9 Effective Strategies to Boost Brand Awareness Through Email Marketing

It shouldn’t be a shock to hear that in this age of short attention spans, businesses face a tough time putting their brands in front of their target audiences like never before. And we’re not necessarily talking about small companies here. Even the big names are feeling the same heat.

Now that you’re aware of how profound the problem is, you might feel a little intimidated. Don’t worry! Email marketing can help with all of those concerns your business is struggling with. With a user base of 4.26 Billion, email marketing is definitely your best option if you’re looking to establish a solid online presence, and it’s not really hard to see why! 

By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly how to leverage email marketing and take your brand awareness to a whole new level! 

Sounds good? Let’s first have a clear role of email marketing in all of this.

Building Brand Awareness: The Role of Email Marketing

You could say that email marketing is an old-school tactic that doesn’t work anymore, and we can agree but then we’d both be lying!

Just imagine how powerful it is to directly hit the inbox of your target customer. Honestly, can you think of any marketing strategy that can beat that?

The minute a user decides to enter your email list, they’re basically saying, “Hey, I’m interested in your services” and it’ll be your responsibility to convert that interest into action. Research is here to back up this statement, according to Mailmodo, the average ROI is $42 for every $1 spent (yep, you heard that right!). 

Why is email marketing that efficient, you ask? Here’s the explanation:

What every business wants is a channel that allows them to connect directly and consistently with their loyal customers, and it’s totally safe to say that none of the other marketing mediums come close to the interaction journey that email has to offer. 

Don’t get us wrong—we’re not saying leveraging social media or other channels can’t do the trick, they can enhance your brand awareness, no doubt! But if you want to get your customers excited to hit that “purchase” button, nothing does it quite like emails.

So, we’ve talked quite a bit about the role that email marketing has to play in the online presence of your business, which brings us to our next question: how to leverage email marketing to boost brand awareness? Well, that’s what we’re about to show you. 

How can you Leverage Email Marketing to Boost Brand Awareness?

Time for some hands-on work! 

We’ll share 9 strategies that will move the needle for your email marketing game and bring your brand right in front of potential customers.

Ready? Let’s get our hands muddy! 

1. Develop a clear understanding of your audience

Marketing has taught us that all customers are not the same, and that’s why creating some sort of customer profiles saves the day. It will help you understand your audience better, hit their pain points, and effectively pitch your products and services.

But this process will take a little more work than that: you need to do your homework to collect the right data about your target audience, such as their different ages, genders, nationalities, location and everything in between.

Now that you know enough about your target audience, you can start customizing your email marketing campaigns to fit their needs. At this stage, you have all the pieces to deliver real value to them and when they see your brand as their one-stop solution, it’s going to be too hard for them to ignore it. 

2. Create an engaging email subject line

It might sound a bit over the top, but it’s safe to say that creating an engaging subject line is your best bet to get your audience to open your email. If it’s not catchy, they won’t bother. Just like in the film industry, when the trailer is bad—no matter how great the content is, the movie won’t make it big at the box office.

So make sure to come up with something brief and eye-catching. Your subject line should deeply resonate with your email’s content and spark a sense of curiosity. Incorporate elements that set your email apart from others in the inbox: power words, statistics, emojis—basically, anything that adds an urgent tone.

Using clickbait subject lines is a total red flag that can literally ruin your credibility and boost your unsubscribe rate! Customers expect you to provide value and solve their problems, so if you want to build a long-lasting relationship with them, craft a subject line that aligns with this mindset. It’s that simple!

3. Get innovative with your welcome emails

You may already know that welcome emails are a great way for you to introduce your brand voice to your audience. Surprisingly, lots of businesses aren’t using them. Hate to break it to you, but if yours does too, you’re totally missing out.

One great way to build bridges with your subscribers could be offering them a chance to choose the volume of email correspondence. Let them pick how often they want to receive your emails.

Not only does this keep everyone on the same page, but also it spares your audience from getting inundated by emails they don’t want to engage with.

Consider also segmenting your audience by inserting a selection of links in the welcome email for them to choose from. The point of doing this is to have a clear understanding of each customer so that you can personalize your content down the road.

Take this welcome email example from M&Ms. You can instantly guess the logo of M&Ms, the voice of their brand, and, of course, the industry they’re in. 

4. Consistency beats perfection

Just like with any marketing channel, consistency is the name of the game. Don’t buy into the salesy promises of overnight brand awareness—it’s just not realistic. 

Email marketing is a long journey that involves multiple phases to reach the engagement your brand aims for. 

On the other hand, emailing too often can also have the opposite effect, so you must find the right balance. Your best bet is to leverage the email metrics you gathered from the previous email campaigns as this won’t just tell you how frequently you should send emails, but it will also reveal the content type that engages your audience the most.

Once you reach the perfect balance, you can build a loyal and engaged audience that’s ready to convert and do the word-of-mouth magic recommendation for your brand. But whatever your strategy may be, it’s best to go back to basics which is to create an engaging content that gets your audience excited for the next email to hit their inbox.

