Can you confidently say that your emails have the distinct look and feel that are characteristic of your brand? How can your customers instantly recognize your emails in their packed inboxes?
If you find yourself hesitating to answer, you’re in luck. This article will guide you on how to brand email communications. We’ll explain what it entails, reveal its essential elements, and provide tips on how to start on a strong footing.
What is email branding?
Email branding refers to how a company or brand uses its email communications to position itself in the minds of existing and potential customers. It touches on almost every aspect of email as a marketing channel, from how you start the email to the techniques used to present its visual elements.
You can think of branded emails in the same way you would an individual’s personal brand. When you replace characteristics like fashion choice and hairstyle (personal branding) with attributes like colors and fonts (email branding), you’ll see that both share similar goals, i.e., to:
- express uniqueness/individuality, and
- create instant recognizability.
Thus, email branding can be a powerful way to differentiate your marketing emails from your competitors’ messages.
Why should you invest in branding your emails?
Branded email communications will enhance your email marketing strategy in the following ways:
- Increased brand recognition: Effective branding in your email marketing campaigns can be an effective way to get your emails opened in a crowded inbox. The reason is branding your emails can, over time, make them instantly recognizable. When combined with email campaigns centered around delivering value, you can even cultivate customer loyalty among existing customers and build trust with potential ones.
- Improved customer engagement: Since a branded email campaign can help you build brand recognition and, eventually, foster trust and brand loyalty, you’ll find it easier to engage subscribers in the long term.
Your customers will recognize your emails as coming from a trustworthy source and associate them with the level of quality your branding has cultivated in their minds. That last part will encourage them to engage with your future emails.
- Enhanced professionalism: When you brand email communications, you don’t just make them distinct; you also give them a veneer of professionalism. Again, when combined with brand consistency, the professional sheen email branding provides can positively influence customer loyalty, trust, and engagement.
- Higher conversion rates: Email branding is a means to an end: conversions. When you get it right, the domino effect of earning your customers’ trust, engagement, and loyalty should result in higher conversion rates.
For the above reasons and more, branding should be integral to your email marketing efforts.
What are the essential elements of email branding?
Let’s discuss the essential components of a branded email:
1. Subject line
The subject line is arguably the most essential element of a branded email. It’s the first thing your subscribers will see in their inboxes and the first opportunity you have to create a favorable impression of your brand.
If that isn’t enough pressure, research has shown that 33% of people use an email’s subject line to decide whether to open and read its contents. Get it wrong, and you may never get another chance to showcase your brand. Compelling subject lines are that important.
So, how can you use an email’s subject line to brand the email?
A few ways include:
- Using the right sender: Make your subject lines professional by using your business name or an employee’s name as the sender. That way, the recipients will know exactly who it’s coming from (as opposed to “noreply@[company name].com”).
- Striking the right tone: Make sure that your email subject lines match your brand’s distinct voice or tone. They need to be in sync with the rest of your assets to maintain brand consistency and strike the right tone with your audience. Get the ball rolling by identifying the tone of voice that best represents your brand. Then, weave it into all future subject lines.
- Being aware of length constraints: Most email clients have character limits that, when exceeded, result in sentences cut off with ellipses. Keep these limits in mind when crafting your subject lines to make sure your readers see the full message. Ideally, your subject line shouldn’t exceed 70 characters.
Other than the above, consider crafting subject lines that address your customers’ pain points. This strategy will work wonders in positioning your branded emails as being in tune with your customer’s needs:
ClickUp’s subject lines in the image above are excellent examples of the best practices we’ve discussed. They strike the right brand-appropriate tone, use the correct length, and include sender names while addressing customer pain points.
2. Email layout
An email’s layout can determine how (if at all) a reader’s eyes move through the copy. It can also make them form a positive or negative impression of your brand.
While layouts with appropriate spacing between visual elements give off a professional look, cluttered ones do the opposite. In the worst-case scenario, a poorly laid out email can make the reader click away without converting or unsubscribe from your list.
Some of the hallmarks of an aesthetically-pleasing email layout include:
- well-spaced elements
- use of bullet points to break up text
- use of headings and subheadings to establish a visual hierarchy; and
- use of color to highlight call-to-action buttons
Lamborghini’s email is a great example of one that adheres to many of the above-mentioned best practices:
It’s well-spaced, establishes a visual hierarchy, and uses color contrast to highlight its call to action.
Additionally, it’s good practice to include a header and footer section for your email. While the header is where your logo will go, the footer provides one final opportunity to leave a lasting impression.
If you have a social media presence, you can include social media links that your email recipients can use to connect with your brand on other channels. You can also include an email signature and the sender’s contact details for business emails.
