The power of brand cohesion in email marketing

What is brand cohesion?

Brand cohesion is all about consistency. It means creating a seamless and unified brand experience across every interaction your customers have with you – from the first touchpoint (like a signup form) to the emails they receive and the landing pages they visit.

Think about your favorite brands. When their emails land in your inbox, you probably recognize them instantly even without opening them. Maybe it’s the color scheme, the logo, or the way they write. That’s brand cohesion in action. It builds trust and makes your brand memorable to your audience.

Why is brand cohesion important for email marketers?

Email marketing is all about building relationships with your audience. But in today’s crowded inbox, simply sending emails isn’t enough – you need brand recognition to make an impact. A well-designed, cohesive brand experience can make a significant difference in open rates, click-through rates, and overall customer trust.

According to Mailjet’s email engagement report, 75.4% of consumers prefer to receive promotional messages via email, making it the most popular channel by far. But just because someone subscribes to your list doesn’t mean they’ll stay engaged. 26% of consumers say receiving emails too frequently is a dealbreaker, while 25% will unsubscribe if emails feel irrelevant.

The key to reducing unsubscribes and increasing engagement is creating emails that feel familiar and consistent. When your brand has a distinct look and voice across all customer interactions, people recognize and trust your emails, making them more likely to open and engage.

When your emails, landing pages, and signup forms don’t look and feel connected, it confuses subscribers and can reduce their willingness to engage with your brand.

How to create brand cohesion across your marketing campaigns

So, how do you create that seamless experience that makes your brand instantly recognizable? It starts with aligning every touchpoint from the moment someone signs up to receive emails, to their first welcome message, and every interaction thereafter.

During Email Camp 2024, Mailjet’s Senior Product Manager, Natalie Lynch, and Senior Email Marketing Manager, Julia Ritter, shared practical strategies for brand cohesion and how it impacts your campaigns. Let’s go through the key steps they discussed to ensure your email marketing is consistent and recognizable.

Keep design elements consistent

Visual consistency is the foundation of brand cohesion. If your email uses one set of colors and fonts, but your website and landing pages use another, subscribers may feel like they’ve landed in the wrong place.

Here are some of the key design elements to maintain across all marketing assets:

• Logos: Place your logo in the same position in every email and landing page to reinforce brand identity.

• Color palette: Stick to a defined color scheme that aligns with your brand’s primary and secondary colors.

• Typography: Use the same fonts across emails, landing pages, and signup forms.

• Buttons & CTAs: Maintain uniform button shapes, colors, and text styles so they are instantly recognizable.

• Imagery & iconography: Use a consistent style for graphics, illustrations, and photos to enhance familiarity.

To put this into context, imagine a retail brand sends out a promotional email using a sleek black-and-white design, but when readers click the CTA, they’re taken to a landing page filled with bright, neon colors and a different font. This visual disconnect makes the experience feel unprofessional and confusing, right?

By keeping the design elements consistent you avoid the risk of this happening with your own audience.

Mailjet’s Brand Kit simplifies this process by letting you store and apply your brand’s fonts, colors, and logo to every email by just copy and pasting your URL. This ensures that every email matches your brand identity, whether it’s created by you or another team member.

Unify your email and landing page experience

A subscriber’s journey doesn’t end with an email – it’s typically just the first course the marketing culinary experience. Think of your email as the appetizer and your landing page as the main course. The email’s job is to spark curiosity, just enough to make subscribers hungry for more and eager to click through.

Now, imagine they arrive at the landing page ready to dig in, only to find something completely different from what was promised. It’s like ordering a perfectly cooked steak and getting a bowl of gluten-free pasta instead – not exactly what they signed up for now, is it?

To keep your subscribers from feeling disappointed (or worse, clicking away), make sure your landing page delivers exactly what your email promised. While it might seem convenient to send them to a general product or pricing page, a dedicated landing page that matches your email’s offer will drive much better results.

This is an email our subscribers receive informing them of an upcoming episode of our Email Academy webinar series.

Notice how the landing page is targeted specifically to the webinar, and is synchronized both from a content, design, and structural perspective

When a subscriber clicks a CTA in an email, they should land on a page that looks and feels like a natural extension of the email they just opened.

Use a clear and recognizable sender identity

Brand trust starts before an email is even opened. Your sending domain, email name, and reply-to address should all be aligned with your brand to help subscribers instantly recognize who’s reaching out.

A disjointed experience like an email sent from one domain leading to a completely different-looking landing page can cause confusion or even make your brand seem untrustworthy.

We recommend that email senders set up the primary email authentication protocols:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework) allows senders to specify the servers and domains permitted to send email from their organization. When servers receive a message from your brand, they compare it to the list of allowed servers. This lets them verify the message actually came from you.

• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds an encrypted digital signature to every message sent from your brand. Receiving servers use a public key to read the signature and verify that it came from you. This also prevents content being changed when the message is sent between servers.

• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) essentially tells receiving servers what to do with messages from your brand when they fail either SPF or DKIM. Now, there are three options or “instructs” for servers:

Essentially, these authentication protocols not only improve strength and trust in the security of your brands communications but also prevent phishing and improve deliverability.

