Enough Email Marketing, What About Email Branding!

If you’re anything like me, you’re sending emails out all day and night. All these emails are potential opportunities to further brand you and your organization into the minds of recipients. There are several little changes you can make that will help you maximize the branding effectiveness of your emails. Namely, your email address itself, not using one of the web-based or ISP email accounts, filling up the From: field, and inserting a signature file.

Your email address is the one part of your contact information that you can personalize and therefore use to reinforce your brand of who you are and where you’re from. Your email address should read “FirstName” then “LastName” @ “YourOrganization.com”. You can separate the first and last name with either a period ( . ), dash ( - ) or underscore ( _ ). For example, my email address is Keenan_Davis@unorthodoks.com. The reason for this is that everyone that I come into contact with will have my full name and have to see it every single time they email me or pass my information onto others. The first letter in each name should be capitalized to bring further attention to the name, as well. Do not worry if this approach makes your email address long. It’s not as though people won’t email you simply because they have to type a few extra letters.

This leads right into the importance of having your own domain name and not using one of the web-based or ISP email account for business purposes. My email address lets people know that they are corresponding with Keenan Davis of Unorthodoks Marketing. The “@unorthodoks.com” ending lets someone who just happens upon my email address know what my website is and therefore they can explore what “unorthodoks.com” is all about. It is not everyone’s job to remember who you are. It is your job to help them remember! Email addresses such as kdavis@hotmail.com or unorthodoks@verizon.net only vaguely reminds someone who I am and absolutely doesn’t reinforce my brand. Equally as important, ending my email with “unorthodoks.com” does more for creditability than if I’m emailing from “hotmail.com”.

Now to more effectively brand when sending email, you should improve your “From:” field. When receiving an email, the “From:” field should have both your full name and the name of your organization. For example, when receiving one of my emails, the “From:” field states, “Keenan Davis – Unorthodoks Marketing”. This allows for another opportunity for your clients, potential clients and associates to see your name and organization. You can edit the “From:” field in Outlook Express by going into Tools, Accounts, selecting your email account, clicking Properties and then changing the “Name” field to your first and last name and organization.

Brand yourself once more at the end of the email also by developing and including a signature file on all outgoing emails. A signature file is separate from the body of the email and found at the end of the email. The signature file I use is as follows:

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Keenan Davis - CEO
Unorthodoks Marketing
www.unorthodoks.com
Keenan_Davis@unorthodoks.com / 718.496.4454
Internet Marketing & Web Design To Reach The Online African-American Community
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A signature file is a non-obtrusive approach to let people know the rest of your contact information and re-brand what you do. My signature file contains the company name, web address, direct line, and company expertise along with my name, title and email address. Signature files allow you to include 4 to 6 lines of company information with every email.

These are several changes that can be made in 2 minutes and will allow you to start using your email for more than just sending email.