At some stage in your business, if it hasn’t happened already, you may wish to consider doing email marketing to communicate regularly with your customers.
Now before you rush to explain that all the cool kids are using social media, bare in mind that when done correctly, email is still one of the best ways to promote your business and keep your customers informed online.
There are many benefits that contribute to a good email marketing campaign such as relevance, timing and engaging content, which are all important factors to consider. But the challenge for us designers is creating an email template that can:
- Build familiarity and confidence with your customers
- Look great in all types web browsers
- Provide ease of maintenance for the user
- Look fabulous and professional
- Help build your brand
So what bits do we need in an email?
Your brand combines good use of images and relevant messages to convey the personality of your business and the promise to your customers. Consistency makes your brand more recognisable and helps build trust.
So to help build a consistent brand using email marketing, a good designer will incorporate all these essential ingredients to help you engage your customers more effectively:
- Main Image – That is reflective of your brand and can elicit the emotion you want your audience to feel.
- Logo – The idea is to make sure people who open your emails see your logo straight away.
- Message – Your email copy should be consistent with what’s on your website and in other communications. It doesn’t need to be an essay, but just enough to get them to take action.
- Call to action – To help drive customers to click on the link, pick up the phone, or purchase a product.
- Graphics and photos – They can bring your email content to life. But they need to be used wisely and be true to your business personality.
- Different “pre-branded” templates – Used for different email campaigns, such as newsletters, announcements, and promotions. The logo and colour scheme should be consistent across the templates, but you can vary subtle design elements to show each is different
Remember to carry your brand across all media
As you’re thinking about your business image and your email campaigns, don’t forget about Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites! Those are great places to promote your content and invite people to sign up for your mailing list. Plus it’s where all the cool kids are hanging out these days 🙂
It’s also important to present your logo and message in tune with your other branded communications such as your website, your brochures and even your client invoices. Promoting your brand image consistently with thoughtful design for all your communications builds a solid business reputation. In the end, people are going to spend their money with businesses whose brands they recognise and whose messages they trust. Consistency builds both.
Not sure where to start?
At Bright Owl Marketing we time to learn about your business, the products and services you offer and your core values during an initial consultation. This enables us to collectively develop a very refined and polished design brief so that the designer can create fantastic email templates and branded communications that are right on the mark from the outset.
So if you’re not sure where to start, why not call Bright Owl Marketing to assess your brand.
