Employing an effective email marketing strategy is an essential tool for building up brand awareness.
Many online businesses tend to view email marketing solely in terms of sales.
However, building strong relationships with an email list is one of the best marketing strategies for increasing sales performance and strengthening the position of a company.
When employed well, email marketing can:
- Foster serious customer loyalty by creating direct links with consumers
- Leverage ROI of any marketing campaign
- Establish a brand as a reliable reference point for consumers
- Decrease email list unsubscribe rates
In short, email marketing provides one of the most powerful tools for encouraging long-term habitual interactions with a brand.
In this article, we will take a look some highly effective methods for reinforcing brand awareness using email marketing.
These are tried and tested methods for creating trust and authority and building email marketing campaigns that really add value to consumers’ lives.
What’s great is that you can begin using these methods in your email marketing strategy right away!
Why Email Marketing Is Essential for Building Brand Awareness
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing mediums.
It provides businesses with the opportunity to target customers in the place they visit every day – their inbox.
When a user subscribes to an email list he or she has shown a desire to engage with a brand.
This makes them a highly valuable lead and the research backs it up:
- 66% of customers make a purchase as a result of an email marketing message – Digital Marketing Association
- Email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping your business acquire new customers – McKinsey
- Email marketing yields an average ROI of $38 for every $1 spent – Email Monday
Why is this so?
Because email offers brands the chance to reach loyal customers regularly and directly.
Of course, developing brand awareness among other marketing channels, such as social media and SEO, is important.
However, the fact is that none of the other mediums provide the direct, consistent interactions that email does.
Simply put, it is the most important component to any brand awareness building strategy.
5 Techniques For Developing Brand Awareness in Email Marketing Campaigns
#1 – Personality and Tone of Voice
Should a brand be serious or friendly? Scientific or colloquial?
The personality of a brand’s marketing communication should be consistent with all points of contact with the consumer.
By keeping to a tone that is representative of its values a brand will instill confidence and reliability in the eyes of their customers.
#2 – Email Campaign Template
Humans are pattern-seeking mammals.
It is precisely this need for pattern recognition that forms the foundation for solid brand awareness.
The easiest way to establish this is with an HTML email template that is in line with the company’s objectives.
It is important to consider the following:
- Do the fonts, colors, call to action and layout match those of the business?
- Is the logo being used correctly?
- Are the company details clearly displayed?
- Does the email message contain a personal signature or the company name?
Email marketing templates are an opportunity to reinforce brand recognition.
Making an email instantly recognizable will encourage consumer confidence.
#3 – Make Sure That Your Email Campaign Converts
Typically email newsletters that contain graphics tend to perform better than the text-only transactional type.
In addition, users are more likely to open messages from brands they recognize. So be sure to include the company logo.
A compelling image in the top area of the email is one of the best ways to get a brand’s message across and will often determine if the email gets read or deleted.
Don’t forget to include just one “call to action” so that the receiver knows exactly what to do.
A further tip would be to split test all email campaigns. A split test could include testing a different “call to action,” graphic or layout.
The important point is to always optimise the weaker performing campaign to push up those conversion rates.
#4 – Send Out A Welcome Email
The Welcome Email is a great chance to set the tone for all future email correspondence.
Amazingly, there are still many online businesses that don’t use it.
The first few emails are typically the ones in the follow-up series that get the highest open rates – so why not make use of them?
Informing the newly subscribed user what to expect from future email correspondence will make a brand feel much more personal.
To really make a subscriber feel worth something it could be a personal note from the CEO.
You could also offer them a chance to choose the volume of email correspondence they would like to receive (weekly, monthly, etc.).
This would let the customer feel not only that they were more involved but also that they are not about to get bombarded by emails that they are not likely to engage with.
The email could contain a selection of links to choose from and then transfer the subscriber to different lists or add tags based on the links that they click.
From a marketing perspective using an email message to segment users in this way can present many opportunities for email personalization further down the line.
#5 – Create a Matching Landing Page
The email marketing sales funnel is not complete without a landing page that’s customised to match the email template.
From the customer’s perspective there is nothing worse than being presented with a scintillating offer, eagerly clicking on the “call to action” in the hope of redeeming the offer, only to be directed to a landing page where it’s hard to find the offer or worse still one that doesn’t contain the offer at all.
Keep it simple.
If the email and landing page is asking for the customer to carry out a specific task, make sure that they know what that task is and that they are able to perform it.
#6 – Avoid Continuous Sales Pitches
Email campaigns are a simple way to communicate that a brand is an authority in their niche.
A brand that is only interested in sales will find that their email drop off rate is high.
The best way to ensure that customers remain loyal and will bring repeat custom is to offer solutions to problems that they are facing.
By offering solution-focused email content customers will not only remain engaged with the brand but will be eagerly awaiting the next email follow up.
The sales will come later.
#7 – Send Emails Regularly
We spoke earlier about being consistent with branding and tone.
Make sure that you are also consistent with sending.
For example, don’t bombard subscribers with 10 emails in one month only to send them 1 the following month.
Remember to create a scenario where they are looking forward to a message from you.
This way you keep them interested and keep the trust alive!
#8 – Segment and Personalize
Any company not working on list segmentation and deeper personalization are missing out on a method for solidifying brand awareness.
Segmenting an email list into highly targeted micro-segments allows for more customer targeted product marketing.
Consider that your business is a Day Trading Portal that caters to traders of all levels.
By creating segmented lists of say, beginner, intermediate and advanced traders you now have the opportunity to target each trading group personally.
Rather than alienate beginner traders by sending them advanced trading material the business has the opportunity to nurture the customer by way of beginner trading tutorials, tips, and strategies.
Similarly, the more advanced traders can be kept engaged with updates about various trading platforms, specific trading events, and more advanced investment strategies.
Email marketers interested in optimizing conversion rates have identified personalization and segmentation as conversion stimuli in email content for some time now.
The benefits for brand awareness include minimizing the unopened email rates, decreasing email list subscriber drop off and fostering confidence in the customer that the brand really understands what each individual customer needs.
Conclusion
The key to developing brand awareness through email marketing lies with consistency, providing solution-focused content, personalization, and highly optimised campaigns.
A well thought out email campaign can run for many months and keep customers coming back for repeat visits and repeat conversions.
If you’re not employing your email marketing strategy to its full potential it’s time to get to work on content and mailers and start thinking about how to keep those customers coming back.
Never before has there been a greater medium for keeping customers engaged!
If you liked this post, check out our Small Business Guide to Email Marketing.
About the Author
Simon James is a Marketing Consultant. He owns a Marketing Agency and Hosting Company. In addition, he runs the blog AffexPro, a tech blog focusing on Hosting, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and SEO.
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