How to Build Your Brand: One email at a time.

It’s true: email marketing has been around since the 90s. It even looks and works much the same way. And yet, despite all the new-fangled ways to build audience (Instagram Stories, YouTube influencers, look-alike audiences, etc.), nothing can touch the engagement and sell-through rate we see from our email marketing. As I write this, email campaigns drive 40% of Bean Box’s e-commerce sales (currently in the 7 figures).

We think a lot about why this works so well, because it helps us optimize. First and foremost, we believe that email gives you the opportunity to deliver a more personal, authentic, and direct brand experience than other social channels, because they embody the possibility of 1–1 dialogue, as opposed to the model of highly polished 1-many broadcasts. From what we’ve seen, most startups treat email marketing as an extension of their social content efforts: they write copy for the masses, fuss too much about aesthetics, don’t bother to personalize the content, and focus their strategy around the details of the offers (and not its relevance to the recipient).

The philosophy and approach we’ve developed are quite the opposite. We think of our email recipients as pen pals who love coffee as much as we do. We tell stories about the coffees we feature: explain why they’ll love the coffee, what they’ll taste when they brew it, what makes it unique or rare, and we then gently remind them how to reserve the coffee so it arrives fresh on their doorstep before it’s all gone. We address every email to a specific recipient, personalize the content based on their coffee preference and history, and send every single email from my personal email address. It’s worth mentioning that I have responded personally to most customer replies over the last 4 years (and if you think that doesn’t scale, see these pieces on Jeff Bezos’s and Tim Cook’s email habits). Here’s an example of the kind of tone we use:

This personalized, conversational approach to email marketing has helped us cultivate a highly-engaged audience, and it’s the foundation of our fastest growing sales channel (one we don’t have to pay to reach again). Thankfully, our tone stands out against the backdrop of the barrage of marketing emails that don’t have any personal touch, and we end up delighting many of our customers. By way of proof beyond the pudding of our open and conversion rates, hundred of recipients of any given email actual write back. Here’s an example:

Hey Ryan — thanks for thinking of me! Really enjoyed that last “candy coffee”, and I’ve always wanted to try one of those Geisha beans. Please send a bag and charge the card on file. - Jennifer

In our experience, emails that engage the audience with a personal touch often lead to that holy grail of email marketing exchange: conversational commerce.

For effective audience, brand, and revenue building with email, you don’t need a designer, copywriter, or engineer in order to succeed. What you do need, however, is the desire to engage your customers one on one, using your own authentic voice. Tell your story, one email at a time, and the rest will fall into place.