GetResponse has hundreds of pre-built email templates you can use to lay out your branded emails. All of them are customizable, allowing you to include your brand’s colors, logo, and fonts. Start with our free plan to see how our software can help you brand email communications.
3. Font style
Customers who engage with your brand on one platform (e.g., social media) may expect a similar visual experience on another. You must meet this expectation by maintaining brand consistency across all channels.
For example, you can reuse the font family on your website in your branded emails to reinforce brand recognition.
That said, while it’s good practice to follow the above advice, you do have some leeway for experimentation, as the Youth of the People email shows:
Sometimes, it’s okay to use eye-catching fonts that outshine your brand’s main one. The caveat is that these fonts must be brand-appropriate.
Here, Youth of the People uses a font that emulates the viscosity of a lotion when spelling out the “Serums Month” email headline. It works because the font’s design helps set the mood for the email’s content, which is a promotion for the company’s serums.
4. Images
Images can elevate your branded emails by making them more visually appealing. Their inclusion not only helps to attract and hold attention but can also reinforce your brand’s identity.
When using these marketing assets, always choose images that align with your established brand. Remember, you’re branding your emails to project a specific impression of your company in your customers’ minds. Thus, the subjects, colors, lighting, and other elements of the images in your emails should reflect this goal.
The email below fits the above principles to a Tee:
Homecourt uses a powerful yet minimalistic image of a lone-scented candle when promoting its calming products. The image is compelling because it sells the idea that Homecourt is the place to shop from when you want supplies for meditative and calming experiences. It also creates an appropriate vibe reflective of the company’s brand.
5. Logo
Your logo is your brand’s visual identity. It symbolizes everything your brand stands for and, if memorable enough, will be the first thing your customers recall when they think of your company. Naturally, it should feature everywhere you exist on the web–from your website and social media accounts to your subscribers’ mailboxes.
Your logo should be the first thing your audience sees when they open your branded email. For the people in your target market with short memories, its placement in the email will remind them of (and prevent confusion about) who it’s from. Also, when paired with the other contents of your email, it can help to reinforce your brand identity.
Thus, it’s good practice to position it at the top and center of the email, as company Shift has done in the image below:
Another lesson worth drawing from Shift’s email is to match the color scheme of your email with your logo’s colors where possible.
Notice how some of the text and illustrations in the email share the same color as the icon in Shift’s logo?
That’s no coincidence.
The company likely made the color choices to strengthen the link between its email and the brand’s identity. So even if the reader forgets the email’s contents, they may come away with its aesthetics lodged in their memories. That’s one way to use branding to get subsequent emails opened.
6. Tone of voice
At their core, branded emails are communication tools. Their sole purpose is to communicate:
- Your brand’s value proposition
- Its promise to customers
- Why it should live in their heads rent-free.
Thus, when branding your emails, never lose sight of the fact that your communication style matters.
Your choice of words and voice tone in a branded email can endear your brand to prospective customers by creating an impression in their minds. They can also have the opposite effect.
Luckily, you don’t have to do guesswork here.
If your brand already exists elsewhere on the web, it’s simply a case of adopting the same communication style you’ve developed for those platforms.
In fact, unless you’re planning a rebrand, it isn’t advisable to deviate from an already-established communication style. Doing so may confuse or alienate your current customers. Be consistent.
This email by MAGIC SPOON does a wonderful job of combining vocabulary and tone to project the company’s playful brand image:
Considering its product offering, using words like “sweeten” and “treat” is a no-brainer. Still, the inclusion of the sentence “have your cake, and eat it too (with a milkshake on the side for good measure)” is noteworthy.
Not only does it have a literal meaning synonymous with the promoted campaign, but it also transforms a common idiom into a double entendre. This playfulness is on-brand for MAGIC SPOON and is an excellent example of the role tone plays in email branding.
With GetResponse’s email generator, you can save time during the drafting process by generating full-fledged drafts in seconds. Powered by GPT-3.5 technology, our platform lets you set the tone of your emails from the get-go. Whether your brand voice is “friendly”, “formal”, “informative”, or “inspirational”, our email generator will craft emails that match your sound perfectly.
5 essential tips for strong email branding
When branding email campaigns, applying the following tips should set your campaigns up for success:
1. Maintain visual consistency
When a potential customer opens your email, it should be immediately apparent that it comes from your brand. You can achieve that effect by maintaining visual consistency with your website and other digital assets.
The color palette, fonts, and imagery you include in your emails should offer a cohesive and uniform brand experience that breeds familiarity. Even when you repurpose content from your other marketing channels, it should be instantly recognizable as coming from you.
To start, establish brand guidelines related to the essential email branding elements we discussed. They’ll prove invaluable for maintaining consistency whether you outsource the email content creation process or work with an in-house team.
