For the past 75 years, almost every form of popular communication has transformed from black and white to color. Newspapers, television, and computers are only a few examples. (Well, some computers went from green and white to color…)

That leaves this question: Why hasn’t everyday email communication done the same? Think about it this way – your company probably spends quite a bit of money on building brand image. Billboards, newspaper ads, radio ads, jingles, TV commercials, logo creation, business cards, corporate letterhead, and websites are just a few of the places that corporate marketing dollars might be spent. Why leave out one of the most used (if not the most used) form of communication that you have?

Everybody Wants to Brand Their Email

Branded email can be classy enough for more conservative companies (legal, banks, medical, etc) and showy enough for businesses to highlight products or services that have to have that graphical edge. Most companies can develop a template (or set of templates) that’s geared toward how you want to use them. The ability to choose from more than one template is also a nice feature to have, so you can vary the emails you send based on purpose.

Me and Branded Email Down By the Schoolyard

When you’re considering a branded email system, do your homework. And if the company has a free trial, take it. You don’t want to purchase something and end up hating it. Keep in mind, however, that most companies, however, won’t develop a custom design for you to use during your free trail, so you won’t get the full experience until after your purchase. But while you’re researching, here are some things to look for:

• Spam Filters – See what they say about spam filters. A good system can get past most spam filters (with the exception of extremely strict filters). If you’re testing the system, can you send an email to yourself? (If you test lots of systems and none of them get past your filter, consider getting a better one, or making yours less strict)
• Email size – If the system embeds or attaches the images to the email, stay far, far away from it. You don’t want all of your emails going out at 300-1000k in size. That would be a long download even on a broadband connection. The typical plain text email is 5-10k; your emails shouldn’t go over 100k, and even that is pushing it. – Do note that Outlook, by default, will embed any image in an email when you click send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
• Usability – Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
• Functionality – If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than “Hey, go c
  Importance of Branding - What's in a Name?
  Branding is perhaps the most important facet of any business--beyond product, distribution, pricing, or location. A company's brand is its definition in the world, the name that identifies it to itself and the marketplace. A model may be beautiful, but without a name, she's just "that girl in that picture." Where would Norma Jean be without Marilyn Monroe, or who would imagine Coca-Cola as just a soft-drink manufacturer? A brand provides a concrete descriptor to customers and competitors alike, a name for a product or service to distinguish it from anything else. Bob may run a hobby shop, but trying to advertise as "The hobby shop a guy named Bob runs down the street a ways" is financial suicide. Each customer will have to describe the shop, who Bob is, and what the shop does every time someone asks about it.This makes the pr
  bsites are just a few of the places that corporate marketing dollars might be spent. Why leave out one of the most used (if not the most used) form of communication that you have?

  Everybody Wants to Brand Their Email

  Branded email can be classy enough for more conservative companies (legal, banks, medical, etc) and showy enough for businesses to highlight products or services that have to have that graphical edge. Most companies can develop a template (or set of templates) that’s geared toward how you want to use them. The ability to choose from more than one template is also a nice feature to have, so you can vary the emails you send based on purpose.

  Me and Branded Email Down By the Schoolyard

  When you’re considering a branded email system, do your homework. And if the company has a free trial, take it. You don’t want to purchase something and end up hating it. Keep in mind, however, that most companies, however, won’t develop a custom design for you to use during your free trail, so you won’t get the full experience until after your purchase. But while you’re researching, here are some things to look for:

  • Spam Filters – See what they say about spam filters. A good system can get past most spam filters (with the exception of extremely strict filters). If you’re testing the system, can you send an email to yourself? (If you test lots of systems and none of them get past your filter, consider getting a better one, or making yours less strict)
  • Email size – If the system embeds or attaches the images to the email, stay far, far away from it. You don’t want all of your emails going out at 300-1000k in size. That would be a long download even on a broadband connection. The typical plain text email is 5-10k; your emails shouldn’t go over 100k, and even that is pushing it. – Do note that Outlook, by default, will embed any image in an email when you click send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
  • Usability – Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
  • Functionality – If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than “Hey, go
    How to Satisfy Their Needs - Building the Perfect Retail Store Display
    Shopping is an experience for the senses: the colors, the textures, the lighting, but ultimately it is the act of shopping that people enjoy. The enjoyment a person gets from shopping comes from the emotions and release in endorphins that race thought a person’s bloodstream as they purchase that new sweater or flat screen television. It is not the purchase of a box of cereal or dish washing detergent that excites us; it is the purchase of those extra things, things that are by most standards luxuries, that causes us to experience a rush.On top of that desire for that shopping rush, marketers have been successful in creating need. They have succeeded in convincing us that we need everything: we need this shampoo to make our hair thicker and softer, that car to make us more appealing to the opposite sex, and they have even convinc
    mails you send based on purpose.

