The Best Ways to Use Your Brand in Email Communication

1. Why branding in emails is essential
2. What emails require branding
3. Best tips on implementing your brand into email communication
4. Email signature branding
5. What can hurt your brand in email marketing

Useful tools:
1. Newoldstamp - Email signature marketing
2. Mailchimp - Email builder and sender
3. Reply.io - Personal email outreach, calls, and tasks
4. Mailtrack - Email link opens tracking
5. Canva - Online tool for making designs

We have already covered the topic of brand consistency in this blog post. And in today’s article, we are going to talk about the ways to infuse your branding into email communication and why it matters. 

Why branding in emails is essential

It is pretty obvious, actually: when your emails look good, your business looks good too. And when you do your best to make the appearance of your emails professional and uniform to your brand image, you contribute to the following essential things: 

A) Making a good first impression;

B) Maintaining a professional corporate image;

C) Increasing brand awareness;

D) Strengthening credibility and trust to your brand.

If you still keep ignoring business email branding, that’s inexcusable.

• Email is the main communication channel

First, emails have become one of the most common forms of communication between people. Whether we like it or not, lots of customers don’t want to pick up their phones anymore. Instead, they prefer a text or email or something they can push off until time allows them to reply.

• Company voice should be distinguishable

Secondly, there are so many strong brands out there. You definitely need to take every single opportunity not to lose the race against your competitors and win the attention of customers. 

• It’s free

And lastly, you are already sending emails to your customers regularly, why not add some style to your communication? It typically requires the elements you already have at hand (e.g., brand colors and fonts, tone of voice, visuals associated with your brand, etc.)

What emails require branding

Actually all of them. But there are some points you need to pay attention to. 

• Welcome email

The welcome email is the first message your supporters receive from you once they subscribe to your mailings. Branded company emails that welcome the recipient give the right first impression.

source: Reallygoodemails

• Offer

Keep in mind that not all of your recipients are already customers. That’s why they might need a little more background about your established brand to start trusting you. Be sure not to overload such emails with too many visuals if you don’t want to distract recipients from desired behaviors.

• New features or updates

Email branding design is important for such emails because it helps reassure users they have chosen the right product or service from the best brand. Just as with the previous type of emails, be sure not to overwhelm content with excessive branding elements to let people concentrate on the updates.  

• Transactional emails

Branding is essential in transactional emails, too, because it creates trust and displays that the vendor is reliable and professional. But be wise with the design and value your recipients’ time by not including the things that they didn’t ask for and don’t want (for example, too many visuals). 

source: Reallygoodemails

• Newsletters

The design of your newsletter should be on-brand too. Of course, content always counts, but the first things recipients see after the subject line are various visual elements. And no matter how awesome your content is, if it isn’t well packaged, people won’t bother reading it.

source: Reallygoodemails

• Cold emails

When getting in touch with a person for the first time, you should find a way to show that your company is established and professional. A generic non-branded email may project inexperience and even raise doubts on whether you represent a real company. But when you bother to send only branded cold emails, the recipients feel that you are serious about your business. Keep in mind that for cold emails, you shouldn’t add too many visuals. Often, it is better to use professional email signatures to make your cold emails personalized and branded.

• Internal emails

A lot of companies don’t put much effort into their internal correspondence, assuming employees will read the emails anyway. At the same time, many organizations make email communication a part of their corporate culture and implement great email across the entire company. It forms employees’ loyalty to the company and brand.

• Business communication

Talking to your partners via email is no different than talking to customers. In both cases, it is a wise idea to communicate what your company stands for. Well-designed branded emails can help potential partners recognize your message among others and understand that you are a true professional. 

You might also like: “Detailed Guide: How to Protect Your Email Newsletters From The Dreaded Spam Folder.”

Best tips on implementing your brand into email communication

Now, let’s see how you can brand your business emails so that you always look like a pro in the recipient’s inbox.

• Brand in email is 80% design

You should make sure your email template is branded wisely so that when people see your logo somewhere else a long time after, they realize they have seen it before. Notice that different types of email require different designs.

Use branded visuals

Your logo, product images, ad photos, social media images, and even employee headshots all should be in line with your brand. But don’t try to create any visual elements before understanding what they need to communicate to your audience. Choose a color palette, fonts, style of images wisely, and make them work together to create a visual impression that demonstrates people what your brand stands for.

source: Reallygoodemails

Create some email templates

Create email templates for different occasions to save time. These would have all the branded elements already implemented.

