How to Create Email Branding

Posted by Ety D.
6
Jul 14, 2011
1264 Views
Image Email has become one of the most common forms of professional and personal communication. It's affordable, convenient and, if used correctly, an excellent branding tool. Many private and public organizations are now using email newsletters to grow their brands and spread their messages. To maximize email's value as a branding tool, you need to focus on consistency for your content, voice, design and deliverability.

Creating a memorable brand

1.  Define your niche. To build a strong brand, you need to have legitimacy with your readers. What's your expertise? What can you write about with enough authority that readers will come to you for advice or information? You may feel passionate about a topic, such as national politics, but if you can't create legitimacy and offer a compelling reason why readers should care about your opinions, you will struggle to build a strong brand.

2.  Decide on a voice. As a form of correspondence, email is somewhat personal in nature. Your readers need to feel like they know you. You can't be folksy and conversational one day and technical and scientific the next. This creates brand confusion.

3.  Select a template. Your design template should be a reflection of your brand. Are you trying to create a high-tech image, which would lend itself to more images and a slicker design? Or are you trying to be personal and conversational, which would favor a design that is more text-heavy and less polished? If you use too much HTML code or too many images in your email, it may become caught in spam filters. Work with your email vendor to find the right balance.

4.  Work with a vendor who will protect your reputation. If you hire a vendor to send your emails and manage your lists, make sure that vendor has an aggressive program for protecting your online reputation. All emails should have easy links or buttons for unsubcribing or reporting the email as spam, if the reader didn't wish to receive it. Make sure the vendor is "whitelisted" with the major Internet Service Providers (such as Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc.). This means the ISP knows the vendor is not a spammer and will not block delivery of the vendor's emails. Your vendor should also be able to make recommendations about when to send your emails, how best to format them to avoid junk mail boxes, and other things you can do to increase deliverability.

5.  Know your readers and build your list accordingly. You will harm your brand if you fail to deliver the type of content your readers want and expect. With any opt-in email list, readers have subscribed because they expect--or were even promised--a certain type of quality content. The more you stray from what you promised your readers, the weaker your brand becomes.




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