Email branding to hit inboxes around the globe + 15 reasons not to be left behind

I can’t help but chuckle silently as I type this. It is said that corporate branding may be the next wave of the email phenomenon. Companies spend extortionate amounts of money on advertising, corporate image, letterheads and business cards, yet when it comes to email, the most common form of business communication, they are plain, impersonal, and unbranded.

Probably the most perfect opportunity to impress your brand image onto your customer is ignored for reasons that boggle the mind. Coca Cola, the world’s most recognized brand, is spending billions of dollars each year on marketing and advertising…virtually guaranteeing no single person could go through a day without being exposed to their brand.

However, Coca Cola must be sending millions of emails every year, yet they don’t brand a single one of them. You, as Small Business Owner, spend much less on marketing. But those dollars are probably much more sensitive to your bottom line. To prove this, ask your marketing guy to tell you straight how difficult it is to get funds approved for new campaigns.

So what’s so funny about all this?

Well, for starters, most of the abovementioned were written and published way back in 2001 already. Even though it was related to the Australian market, it still holds true for most countries today, eight years later. It is still one of the cheapest forms of marketing, performed through a channel that you own, and yet the market is still largely untapped.

There’s no competition for space, no bidding on placement and zero cost per click and with very little onset capital needed, the branding potential and ROI through this channel is huge.

MarketingProfs which I hold in high esteem, indulges us with 15 benefits of email branding:

Technical Benefits
1. Integrate templates into your corporate email system
2. Apply different templates for different situations
3. Control access to templates
4. Publish managed content to email templates to enhance corporate branding
5. Customize email templates to corporate branding and personalize to the sender
6. Minimize the impact to the email system with lightweight HTML templates
7. Utilize the centralized storage of a web server to store resources instead of sending them along with each email

Business Benefits
1. Reinforce your brand each time an employee sends an email
2. Ensures your company maintains a consistent professional profile
3. Differentiates your company from competitors by providing a flexible communications tool
4. Increases productivity and efficiency by directing recipients to relevant sections of your website, or to a free phone number
5. Enables your company to send targeted and focused messages, increasing brand awareness
6. Can be incorporated as part of a lead-generating process, using Web links
7. Increases customer retention through more effective and continuous communications
8. Contributes to the identification of new business opportunities by making your brand more visible

What are typical questions you want answered before adopting this approach?