    Me and Branded Email Down By the Schoolyard

    When you’re considering a branded email system, do your homework. And if the company has a free trial, take it. You don’t want to purchase something and end up hating it. Keep in mind, however, that most companies, however, won’t develop a custom design for you to use during your free trail, so you won’t get the full experience until after your purchase. But while you’re researching, here are some things to look for:

    • Spam Filters – See what they say about spam filters. A good system can get past most spam filters (with the exception of extremely strict filters). If you’re testing the system, can you send an email to yourself? (If you test lots of systems and none of them get past your filter, consider getting a better one, or making yours less strict)
    • Email size – If the system embeds or attaches the images to the email, stay far, far away from it. You don’t want all of your emails going out at 300-1000k in size. That would be a long download even on a broadband connection. The typical plain text email is 5-10k; your emails shouldn’t go over 100k, and even that is pushing it. – Do note that Outlook, by default, will embed any image in an email when you click send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
    • Usability – Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
    • Functionality – If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than “Hey, go
      A Guide For First Time Business Buyers
      Owning your own business can be very rewarding both financially and emotionally. Business ownership provides innumerable opportunities to put ideas into action and reap the rewards (and sometimes the pain).Buying a business, rather than starting a business from scratch, has many advantages:The business should have established customers who will provide revenues for the business almost immediately. Unlike a start-up business that needs to find customers and take them away from another business, the business buyer must retain it's existing customers. It's always easier and less expensive to retain customers than to try to find new customers.The business you buy will have systems in place that you do not need to invent. Although it's rare for any business to have perfect systems, the business you buy wil
      on of extremely strict filters). If you’re testing the system, can you send an email to yourself? (If you test lots of systems and none of them get past your filter, consider getting a better one, or making yours less strict)
    • Email size – If the system embeds or attaches the images to the email, stay far, far away from it. You don’t want all of your emails going out at 300-1000k in size. That would be a long download even on a broadband connection. The typical plain text email is 5-10k; your emails shouldn’t go over 100k, and even that is pushing it. – Do note that Outlook, by default, will embed any image in an email when you click send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
    • Usability – Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
    • Functionality – If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than “Hey, go
      FREE - Publicity for Your Business
      Learn how to write a press release and avoid expensive advertising as you grow your business.A full page ad in an industry journal can cost almost $6.000. But there is a way to use the same publications to to promote your business free of charge.Journalists want a need one key thing. NEWS! They’ll gladly write about you or your business provided you know what to feed them and do it in the right way.This is a great way to promote your business FREE.How can you make the most of the media? Learn how to write a press release and submit it correctly to the journalists so that it gets read and published. Remember journalists have an in-satiable appetite for news. So give them news.News is central to journalism.What makes news.1 Significance – anything which will affect reader’s lives.
      send. You have to turn this off through the Tools > Options > Mail Format > Internet Format > HTML Options checkbox (MS Outlook 2002 and 2003)
    • Usability – Make sure the product is easy to use. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time trying to use a bad product while sending your email. You should be able to set your account up, and send emails like normal.
    • Functionality – If your email contains links to specific pages or areas in your website, you can send traffic directly to your catalog, your affiliate/reseller site, your online video, anywhere you want them to go. This is a much better opportunity than “Hey, go check out my site at www.EmailAppeal.com!” As the old adage goes, on the Internet you’re always 1 click away from losing a customer.
    • Dynamic Capabilities – Be sure you can easily change your contact information, picture (if the system allows you to upload one) and any other sensitive information on your template.
    • Control – Do you have control over the aspects of the design, or can the user change the design at will? Brand control and consistency is a big deal in any business.
    • Security – Does the system require you to send your email through a different server or to a different email address? This is a security risk whether they say so or not, as your emails are all being routed through a third party server. A good system will work without requiring you send your email through a third party.

    I Want to Know What Branded Email Is

    Branded email can fall into the following categories, each works a little differently than the next:

    • Stationary – Microsoft Outlook comes with its own stationary tool, and there are quite a few other stationary companies. Drawbacks – These systems typically provide little or no customizability, no functionality; no usability; can be email size issues

    • Mail Redirect – This type of branded email system can use (or allow you to develop) a custom template, then in order for you to send branded email, you send an email to second- or third-party servers, via an email address like this one - your.recipient@company.com@MailRedirectCompany.com - which puts your message in the body of the branded email template, then send it to the recipient on your behalf. Drawbacks – low usability; not secure; hard to reply/forward email with branding

    • Web Based – Now we’re getting to the more advanced systems. This type of system offers custom and/or generic templates that you can use with your email. You log in to their website and send your email through their site. Drawbacks – Most won’t allow you to use your own email address; not secure; hard to reply/forward email with branding

    • IT Department or Design Department created – If you have an IT guy/department or a design guy/department you can probably do this in-house. Create the HTML template that you want to use, and add it into your client. Drawbacks – it takes time to change the templates if your contact information changes; you have to duplicate the design and change it for every person in your office; you have to host the images on your server, or attach/embed them to