Too much repetition can kill email branding effectiveness

Dries Morris, operations director at Securicom, a specialist IT security company which offers a server-based email branding solution, eBranding, warns that companies need to be on the ball to get the most out of their email branding efforts.

Repetition has been proven to increase recall and comprehension, particularly if the message is complex. However, in marketing, messaging can lose its effectiveness if people are overexposed to it.

This is true for email branding as well. To avoid stagnation of email branding campaigns, companies need to keep the momentum going by changing them often.

There’s great value in repetition for learning. In fact, it’s the most basic learning technique. Babies use it to learn to speak. Parents use repetition to teach routines to their children. Teachers use repetition in the classroom. Adults become astute at their jobs through the daily repetition of the tasks associated with it, and we all know how some songs tend to ‘stick’ after we’ve heard them a few times.

However, when recipients are repeatedly exposed to the same email branding over a period of time, it loses its effectiveness because recipients tend to lose interest and eventually switch off.

Just like any other marketing program, email branding campaigns should be regularly refreshed. Email branding is not something that can be implemented and then expected to remain relevant for an indeterminate amount of time.

Companies need to strike that fine balance between repeating the messaging often enough to be recognized by recipients but not so much that it loses its impact and becomes obsolete.

Securicom’s eBranding solution is a web based service that is hosted upstream by Securicom at an ISP. Companies subscribe to the service so there is no installation required. Administrators have access to a user-friendly online portal where they can either use existing templates or create their own to configure and brand everyday, outgoing company email. All outgoing mail is directed through Securicom, where the configuration is then automatically assigned before being directed to the recipient.

Securicom eBranding allows for easily-customisable, one-on-one branded email communication. For instance, branding and banners can be tailored for specific groups or campaigns and attached to every outgoing email from specific senders or departments to help drive recipients to a website or into another online marketing or customer service programme.

What this means is that the marketing department can change email branding to fit the marketing needs of different departments and campaigns as often as they like, and with incredible ease. And, administrators no longer have to laboriously visit each and every computer in order to effect changes to email branding templates to fit new campaign or marketing needs.

Because the solution is hosted offsite and only authorised internal administrators are able to access the web based portal to recreate and change branding templates, there’s no risk of users disabling or tampering with the settings on their desktops without the business knowing.

A major plus of Securicom eBranding is that it provides the marketing department with the ability to monitor email branding campaigns and measure results with click-through rates and other measurement tools via the interactive online management platform.

By monitoring and measuring recipients’ response to campaigns using click-through rates and the like, the marketing department can evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns over a period of time, making it easier for them to see when the time has come for a change so that the campaign doesn’t stagnate, adds Morris.