Branding is a way to build a strong “persona” for your business that distinguishes it from that of your competitors.  It establishes and reinforces your presence in the market.

And if your business is like most others, your e-mails are an abundant source of communication and present a great opportunity to build your brand.

Branded E-mails Show Pride In Your Work

By applying your company brand to your business correspondence you show that you are backing your words with your company’s reputation.

Branded E-mails Are Distinctive

One unmarked white sheet of paper looks very much like another.  So too do e-mails without any branding.  By creating electronic “stationary” for your online correspondence, your messages become identifiable at a glance.

Branded E-mails Demonstrate Sophistication

Not everyone brands his or her e-mail.  For that matter, not everyone knows how to brand his or her e-mail.  This means that the very act of branding shows a level of sophistication, either in your own technical ability, or in your ability to find people who know how to do things right.

And it is important to do things right.  Clip art may have been okay to use when PageMaker was still published by Aldus (raise your hand if you remember them), but use it now and you’ll come across as gimmicky, amateurish, and cheap - a far cry from the image of sophistication you could be sending.

Branded E-mails Have Character

Do you have a playful company?  You can build that into your e-mail design.

Do you focus on green solutions?  You can work that in too.

As with any other marketing material, a well branded corporate e-mail will offer insight into your corporate identity, including who you are, what you do, and how you go about doing it.

Branded E-mails Are Memorable

The human mind is remarkably adept at recognizing patterns and at picking out the oddities that bREaK them.  Using a free or shared template will let you stand out if none of your competitors has thought to do the same thing.

Getting a custom template design lets you draw on the full strengths of your visual brand identity and thereby stand out from those competitors using more constrained designs.

Conclusion

Before the information age, most inter-office correspondence was handled through the exchange of memos and formal letters.  In order to re-enforce brand image and put corporate weight behind individual exchanges, corporations used formal letterhead.

Now that e-mail dominates inter-office correspondence, it is only natural that the considerations that led to branding paper exchanges be extended to digital exchanges.