Also, audit your existing marketing channels to gauge the cohesiveness of your brand’s presentation. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes when doing so: they’ll expect a homogenous visual experience across social networks, your website, and email. Does the branding for your emails fit into that view?
Finally, create brand assets with a view to recycling them. While fonts and colors are given, you can reuse branded hashtags from your social media accounts or include your brand’s slogan. Such elements will reinforce your brand in your email communications.
2. Optimize for mobile
A Statista report estimates that the number of smartphone users worldwide will increase by 1.7 billion between 2024 and 2029. As more people connect to the web via mobile, the number of people accessing their emails from their phones will likely increase, too.
What the above means for your email branding efforts is to optimize for mobile.
One way to do that is to use a responsive email design. That’s easy enough because email marketing platforms like GetResponse provide hundreds of responsive mobile-optimized templates you can customize to your liking.
Your chosen email template should respond to the device’s screen dimensions and give your email readers an uninterrupted branding experience. All the elements must fit on the screen without the user needing to slide a horizontal scroll bar to see it. Even when they tilt their smartphones horizontally.
Take the Nonny email below, for example:
Notice how all its text and the call-to-action button are centered vertically? This design is optimal for viewing on mobile because it doesn’t hinder vertical scrolling.
The reader can experience Nonny’s branded email in the natural way smartphones are meant to be used. Your email designs should achieve a similar result.
If you’d like more details on optimizing your emails for mobile, download our free Responsive Email Design Guide.
3. Use personalization
By this point, it’s pretty clear that branding isn’t just about how your customers perceive your company but how they feel about it, too.
An effective way to influence how your branded emails make your customers feel is to incorporate personalization into them.
Email personalization entails tailoring an email’s contents to a recipient’s interests, behavior (like their purchase history), and demographics. There are many ways to do it, but you’ll need to segment your email subscribers into groups first.
The main benefit personalized emails provide is that they can increase engagement. Your readers will be more likely to respond favorably to your emails when you send them relevant content that appeals to their interests or pain points. These favorable responses will translate to higher open rates, click-through rates, and, ultimately, conversions.
Also, email personalization can humanize your brand and foster brand loyalty. Sending customers a timely discount, recommending products they may be interested in based on past purchasing decisions, and more are excellent ways to show you appreciate their business.
This guide to email segmentation should give you a headstart when creating personalized experiences.
4. Keep it simple
Keep your branded emails short and simple. While it’s true that you should aim to leave a positive impression, don’t go overboard or oversell. If you send overly long messages, you may risk boring your audience.
According to productivity software company Boomerang, emails that range between 50 and 125 words have the highest response rates at over 50%. This word count may seem limiting if your marketing strategy involves educational content. However, as the EverlyWell email pictured below shows, it’s doable:
Keeping things simple also correlates to your conversion goals.
The other idea is to split your educational content and share it through several emails in a drip campaign.
Every email message you send will likely close with a call-to-action button. The amount of text between the opening headline and this button shouldn’t be so long as to prevent the reader from taking action.
Similarly, the email’s layout should be simple enough that the reader’s eyes flow through it as quickly as possible and without hindrance. Again, Everlywell’s email (above) offers an excellent example of a minimalistic design that reflects this principle.
Finally, avoid technical terms and jargon where possible. A huge part of branding involves speaking to your customers in a way they understand. Research the words they use in their day-to-day lives and include them in your messaging. This effective branding strategy can close the distance between your brand and the people who belong to its target audience.
5. Monitor and update strategy regularly
Update your email branding strategy regularly to keep your brand fresh.
Email marketing should be a two-way dance involving sending an email and getting a response (or not). Don’t neglect your tango partners. Look out for and respond to their needs.
Making effective campaign updates requires relying on the data you get from past ones. Identify which branded emails performed best and which fell flat. Analyze metrics like email opens, bounce rates, unsubscribes, conversions, and ROI to get the complete picture of a campaign’s performance.
You can also perform A/B tests on two design layouts, email copy drafts, or calls to action for a proposed update. Carry out the tests on a sub-segment of your subscribers to determine which one to send to a larger group. Poring over the data at your disposal will help you make informed decisions when you decide to update your approach to branding email communications.
An all-in-one email marketing platform that can collect and help you analyze such data will be critical to these efforts.
GetResponse excels at marketing analytics, displaying the data in user-friendly dashboards. Our powerful software also offers A/B testing to help you compare different campaigns.
In closing
Knowing the essential elements of a branded email will help you brand email communications effectively. These components include the email subject line, layout, font, images, logo, and tone.
When combined with a mobile-friendly email template and copy incorporating personalization and simplicity, you can create a visually consistent experience for your customers.
Update these campaigns regularly, and your email campaigns will be powerhouses that put your brand’s best foot forward.