If an email campaign can be developed and deployed in a holistic and strategic manner, it can be a successful brand building effort. This would require a well thought out campaign design using offers and techniques that are relevant and that engage recipients.
For marketing emails, segmentation and personalization techniques can help provide a sense of relevancy to user needs. In this situation the need for a slick graphical presentation is trumped by the straightforward approach of the brand’s emails and the recipient’s need for information. To support the brand, white papers or newsletters can also be attached in PDF format or linked to from the text, but the information must be as relevant as possible to the recipient’s needs. This will mean getting to know your lists and your customers well.
Another way to build brand through text emails is by optimizing the transactional emails and landing page experiences. A place to start is by taking advantage of the welcome email. Welcome messages are one of the most common types of transactional email messages. A survey published in MarketingSherpa’s Best Practices in Email Marketing Handbook found that 54% of respondents stated that they open and read transactional messages “very often or always.”
It is likely that transactional emails could be effective if delivered in text only format; however, it is important for organizations to think about their transactional messages from the brand experience perspective.
According to MarketingSherpa an effective welcome message should:
- Thank the subscriber for signing up
- Reiterate the benefits of the email relationship
- Include a call-to-action
- Offer an incentive to encourage the desired action
The landing page or micro site experience can use graphics to present the brand, but the main focus here should also be on the user’s needs and the relevancy of the proposition. This will help create a connection from the email message to the landing page function and promote conversions. A-B testing and multivariate testing can help optimize the effectiveness.
I believe that an integrated marketing approach along with strategic text email campaigns can be successful in brand building, but will require consistency across all mediums and messages.
