Well, according to Seth Godin, marketing guru.
What he’s really saying is that potential customers aren’t buying into the rhetoric anymore. They are looking for authenticity – something you get from a one-to-one conversation with a personal contact – it’s the trust that comes with the relationship.
There is a wealth of information available out there, over and above your official company collateral – from review sites to candid user videos to minute-by-minute social media feeds – all with something to say about your products and services and with the credibility of independence. Somehow you’ve got to break through the noise and get your message heard. Email branding does just that with the personal nature of the message and allows you to be agile – able to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person.
Let’s Get Practical
Getting started on anything new can be a bit daunting so we’ve put together our top 5 tips for running a successful email branding campaign.
1: Set your email branding goals
Are you hoping to achieve greater brand consistency? Do you want to elicit immediate customer feedback? Or perhaps get a market indicator on a forthcoming product? Whatever your goals, it’s important to define them upfront and decide the metrics. The results will not only prove your success, but give you valuable insight and guidance for future campaigns.
2: Audit your content
Evaluate your content in terms of your goals – look at what you’ve already got and determine what can be reused, which pieces have the relevance to help you deliver on your objectives. Does the content support the right stage of the customer journey? Where are the gaps? Where are you taking them to next?
3: Build a plan – The Customer Journey
Are you using email branding as part of an integrated campaign or a stand-alone medium? Either way, a banner lends itself to short headlines and simple design for maximum impact. Because it’s so easy to customise and execute, plan a series of banners to underpin a wider marketing effort or as a standalone campaign. It keeps the message fresh and relevant.
4: Integrate, integrate, integrate
Using all the functionality of the customisable, interactive and trackable banners and email signatures is the key to success. Ensure that your systems such as CRM, marketing automation and analytics engine are all integrated with the email branding tool. That way, you get the maximum information from your results for the minimum effort.
5: Review and test
Email branding is a perfect way to get feedback on which messages are resonating with your audience, in real-time. Automated reports can be delivered to your inbox. Banners can be applied using a keyword in the subject line. It lends itself well to testing messages prior to a full campaign launch perhaps segmenting by department or domain name. With on the fly reviewing you won’t only have the agility to get the best results but also a way to gather important market data that may affect the success of future campaigns.
