Transitioning from a brand’s soft identity to its hard identity is not an easy thing to do. Going from a gutty understanding of your brand to manifesting it to the market can be a long process. No Apple is born with the bite. So, if you’re worried how to brand your assets, you’re far from alone.
But coming to the matter at hand, with respect to marketing via email, you have a distinct advantage: Email gives your brand the space to showcase your brand identity consistently, continually, and congruously. No other channel does that.
Now that’s 12 years of email marketing speaking.
Curious to learn how to make a branded email? Let’s tee off!
5 Branded Email Templates & Tips
1. Commit to Consistency
Identity is by virtue of consistency. That’s why multiple identity is a disorder. The same with your brand.
Check out these branded email templates from 1906.
You can see the consistency for yourself: In all three emails, the following remain consistent:
- Use of gummy shapes as textual boxes
- Rounded buttons and banners
- Swimlane sequence at the top which features the brand name
But keep in mind that consistency applies to your sender details, subject line, and pre-header as well. Catch Shinesty’s pre-open consistency below. In all these emails, Shinesty’s humor comes through in the subject lines, sender details, and pre-headers.
2. Brand Your Sender Avatar
This is so basic, yet so many brands don’t do it. Now, there’s no harm in not branding the sender profile pic. But in the context of identity, the cumulative effect of small things can be impactful. It all adds up, and memory takes advantage of details.
That’s why the bite is more famous than the apple.
Take a look at how these brands leverage the profile avatar. It is not just consistent but a strong credibility marker as well.
Compare the above sender addresses with these, and judge for yourself. Brand differentiation works at all levels.
3. Stick to Your Brand Palette
Nothing says you like your colors. Designing all your templates in light of your brand palette is therefore important. This also is part of being consistent. Consider these emails from Dollar Shave Club. The pumpkin orange-blue color scheme is intact.
From buttons to hero images to background color to that towel in the first email, the brand’s visual consistency is striking.
(Please note that consistency is not synonymous with sameness. You may and should deviate from your color schemes in one-off campaigns, special occasions, etc. Only don’t lose the markers.)
4. Brand Your Footer
No, not just the hero section, not just the product grid, but brand identity operates right till the end. It’s amazing to what extent certain brands go to leverage this space. No, it’s not just the legal bit, these brands use the footer to tell stories as well.
Take a look at dbrand’s footers in these emails. (You know, intent is also what differentiates your brand from the bricks.)
Let’s think of it like this: How you look is characterized not just by your Ray-Ban glasses but by your Jimmy Choo pumps as well, right? This Vitruvian wholeness, if one may put it that way, is integral to your brand identity. If you’re avoiding these seemingly trivial elements of email design, you may not be affecting the bottom line alright, but you’re not delivering brand experience to the fullest extent. It assumes weight in the realm of perception.
“Perception forms a key part of the experience. This includes audio, visual, and tactical interactions that allow customers to connect a specific sense to advertising campaigns. In much the same way that particular smells can bring back memories of childhood experiences, brands that successfully merge senses with marketing can create connections that drive sales,” explains Doug Bonderud.
There’s a god of small things too.
5. Typify Your Brand Voice
Use email to typify or exemplify your own brand voice. If you’re humorous, jest up your emails like a Shinesty. If you’re morbidly funny, go full Gothic and ghostly like a Liquid Death.
Because email gives your audience the time and space to read and reflect, leverage it especially to bring your voice to the fore. At the same time, make sure that your voice is distinct and familiar across the rest of your assets.
While critiquing a brand’s email, Jeanne Jennings, email expert, draws attention to just such a discrepancy, “Then there’s that headline. This is another place where, in addition to mentioning the brand, they need to channel the voice and tone of the website. This is so sad — this email doesn’t look like it has anything to do with the charming website I visited earlier in the day.”
Let’s take a look at Liquid Death’s branded email example. Here are three emails.
In all three emails, Liquid Death uses negative humor, which is their hallmark, their brand voice. Our favorites are these:
- Hell Yes
- More Stuff You Don’t Need
- Sell your soul today
- Did you die or get kidnapped?
Now, Liquid Death sure makes it look easy, but it’s never easy to write such emails. Without a professional copywriter at your disposal, you can’t communicate your brand voice. Because the voice of your brand needn’t be as clear as an adjective.
To elaborate: We find it easier to describe brands in one word. So Shinesty is funny, Nike is bold, Apple is innovative, and so on. But the fact that we can describe these brands so easily shows just how successfully they’ve been communicating their identity. Yet, a brand’s distilled identity is not necessarily apparent to the founders themselves. It’s the creative spirit that defines it, and makes it communicable to the other person.
This is also what Grace Aldridge Foster, co-founder of Bold Type, argues with reference to email writing, “…people write emails based on the way they prefer to write them. Based on their own preferences. But the thing about email is you’re writing to accomplish something and it requires the participation of another person, of your recipient. And so constantly what I’m doing when I’m teaching is, is reminding people, you need to understand your audience’s preferences and you need to write emails, uh, around their preferences, not yours.”
In light of that, if you want to communicate your brand voice, do invest in creative specialization. Hire a dedicated copywriter to craft your emails, to bring out your brand voice loud and clear.
What’s Your Brand? Tell Your Evangelists at Email Mavlers!
If your brand assets are ready with you, share them with us. With over 5,000 successful client collaborations to date, our team excels at taking brands from conception to conviction.
Get in touch with our email template production team.
Susmit Panda - Content writer