5. Incorporate an obvious Call-to-Action

Another great way to boost brand awareness via email marketing is to incorporate a clear call-to-action. Now, for those out of context, a CTA is a statement that prompts your audience to take a specific action in your business relationship. This action might involve purchasing your product, signing up for your online course, or reviewing your app.

The best way to do this? Put your CTA in a visible and easily noticeable spot in your email. Don’t forget also to use a contrasting color and larger font size so no chance that the call-to-action will be missed.

Avoid beating around the bush with CTAs—just tell your audience what you want them to do. If it’s about subscribing to your newsletter, go straight for it with a simple “Subscribe here”. 

The tone you use in your call-to-action is also crucial. Consider throwing in some limited offers, countdown discounts or other tactics along these lines to create a sense of urgency and FOMO. 

Feel free to get some inspiration from the CTA used by Extensiv to promote their Warehouse Management System! It’s super engaging, with a perfectly placed click button, colors that match their brand vibe, and just the right font size.

So, before randomly putting your CTA, make sure it checks off all the requirements we highlighted.

6. Create attention-grabbing email layouts 

We humans tend to be pretty logical, and want to follow patterns that align with our thought process. and that’s the formula you should follow to hit the jackpot in your pitch. 

First things first, put those eye-catching graphics to work. This can make your target customers way more likely to open up the email as they scroll through their inbox, and to keep everything on point with your business, do your best to:

• Make the fonts, colors, call-to-action, and layout match with the brand’s style.
• Ensure the logo design is used in harmony with the brand’s identity.
• Add a personal touch with a signature or the company name within the email content.
• Enhance your email design with elements that resonate with your brand. Introduce interactive features like customized QR codes to drive engagement by linking directly to promotions or detailed product pages, making it easier for customers to take the next step in their journey.

Softr, the popular no-code web app builder, sets a great example of how email layouts should be structured. With a neat design and a well-organized template. They managed to highlight all the important details in their emails, all while staying consistent with their logo design and brand style.

But using aesthetics isn’t really the full story–a neat and attractive email template can speak volumes about your voice and values, allowing your potential customers to get to know more about your business mission. Once they experience that ‘Aha’ moment, they will naturally spread the word, and your brand recognition will go through the roof.

7. Avoid coming across as too salesy in your email content

You’ve heard it before, but we’ll say it again: never come across as salesy when connecting with your target audience, especially in your emails. Instead, focus on offering value and genuine solutions, and infuse a human touch throughout your campaign. Because after all, your goal behind all of this is to build strong relationships with your customers.

And you really don’t need to be a marketing genius to figure out that brands whose primary focus is making sales tend to experience a massive drop in their email lists. These “Spray and pray” approaches just won’t hit the mark.

When your email content can help with addressing the pain points your audience is facing, sales will follow naturally. 

8. Use Social Media to promote your email campaign 

Your work doesn’t end with sending your email campaign, you have to push the boundaries with some serious promotion, and can you think of a better tool for the job than social media? 

If you can make the most out of your social media in your promotion, your email campaign will become the talk of the town the next day! More sign-ups for your email list, better customer experience management and most importantly, more won deals.  

One of the most effective methods to boost brand awareness is by integrating social sharing buttons at the bottom of your emails, this will make it a no-sweat for your readers to share your emails with their network.

Self-promotion can also work wonders. To encourage your audience to sign up for your email list, consider offering engaging incentives such as giveaways with company-branded swag, discounts, or coupons for first-time subscribers.

Alternatively, you can go the direct route: invest in social media ads. All you need first is to create a sign-up form dedicated to the campaign, then run the ads, and watch them work their magic to drive traffic. 

9. Track and monitor your email campaign performance

How do you determine your email campaign success? Through metrics, of course!

After you’ve launched and promoted your email campaign, the next (and likely final) step in the process is to track its performance. Slice and dice your data to see what’s working and what needs fixing for next time.

Tracking your email campaigns involves analyzing various metrics, and we recommend prioritizing these four key ones:

• Open rate: This metric tracks the number of people who opened your emails.
• Click-through rate: This refers to the percentage of readers who clicked on email links.
• Conversion rate: This measures the percentage of readers who completed the desired action, typically a purchase.
• Bounce rate: This measures the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered to recipients’ inboxes.

As you might already know, there are incredible email marketing tools known for their high scalability, that will do all the heavy-lifting for you, from providing in-depth analytics, to segmenting your email subscriber, and tracking the metrics we mentioned above – pretty much anything you can think of.

Tracking your email marketing performance will eliminate all the guesswork and help you make data-driven strategies to refine your email content. But remember, that’s not an overnight fix—keep testing and trying out various approaches until you identify what clicks best with your particular audience.

Get Your Brand Noticed by Everyone

And thus we reach the end of our blog post, phew.

But a quick last reminder here: a meticulously crafted email campaign can continuously draw customers back for more visits and conversions over several months.

Now we can safely say that we have told you as much about email marketing as you should know before you start using it to boost your brand awareness. 

We hope you gained something out of this article and we hope you can share something great with us too!

Oh, and while you’re at it, why not give Breadcrumbs a shot? It’s just a click away!