the exact people to focus on for advertising. Targeting the right “persona” using IP address and Device ID records and other known information like email, we can identify people based on actual activity that will be interested in your offer.
Email marketing is still the fastest method to get in front of consumers and is a great way to reinforce your brand. People do business with companies they know, like, and trust! Consistent branding is the key to building that trust and level of being known in today’s digital world. The more consistent you are, the more likely consumers are to remember and trust you! This ultimately leads to more business and growth for you.