Email marketing should be looked at as another way to reinforce your brand message. Consistent branding messages should always be a part of your email campaigns. Your branding message should not only be consistent, but also ever present throughout your email marketing. Make sure that your subscribers and readers never have a second thought as to who or where the email they are reading came from. Your branding message should be clear in both graphics and text. Here are 5 tips that will help you bring a consistent branding message to your email campaigns:

1. Sign Up Page

The branding experience should begin when someone first signs up for your emails or newsletter. Your sign up thank you page should include the same, consistent branding message as everything else in your marketing arsenal. It might just be their first experience with your company, so this is your opportunity to get them familiar with your logo, your voice, and what to expect, to help them recognize your emails in the future. There is a growing trend to embed the signup on your website. It does simplify the signup process, but you might be sacrificing added content. This eliminates the need for a separate page with branding, but it also might mean you have lost some valuable content. If you are still building your brand or fighting for your search engine presence, you should opt for a separate page for newsletter signup.

In our graphic example, you will see that H&M has the branding on their newsletter sign up page, it is continued in the top menu bar from their website. No extra logo was needed for the page since it is built into the template from their website. It also makes for a seamless transition that doesn’t confuse or scare off the customer. Other aspects we love from this sign up page includes the video message and the call-to-action graphic on the right side. Let your subscribers know why they should get your newsletter. In this case, it is a simple “stay up to date”, an important notion for fashion and a simple “sign up now”.

2. Subject Line

Including your branding in your subject line will benefit your email open rates in addition to helping to get your brand name out there. It also means that even if the subscriber doesn’t open your email this time, they are still reminded of your name and your brand regardless of the success of that particular email. If you don’t include your name in at least the “friendly from” section of the email subject line, your brand is lost in this transaction. When I subscribed to the Neverland Store’s email newsletter, it was from a pop-up prompt on their site offering me a $10 savings on my next purchase. The email appeared immediately after signing up, helping follow through with an impulse shopping buy. However, just in case I don’t look at it right away, or want to save it for later, I will find it right away because Neverland Store is in the friendly from, as well as the subject line. Remember, visitors may be signing up from the home page or a pop up offer. If they are shopping around, they may not remember all the sites they visited, so it’s important to include branding in your subject line so they can follow through. Also, don’t forget to include branding in your pre-header text. If you included your brand name in the subject line, and have a powerful message or CTA in the pre-header, your message won’t be lost on the reader.

3. Preview Pane

The preview pane of the email is yet another opportunity to ensure that your email subscribers are seeing your name, your graphics, and your message. Don’t keep your customers guessing as to who sent the email or where it is coming from. If subscribers do not recognize your name, there is more of a chance they might unsubscribe or even click the spam button. AWeber also points out a very valid point about open rates increasing with a properly optimized preview pane. Preview panes are available in different email clients. In Gmail, you can opt to have a preview pane or not. AWeber’s statistics show that 53% of B2B email subscribers have the preview pane feature while an estimated 80% of B2C email subscribers utilize the preview pane feature. When you do have an email preview pane, consider the benefit of your subscriber seeing the preview image #1 over preview image #2.

Image #1 includes text and call to action

In image #2, the message is lost with a large graphic.

4. Personality and Voice

Consistency in your personality and voice is important in your emails for branding purposes as well as for other reasons. Your company’s personality and voice are an important part of the persona of your company. Customers like to see the same personality and voice throughout all communications from a company. It helps them recognize your company and it is also endearing.

5. Consistency in Your Template

Carrying through the same template and graphics in each email helps email recipients to recognize your communications, therefore increasing the likelihood of responding to them, opening them, and carrying through with your intended goals. It also helps make it easy for you to send the emails out by reducing the work involved in creating an email campaign. You just plug new content into your email template, which cuts down time and costs involved in email marketing. As with our example above, H&M keeps the same consistency in their email sign up page, their website pages and their emails as well.

Neverland Store also keeps a consistent logo and their first email is just a quick thank you with your $10 voucher as a reward for subscribing to their emails. They both win on template, graphics, branding, and consistency of voice.

Summary

Your email marketing campaign can help increase your branding. At the same time, thinking about your branding for your subscriber emails and newsletters also helps make for more effective messaging. Using the tips we’ve outlined today and including branding in your sign up thank you page, your subject line, preview pane, personality and voice, and keeping consistency in your template will all make for a memorable email campaign. At the same time, it is also likely to increase your ROI and the effectiveness of your email marketing throughout open rates and conversions.

About the author

Elizabeth Victor is Brand Advisor for Isentia. She enjoys sharing tips on media tracking and monitoring, as well as social media analyzing, press release distribution and marketing topics relating to businesses. You can follow Elizabeth on Twitter @isentia.

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