8 Tricks for Building Brand Identity Through Email Marketing

Some would say that the future of marketing belongs to social media and that we can’t win new customers with email marketing. And it is understandable for some people to think that. We live in a time of rapid technological progress. There is so much hype around new ways of promoting businesses that we tend to forget what was good about the old ones.

So, despite the hype, email marketing is boosting sales for the majority of businesses. And this is far from a personal impression. The numbers say the same: the email marketing metrics say it has the best return on investment (ROI)I rate (because it is practically free to use), and it converts three times more efficiently than social media. And email marketing and branding go hand in hand.

Now that we are clear on the fact that email marketing is essential let’s learn more about it and see how you can make the most out of it.

Email marketing: facts and benefits

Those who claim that email marketing should be relegated to the history of marketing usually understand it superficially. For them, email marketing is just spamming people with company news, promo codes and having constant contact with them. What they don’t understand is the power email marketing has in building a meaningful relationship with customers.

So, how can email marketing fuel your overall inbound strategy? First of all, email communication is a face-to-face thing. Unlike social media, where brands are speaking to a crowd, email is the online address of one single person. If we understand that as an opportunity to personalize our approach, the person’s perception of the brand will grow in both emotional and semantic dimensions. This can help with reducing unsubscribe rates and improve your brand image and brand.

Another great thing about targeted email marketing is that it provides high-quality feedback. In the case of social media, we have to translate customer behavior into statistics in order to understand them. With emails, there is much more qualitative, more personal, and more human feedback. Listening to the feedback can help you to improve your email performance with more relevant messages, different types of email, and with the benefit of avoiding being marked as spam.

Additionally, it is necessary to understand that not everyone is on social media (yet). Although Millennials are an important target audience for many businesses, they are not the only ones out there. Entire generations are still learning to use basic features of the internet, let alone social media. It would be unfair to forget about them.

And guess what? Young or old, everyone uses email. And just like people don’t give their physical address that easily, email is something they give only to those they trust. If we have our customers’ private addresses, we have the privilege of getting closer to them. It is our job not to let them down.

Email marketing is essential for a long-term and sustainable relationship with your customers and for building your brand identity. How can you do this? Here are some ideas.

First impressions matter

Your welcome email is probably the most important one. Do your best to make it friendly to express your gratitude for having them on your email list.

At the same time, stay professional. Make sure your domain name isn’t something random but something that aligns with your company’s name and brand. Furthermore, set up an automatic signature and perhaps get an email automation tool to send a welcome email as soon as the customer signs up.

What you absolutely want to avoid is your emails ending up in the spam folder. In order to make sure to stay out of the graveyard of email marketing, create emails that comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. This act requires you to:

• make it clear that you are writing for the purpose of advertising
• incorporate your company’s contact details (physical address, phone number, website…)
• making the unsubscribe option available and visible
• avoid sneaky and deceitful subject lines.

Also, it is very important to ask for permission to send promotional emails. As previously explained, the email address is considered sensitive information. If you would like to know it, be polite enough to ask.

Know your audience, interact, and listen

You are starting an email campaign to grow your business. Everybody knows that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But in order to make it successful, you need to understand that email marketing is a dialogue.

Personalization is a must in contemporary marketing, and it is something customers are demanding. Forget generic emails – nobody wants to read that.

There are several things you can do to assure your customers that you care about their personal options and opinions. For example, as soon as you get their email address, you can ask them what type of content they would like to get from you.

Another thing you can do is make the email somehow interactive and, if possible, entertaining. It is recommendable to use the customer’s first name and address them with “you.” Then, how about a birthday and holiday card? Or, even better, a discount code?

There are plenty of ways to surprise people in your email list, and that can be highly beneficial for deepening their relationship with your brand and improving your click-through rates.

Be compatible with all devices

We spend a lot of time in front of many different screens: laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and even smartwatches. If you want to prove to your customers that you care about them, then your message should be available on any device they might use.

This means you need to take care of any misaligned text, broken links, or coding inaccuracies. Also, avoid CTAs embedded in background images. Other things that might compromise the legibility of your emails and therefore undermine the user experience are clear or floating coding and JavaScript. Not all of your customers are tech-savvy, and it can be too much for some devices.

Stay true to your brand every step of the way

No promotional email should reach your customer’s inbox if it doesn’t contain your logo, your recognizable font, and your tone. Remember that emails are your opportunity to shine and present your brand’s personality in every respect.

Apart from your brand’s identity, make your emails consistent with each other. Use the same style, tone, and don’t mix templates.

Use automation tools

Automation can help you with repetitive actions and saves a lot of time. There are delivery tools that take seconds to send an email to hundreds of addresses. A human would need hours to do that, while the software does the same thing in a second.

Except for that, some email services track email and make a record of the past interactions including open rates, soft bounces, email metrics and more, and create replies and campaigns accordingly. For example, it can send an automatic reminder in case of cart abandonment.

Also, AI technology does magic with cross-selling and predicting future behavior.

Emails should be associated with your social media, blog, and website

It should be clear by now that your email marketing strategy should be harmonized with the entire business system you are developing.

In order to strengthen the relationship between your brand and your customers, put links to your social media accounts in your emails. Even better – put links to your most engaging posts. That way, you are giving them the opportunity to come even closer to you and interact with the entire community gathered around your brand.

Also, think well before you link your email and your website’s land page. It is important for these to be mutually coherent and logically consistent. Redirecting people from your email to your homepage will bring nothing but a frustrated user.

The same goes for linking the content of your emails to your blog. Blogs are treasuries of valuable information. Show your customers that you know what their interests are and provide the information to them.

Be creative, original, and engaging

The content of your email must not be:

• boring,
• too short or too long,
• irrelevant.

You only have a couple of seconds to leave a good impression, so there is no time or space to waste.

Make sure to add all information that is important for you to say, but don’t forget to include what is valuable for your customers.

The true secret of email marketing is humor. If you can find a perfect balance between being informative and funny, this means you have mastered the craft. Of course, there are businesses whose voice is rather professional than entertaining (finances, for example). In those cases, the content will be balanced in a different manner.

If you remember the basics of branding, it is all about meaning. In order to cope with so many options available on the market, customers tend to assign meanings and feelings to them. The combination of these elements is what makes the core of a brand’s identity. You want every element of your email to be meaningful and impactful. Using videos, animations, and images could be a great way of sending an engaging message. Of course, it goes without saying that all these should be of high quality and fully personalized.

Don’t be pushy

Urging people to buy something is a no-go for contemporary marketing. People have the right to make their choices, and what they want from us is the right information and a good user experience. Marketing is a bridge between the companies and their customers, and it is there to explain what the product is, and what benefits it might bring.

This means it is necessary to keep it simple, creative, friendly, and informative. No fluff and no spam, or your customer loyalty could be at stake.

Conclusion

Email marketing campaigns have great power to raise brand awareness and nourish loyalty and trust between you and your customers. Finding the right combination of tone, content, and visual appearance might take some time, especially if you want to do it right.

Don’t be afraid of errors, and learn from them instead. To help you out with that, there are various tools that track the results of your email campaign. With the right data analytics and a good team, email marketing will yield amazing results in no time. Let’s get that email delivered.

Nina Petrov

Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her little white bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.