Making your email marketing stand out can be an excruciating task, especially given the average person receives 121 emails a day! This makes thinking outside the box essential to engage your customers and drive crucial clicks. 

But how do you engage customers and an emotional and meaningful way? Well, the answer is simple. The humble story. Storytelling is a powerful tool to make your emails stand out among a sea of sends and trigger real emotional responses. After all, emotional motivations drive action.

But how do you tell your stories? Well, through all of the key components of an email at your disposal - copy, video illustration, photography and design. Let’s take a look at visual storytelling tools and how they can be implemented into your email marketing.

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Why design in email marketing is important

First things first, why is design in email marketing so important? Design is a powerful tool for email marketers. Facts can only engage our left brain hemisphere, but in order to engage the right and trigger the release of Oxytocin (happy chemicals) we have to use creative outlets like storytelling and imagery. If your email marketing is able to trigger both sides of the brain it is far more likely to engage the customer, create memorable experiences and ultimately result in clicks and purchases. 

Design plays several roles in email marketing. It’s used to: 

• To tell a unique story
• Build credibility
• Drive conversion
• Direct the viewer's eye
• Make the brand visually recognisable
• Make information clear and easy to digest

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How does design work to tell stories?

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Propaganda

‍Design and marketing can be used to spread a more political message whilst still acting to promote a brand. Examples of this include airB&Bs ‘We accept campaign’. The campaign spoke out against Trump’s antagonistic travel ban airing during the Super Bowl showing an evolving overlay of people of various race, ages and religion, with the hashtag #weaccept. This connecting with the effected audiences.  

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Nike has also produced a campaign with cultural and political messaging exploring the challenges young Arab women aspiring to a professional sporting career face. Through this powerful imagery Nike challenges cultural and social norms asking “what will they say about you” highlighting the stories of five pro and sporting aficionados from a range of disciplines. We can see from the campaign that powerful messages also need powerful visuals in order to make the biggest impact on customers.

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Unification

What is unification? By definition, it means the process of being united or made whole. This can be achieved through the power of design by building a community amongst customers. The use of a mascot can be a effective way of doing this. 

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Mark Elwood, the executive creative director of Leo Burnett London, says that brand characters and mascots can pull emotional levers that other advertising techniques – such as music, logos or the use of a well-known celebrity – cannot.  

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Design also unifies by signalling that a brand belongs to a certain subculture or other groups. When a customer can visually identify that a brand is a part of or advocates for their group it evokes a sense of community which in turn builds brand trust and encourages purchases.

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Communication

Design can aid communication in email marketing by helping guide the eye through the email highlighting the key goal of your campaign and taking the customer where they need to go next. Let's take a look at the following email from Gigantic!

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• Changes in the background colour split the information into digestible sections. The bright yellow makes the top section with the key information and call to action stand out the most. 

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• The imagery below the title visually communicates the header copy helping the viewer quickly understand the message of the email and what it is promoting. 

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• The call to action uses bold text with a high contrast between the text and the background, which help it to stand out so it can be seen even if a customer is just scanning through the email. 

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• Ingredient imagery aids in promoting the key selling points of the product as the customer does not have to read the text to know what is in the bars.  By using imagery with movement set against yellow circular backgrounds, the ingredients look exciting and far more engaging than if it was text alone. 

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Now let's look at the following email

• Close up hero imagery links to the title copy and emphasises the ‘deep’ sleep element. It also gives an emotional and human effect to the title because we respond to imagery of people that we ourselves can relate to. Advertising that includes faces, or images that could be interpreted as faces, tends to be more preferred by consumers than ads that do not have this feature, according to a study published in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).  

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• Another interesting piece of visual communication in this email is the diagrams in the middle section. By using simple shapes to emphasise each benefit of deep sleep the viewer is encouraged to think more creatively about the points and how they may physically feel. This is far more powerful than just text alone.

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• The storytelling is continued in the email through the use of a phone mockup to advertise the ‘Open’ app. Mockups are a great way to quickly communicate that you are promoting something that is accessible on a phone or other device. This removes any friction of a consumer knowing what is being advertised and where to find it.

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Storytelling creates influence

Storytelling can help to build credibility and trust. This could be through a brand history, how the product was conceptualised for the first time, a transparent look into the manufacturing process, a behind the scenes look at a lab/factory. 

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This all helps to create influence and place your business at the forefront of a market through trust and influence. Design can aid in storytelling in creating influence by making the story understandable and easy to digest. An effective method of communicating an origin story is a timeline. The Brooks Brothers email tells the origin of the company using a vertical timeline layout with a combination of imagery and labels in order to make it easy to follow and digestible. The choice of vintage fashion, image style, and artwork provides context about how far back the brand's roots go.

If you run an e-commerce brand, email marketing is a key lever that you can pull to take your revenue to the next level. By nurturing your existing customer base you'll create a loyal base of fans who not only advocate for your brand but keep coming back to buy again and again.

If you run a an established brand and are looking to push the limits of your overall marketing strategy - book a call in today and let's talk about how we can use email marketing to push revenue past 100k a month and beyond.

Written by Cara Egan - Designer at Soar With Us