09.14.06

Email Branding Secrets

Posted in Uncategorized at 3:17 pm by altersage

With “brand” being on my mind quite intensely the last 2 months with deciding on where I want to align myself for the next 5 years and having been “living in my inbox” more than usual, I thought it appropriate to share a few branding secrets with you specifically focussed around email.

Not that they can’t be found anywhere else online. These are a few fundamental items as relates to email marketing. They do to some extent of course also work well in a very general sense for all media.

They’re so simple, yet so many people “forget” or “bypass” these elements.

  1. Know your “brand relationship”. In other words the context of which your audience is engaged with your brand.
  2. Understand how your audience perceives your brand.
  3. Be aware of how your brand “appears” to others when it lands in the inbox. (multi-platform testing, testing and then some more testing!)
  4. Establish and follow through with an engagement program.
  5. Have a disaster recovery plan.

I’ve experienced a few “disasters” and not many people have a recovery plan in place. Most just cross their fingers and hope for the best!

That is a tricky one though, let us say for example you’ve “accidentally” sent out an unpopulated email to the entire database. (I’ve actually experienced this one on the receiving end) what do you do?

  1. Quickly send another mail in apology
  2. Send out the correct mail without saying anything
  3. Say nothing and hope for the best
  4. Send out an apology mail and a separate “correct mail” and hope that the entire database does not unsubscribe?!
  5. Do an “all in one”

In that particular instance the company chose to quickly send a mail in apology and then the correct email. Having been on the receiving end, I did find it quite annoying to receive so many emails. I would rather have suggested the “all in one option”.

It is very subjective though and no matter how you try and recover, there is always the chance of the fateful “unsubscribe”.

On another occasion I received a blank mail (again), but this time the company followed the typical “say nothing and hope for the best” routine. I was infuriated, but I did not unsubscribe only because I really enjoy that particular newsletter.

There are many elements to be aware of before embarking on an email campaign or even if it’s just sending out or replying to a client email. Even the smallest elements in your opinion may affect the perception of your client or correspondent.

Keep these elements in mind and spend a little more time with your email or newsletter before you send it off next time.

Leave a Comment