Continuing on our journey toward an integrated email campaign, we come to the issue of brand identity. We’ve learned about our audience through conversations with them, listening to them, and looking at the data. We know which channels are the right channels, the types of content they want, and the topics that are most important to them. We’re ready to create content, but before we begin, we need to concept an identity that will reinforce our brand, conveying who we are and what we care about, and creating consistency so people can easily identify emails as coming from us.
Consistency is the name of the game if we want to present a unified identity visually and verbally. A consistent look and feel lets our audience know what to expect when they interact with us. Read on to find out how to create a well-defined and well-used identity for your brand.
Values
Brand values are the desired set of experiences or associations a business wants customers to make with its products, services, or identity. Before you start defining your voice and visual identity, take some time to define your values by documenting the following:
- What is your purpose?
- What do you stand for?
- What are your values?
- What do you talk about?
- What makes you stand out?
You want a clear picture of what your brand stands for and how you want it perceived by your customers. Once your brand values are well documented, make them your inspiration for your identity.
Voice
A large part of what we say is how we say it. To create a consistent brand voice, you need to come up with a definition.
With everything you say, you want to communicate your company’s style, the passion and expertise of your team, and how your customers can benefit from your uniqueness. Write down three to five words that you would use to define your company, then focus your communication style around those words. Hip, conversational, playful, educational, sophisticated, fun, irreverent, inspirational, helpful—the options are endless.
Your customers have a major role in shaping your brand voice (and your brand identity). Look back at how your audience describes their world. Make sure you’re speaking their language.
Design
In order to pull together a cohesive look, establish all the elements that make up your basic look and feel, your graphic identity. It’s the little things that build a branding system. That identity should include the following:
- Logo
- Library of logo lockups
- Key colors
- Additional color options
- Typefaces
- Standard typographic treatments
- Consistent style for images
- Library of graphic elements, e.g. background texture, line style treatments, use of white space, color blocks
A well-defined, comprehensive graphic identity creates the foundation for a solid brand identity. Once that visual identity is defined, put it to use in your emails—and all your channels. When your subscribers click on a link in your email, be sure they’re going to a landing page that’s optimized for them and has the same consistent look and feel as your email.
User Experience
User experience affects brand identity, too. Your emails need to look great on every device your audience uses to look at them, be that a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Use responsive design so your emails adapt to be optimized for whatever screen they’re opened on. And be sure wherever you link to—your website—is optimized across devices too. A positive user experience has a direct correlation to positive brand perception.
In closing, remember that every email you create should help reinforce your business’s brand identity—that identity, unique to your business, that includes what your brand says, what its values are, how you communicate its concepts, and which emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business. Your brand identity is continually evolving and requires continued attention and adjustments as your business grows or changes.
Check back later this month for the next step in our series on how to build an integrated email campaign: teamwork.
Learn more about how Filament can help shine a light on your brand today.
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