Email: from villian to victor in brand marketing

Reposting Henre’s blog post here on the corporate site:

Making a case for email branding as value adding tool to everyday business communications is not always as simple as explaining the obvious benefits of branding alone. Some decision makers are driven by return on investment figures, where for some others elegant designs are enough to sell a product.

Whichever way we choose to look at branding, it’s undeniably one of the most important components in business practices. However, while many companies consider their branding strategy as top priority, very few focus on their everyday email communications as a way of managing their brand.

Why is that?

Let’s highlight four major contributing factors:

Email is so last [fill-in-the-time-period]

Considering that email has been around long before the dawn of the digital marketing era, it is often still regarded as a no frills communications tool used to distribute correspondence. The entry point to digital marketing started with idea of rich website design and to many companies, their website still encapsulates their complete “online branding strategy“.

As time evolved and technology advanced, various online components focused on increasing brand awareness with the inclusion of search engine marketing, pay per click, online advertising and affiliate marketing. Today, new areas in social media, including blogging, social networking and micro-publishing forms the basis of what is labeled as the new media era.

With all of focus on the web, not a lot of emphasis has placed on email by the new generation of marketers. Email has never been regarded as a branding tool to start off with; it is continuously disregarded as value-add to the business arena.

But, email is the glue that has made these other applications work. For example:

• Email tells you when users leave messages on your social networking sites
• Email tells you when someone has “friended” or “followed” you
• Email gives you summaries on performance of other SaaS applications

…and much more.

Email needs to be “managed”

Of course, one also needs to keep in mind that email is often regarded as a nuisance. There are tons of applications, tips and management tools specifically created to combat our inbox invasion as it is well documented that email consumes productivity like a new Wii release. With that in mind, it is understandable why decision makers simply refuse to spend money on a tool that we see as more hassle than it is worth.

Contrary to others, email is not dying. Not anytime soon anyway. And while we cringe at the idea of downloading our emails each morning, not to mention staring at the flags of unattended emails of weeks ago, the number of emails we send increases by the day. The number of emails we read increases by the day. With all those impression opportunities, why not put email branding to good use?

Advertising clutters emails

We are being exposed to an increasing amount of advertising and marketing messages daily. This has become a worldwide endemic and the negative effect on consumers is tangible throughout the Internet where they are given the opportunity to voice their opinion. Simply downloading and viewing a branded email might not be welcome, but as studies have indicated, people become inured and even expect these effects – especially if they are presented professionally and effectively.

You’re already “branding” your emails

Or so you think. With a kaleidoscope of templates to choose from, your staff has been playing around with colorful patterns, unique signatures and various formats for ages. They understand the importance of business identity but think corporate identity begins and ends with contact details and website links at the bottom of their signatures. While their unique signature design seem “absolutely fabulous” to them, it is often more damaging to your brand than you could have imagined.

Universally identifiable companies portray a consistent brand image to consumers congruent with their corporate identity and design. It is number one in the ten commandments of branding.

With these four key areas featuring as potential reasons not to employ email branding as complement to your current branding strategy, the bottom line still remains:

Every email send without branding is simply a marketing and branding opportunity lost.

Can your business afford that?