Don’t be too “loud”

You don’t need to add your logo everywhere in emails. Place it in a way that will allow recipients to stay focused on your content.

Use your brand’s colors and fonts

If you have already decided on your brand’s color palette and typography, you can use them in emails too. 

• Stick to a certain tone

Have a look at a few recent emails you sent to your customers. Are you using a consistent tone of voice that reflects the type of products or services you offer? Or perhaps your message can be easily confused with the message from any other company? 

Developing a consistent, remarkable tone of voice can take a little practice, but you should continuously work on this essential brand element. Finding your brand’s voice will help your business emails better connect with your audience and strengthen your brand in the process.

• Always use the brand domain

If you are contacted from this email address ABCxyz@yahoo.com or this email address natalie@YourBrand.com, who are you more likely to reply to? And who is going straight to the trash folder? 

Every professional should use a branded business email address. Usually, we take it for granted that almost every business has one. And if they don’t, it doesn’t make for a very nice first impression. If you choose to send business emails from your generic email address, it would be like walking into an important meeting wearing something not quite suitable, and expecting to be taken seriously. 

The best advantage of using a branded email address is every time you send out an email, you are promoting your brand, not Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail. 

• Associate your brand with a real person

Most of your customers prefer receiving emails from real people, not from companies. That’s why it is a good idea to use a certain name in all your messages. For example, “Hello. Larry from Newoldstamp is here.” 

• Use calls to action in promotional emails

Stick to a clear structure and bright, irresistible call to action (CTA) button. The copy in your CTA should also be composed in a way to show off your brand’s personality.

source: Reallygoodemails

Email signature branding

Even if you write a simple email without any visuals, an email signature with your logo or company name should always be there. Branded company email signatures can be very advantageous to a business. Have a look at the main reasons below as to why it is essential to use email signature branding.

Email signatures increase brand awareness

Every time you send an email with an email signature, you provide recipients with an opportunity to get to know your business and people behind it. Branded signatures also help develop trust and increase recognition. If the recipient recognizes your brand, they are more likely to respond or engage.

Make all employees signatures similar

Don’t let the employees design their email signatures themselves unless you want to turn everything into a mess. It is recommended to create an email signature policy and enforce it, so all the employees’ email footer templates have the same design and layout. To be on the safe side, use a professional email signature tool like Newoldstamp to take responsibility away from employees so they can’t modify the design. 

Add your website and social media icons

Be sure to include social media icons if they lead to the active accounts that are in line with your brand. This will also help you increase recognition.

Use branded colors in signature templates

Use your brand design guidelines to inform your email signature design.

Advertise your brand with banners

Using an email signature for company emails, you can turn every email into an excellent advertising opportunity by adding attractive promotional banners. These banners can include information about your latest product release, sale, event, and more. 

Make it all simple with email signature management tools

Any email message that reaches both potential and existing customers gives an immediate representation of what your brand stands for. That also includes the quality of your email signature. A poor unprofessional design will mean an unprofessional company in the eyes of many people. To avoid this scenario, be aware that everything about email signatures mentioned above can be done fast and with little effort with the help of a dedicated email signature creation and management tool.

Find out more about email signatures: “The Ultimate Guide: How to Make the Most of Your Business Email Signatures.”

What can hurt your brand in email marketing

And, finally, here is the list of things to avoid not to hurt your brand while communicating via email. 

DON’T 

Make it all about your brand

Give some value instead of just saying how awesome you are. That applies even to promo emails.

Use too many visuals

There is no doubt that the right imagery can create the right effect, but don’t overdo it. Your emails may go to spam, or some images won’t load. 

Forget about the copy

Content is king, and making your email body text nice and persuasive is really important.

Use fancy and not web-safe fonts

Use the fonts that are recognized as “web-safe.” If you choose some other fancy fonts, you run the risk that your amazing design won’t display properly.

Forget to test an email

Learn how to test emails and make improvements all the time to get better results. 

Conclusion

Branded emails are more than just emails but memorable communications. If a customer receives a non-branded email – the one that just has a few lines of text, chances are they aren’t going to remember you and your brand. Branded emails STAND OUT. They scream the brand. And people remember that. 

And while a lot of business people are already familiar with the practice of setting up a recognizable tone of voice, color palette, and uniform visuals for all business emails, many still underestimate the importance of email signatures for company-branded emails. But a well-designed email signature, amongst other things, is an excellent chance to make an impression through every email. It can turn a simple message into a professional, memorable one. And that’s exactly what we need when we polish our brands.