What is email branding?
Email branding is the practice of aligning all email communications with a company’s brand identity to create a consistent and recognizable experience for recipients. This includes visual aspects, such as design and color, and content elements, like tone and messaging, ensuring uniformity across all the channels.
Why is email branding important?
Email branding strengthens brand awareness and recall by ensuring a consistent visual identity, making your emails instantly recognizable. A cohesive style, from colors to tone, builds trust and keeps your brand top of mind.
It also enhances differentiation, helping you stand out in a crowded inbox. Unique branding elements make emails more engaging and memorable, increasing the chances of email engagement.
However, it's important to balance strong branding with valuable content to maintain audience engagement. If your emails aren’t relevant, no amount of beautiful branding will make them effective. In fact, well-branded emails without substance can backfire, becoming easily recognizable and just as easily ignored. When branding and content work as one, your emails get noticed.
Elements of effective email branding
Let's explore the key elements that contribute to building a consistent and professional brand identity in your emails, along with the best practices to employ these elements.
Logo
The logo is one of the first things that a recipient sees in your email. Place it prominently at the top of the email so that the subscribers can easily recognize your brand. Ensure the logo stands out, but avoid making it too large, as it shouldn’t dominate the email. Keep the logo size and placement consistent across all emails.
2. Color scheme
Color psychology shows that colors can influence consumer emotions and behaviors. Using your brand’s color scheme in emails reinforces brand recognition and creates an emotional connection with subscribers. Play around with your brand’s primary and secondary colors to create unique designs, and maintain consistency throughout your email communications.
3. Font
Your typography should be consistent throughout your email campaigns as well as your website to ensure uniformity across all platforms. To maintain clarity and readability, limit yourself to two or three fonts, using different ones for headings and body text while staying true to your brand guidelines.
4. CTA
A strong call to action (CTA) motivates recipients to take the desired step, like purchasing, registering for a webinar, or downloading a resource. In the CTA, use brand colors and fonts to match website buttons. Keep CTA language uniform across email and landing pages to avoid confusion.
Check out the email CTA from Mailmodo. It has the same colors and font as the website CTA.
5. Tone of voice
Your tone of voice helps express who your brand is. Whether you're friendly and casual, professional and informative, or bold and witty; your tone builds a consistent emotional experience that your audience comes to recognize and trust. Consistent tone across emails and other communications to your audience helps build an authentic and cohesive brand identity.
6. Images
Consistent visuals, such as photography style, product images, or illustrations, create instant recognition and strengthen recall. Color schemes and design elements that align with a brand’s website and marketing materials build trust and cohesion.
7. Subject line
The subject line shapes first impressions and influences open rates. Consistent capitalization, use of well-placed emojis and familiar naming style (e.g., “What’s New!”) reinforce brand personality and drive clicks.
8. Email layout
A well-structured and consistent email layout enhances branding. Your email layout should also be aesthetically pleasing without overshadowing the email’s purpose.
You can use an email builder to create an email template that keeps your brand’s style intact while adhering to your design principles and brand guidelines. You can then use this template as the base of your future emails, so they look like their coming from the same brand.
You can check out the resource below if you want to learn the design principles behind a visually appealing email.
9. Email signature
An email signature is a professional and personalized closing at the end of an email that includes the sender’s name, role, contact details, and links to social media, along with the company logo or profile image for brand recognition.
Using a standardized signature, whether from an individual like “Jyo from Mailmodo” or collectively as “Team Mailmodo,” helps create familiarity and consistency across communications.
Potential email branding issues
No journey is without a few obstacles, and email branding is no exception. As you plan your email strategy, consider these potential issues:
Blocked images
Some email clients, like Outlook, block images by default, and some users disable them. Ensure your email still conveys your brand’s message without images. Use alt-text for clarity and keep key elements like CTAs in text, not images, to maintain accessibility and readability across all display settings.
Disappearing logos in dark mode
Dark mode can also cause issues with your logo. When the theme switches, and if you’re not using a transparent PNG, your logo or text may appear on a white background or, worse, completely disappear if it's black, as can be seen in the image below.
This is a critical element of your branding that you don’t want to lose. It’s important to consult experts on logos and dark mode to address these potential problems.
Unsupported custom fonts
If your brand uses a custom font, it might not be supported by all email clients. To avoid this issue, it's important to decide as a team which fonts, colors, and design patterns are acceptable in emails, keeping accessibility and fallback options in mind.
How to incorporate branding in your emails
For incorporating email branding, you can use the brand kit feature in ESPs. A brand kit, commonly known as a brand style guide, is a curated collection of visual elements that define your brand identity. Setting up your brand kit is a one-time task that can help your brand’s recognition in the long run.
Mailmodo is an email service provider that offers this feature, and once you have created an account for yourself, you can follow this step-by-step process to create your brand kit:
1. Access your brand kit: Go to the templates tab and select the brand kit section.
2. Review and customize: Your brand library will already be created using information from your website. Click on “Review and Publish” or select specific components for customization.
3. Configure brand logo: Upload your brand logo for the header and footer sections. This logo will replace the placeholder logos when using premade headers or footers in email templates.
4. Select typography: Choose a default email body font and set font sizes for H1, H2, H3, H4, and P tags for both desktop and mobile.
5. Create your color palette: Build a color palette with your business’s most frequently used colors. These colors will be readily available every time you use the color picker.
6. Configure buttons: Configure different button styles to signify different actions. When a button is included in the template, it defaults back to the primary button style.
7. Integrate social media: Add links to your social media handles. Social media elements in the template will automatically default to the selected platforms.
8. Personalize footer: Personalize the footer with your company's contact information. When a footer is inserted in the template, default information will be replaced with your company’s details.
Incorporate branding in your emails with Mailmodo
Email branding examples to inspire you
Here are three standout examples to inspire your own email branding.
Netflix
Netflix emails are instantly recognizable due to their signature red, black, and white color palettes. They use high-quality imagery and minimalistic layouts that are clean, uncluttered, and focused on key CTAs. This email from Netflix aligns with its branding, ensuring familiarity for users.
The email keeps it simple with direct CTAs such as “Play” and “My List,” reflecting Netflix’s in-app experience. The text is short, engaging, and written in a conversational tone. Phrases like "Paris, meet Rome" and "Live the Dolce Vita" create intrigue while staying relevant to the show's theme.
Starbucks
The Starbucks email campaign exemplifies strong, exclusive branding through visual identity, personalization, and a premium feel.
The deep green, warm tones, and elegant typography align with Starbucks’ brand identity, ensuring instant recognition. The email addresses the recipient by name, creating a sense of exclusivity and personal connection. The “VISIT SOON” button is visually distinct and encourages immediate engagement.
This email is a great example of how Starbucks leverages luxury branding, storytelling, and personalization to strengthen its customer connection while driving engagement.
Uber
Uber maintains consistency in its email design, aligning with its app, website, social media, and other branding materials. The black-and-white color scheme and custom font are instantly recognizable and reinforce the brand’s identity.
The appeal of Uber’s emails lies in their simplicity. This email reflects Uber’s signature colors and imagery while clearly notifying the subscribers about deals and promotions. The initial description is brief, paired with a clear call-to-action (CTA), making it easy for users to quickly skim through.
Conclusion
Email branding is an effective strategy to build trust in your brand, boost email engagement, and drive revenue.
Utilize mobile-responsive email templates to maintain consistency in your designs and ensure they are accessible across all devices. Additionally, remember to apply other email marketing best practices, like personalizing content and tracking your email metrics.
It's important to remember that email branding is a continuous effort that should be integrated into your marketing campaigns.