Unsure of how to set up, validate, and authenticate your custom domain? This tutorial explains how to do all three within Mailjet, a process essential for improving email deliverability and protecting your brand's reputation.

Ensure brand voice and messaging are aligned

It’s not just the design elements, but your tone of voice should also be consistent across all customer touchpoints. If your brand’s emails sound professional and formal, but your landing pages are casual and playful, it creates confusion.

So, how do you keep messaging consistent across your campaign? Here are some quick tips:

• Define a brand voice guide – Document how your brand speaks (e.g., friendly, expert, humorous).

• Use the same phrasing and language style across emails and landing pages.

• Keep messaging clear and concise – Avoid using drastically different tones in different touchpoints.

• Align CTAs across different platforms – If your email CTA says "Get Your Discount," your landing page button should say the same, not "Redeem Offer."

To strike the point home, put yourselves in the shoes of an eco-friendly skincare brand. They send an email with a calm, minimalist tone, using language like "pure, simple beauty." But when users land on the website, they see bold, loud, sales-heavy messaging, with phrases like "BUY NOW – Limited Time Only!" This disconnects the customer from the experience and reduces brand credibility.

Optimize email timing and frequency

Even the most well-branded emails can fail if they arrive too frequently or at the wrong time. A key part of brand cohesion is ensuring that your emails arrive when and how subscribers expect them.

Finding the right sending frequency is key. Data from Mailjet’s email engagement report shows that 26% of consumers say receiving emails too frequently is a dealbreaker, while 25% will unsubscribe if emails feel irrelevant. These numbers highlight the fine balance marketers need to strike. Subscribers should hear from you regularly enough to stay engaged, but not so often that they feel overwhelmed.

Consistency in timing also helps reinforce your brand. If subscribers come to expect your emails on certain days or at particular times, they’ll be more likely to open them. On the other hand, sending sporadically or ramping up frequency suddenly – such as during a promotion – can feel disruptive. Imagine a brand that typically emails once a week but then bombards subscribers with daily messages during a sale. This abrupt change can lead to frustration and increased unsubscribe rates.

A smart approach is to segment your audience based on engagement levels and tailor email frequency accordingly. Highly engaged subscribers may appreciate more frequent updates, while those who interact less might respond better to occasional check-ins. Automated email sequences, such as welcome emails or abandoned cart reminders, can also help maintain engagement without overwhelming your audience.

Mailjet’s automation tools allow you to set up automated email sequences that reinforce branding without overwhelming your subscribers.

Email Camp: How to maintain brand cohesiveness

You can watch back the full replay of Julia and Natalie’s Email Camp session where they shared insights on maintaining consistent branding across all customer touchpoints:

Final thoughts: brand cohesiveness builds trust

A strong email marketing program is more than just great subject lines or compelling copy. It requires acohesive brand experience across all customer touchpoints if it’s to stand out, build trust with your audience, and increase engagement.

By using tools such as Mailjet’s Brand Kit and Landing Page, you can effortlessly maintain brand consistency across all customer touchpoints, from emails to signup forms to landing pages. When subscribers recognize your brand at every step of their journey, they’re more likely to open, click, and convert.

Looking to streamline your email design and create a unified brand experience?

Brand cohesion FAQ

How does brand cohesion impact deliverability?

Brand cohesion improves email engagement (open rates, clicks), which in turn boosts email deliverability. When subscribers recognize your brand and engage with your emails, it reduces spam complaints and helps your emails land in the inbox.

Can I use different designs for different email campaigns?

Yes, but stay within your brand’s guidelines. While different campaigns might have unique layouts, the core branding elements – colors, fonts, logo placement, and voice – should remain consistent.

How does brand cohesion apply to transactional emails?

Transactional emails are just as important as promotional emails for brand recognition. In fact, 75.1% of consumers prefer email for transactional updates. Using a consistent design and tone ensures your audience knows and trusts your emails at every stage of their journey.

What is the difference between brand cohesion and brand cohesiveness?

Brand cohesion and brand cohesiveness are closely related but slightly different concepts. Brand cohesion refers to the overall consistency of a brand’s visual identity, messaging, and experience across different channels. It ensures that every interaction – whether through email, social media, or a website – feels unified and recognizable. Brand cohesiveness, on the other hand, is the level of seamless integration between these elements.

A brand can have cohesion (similar branding across platforms), but if the experience feels disconnected or disjointed, it may lack cohesiveness. In short, cohesion is about having a unified brand identity, while cohesiveness is about executing it in a way that feels smooth and intentional.

How does brand cohesion impact customer perception and loyalty?

A strong, cohesive brand presence builds trust and recognition, which are essential for customer loyalty. When consumers see a consistent brand experience, they feel more confident in the brand’s reliability. Inconsistent branding, on the other hand, can cause confusion and make a company appear less professional or even untrustworthy. Over time, maintaining a clear and recognizable brand identity helps create an emotional connection with customers, making them more likely to engage, convert, and stay loyal.