How to Use Email Marketing to Tell Your Brand Story

If you’re looking for a way to build a relationship with your customers, few things work better than sharing your brand story. If you’re wondering how you could do that, email marketing’s the answer.

Having a catchy and memorable business name is a great start, but talking about your brand’s origin, vision, and values can truly leave a lasting impact. People like to know who their custom is going to and what it’s supporting. The best way to communicate these things to customers is by sharing your story with them. That’s why any sound email marketing strategy includes brand story emails.

In this article we’ll talk you through the process, offering tips on what to write, how to write it, and when to send it to your subscribers.

The basics of storytelling in email marketing

The basic goal of brand story email marketing is to use narrative techniques to tug on the heart strings or elicit any other emotional response that might compel your readers to take action. This action might be buying a new product, subscribing to a service, or simply clicking through a link.

In the long term, brand story email marketing serves a second purpose, too. For businesses looking to communicate globally, sharing their brand story with their customer base is essential to letting them know who they are as a business and what they’re about.

The way to achieve both of these goals is to keep in mind the action you want to inspire from your subscribers and what it is you’re providing them – namely, an engaging and compelling story.

Identifying your own brand story

It would be awesome if identifying your brand story was as simple as using a business name generator. The reality, however, is that coming up with a story that is equal parts authentic and engaging is no easy feat.

Let’s begin by dispelling a common myth: your brand story doesn’t have to be novelesque. It could be as simple as how and when you identified a gap in the market your business would come to fill, and the action you took to do so.

Ask yourself: At what specific moment the business began? Was it when you first conceived the business idea? Was it when you decided to register your business name as a trade mark? Or when you served your first customer? Then, once you have your answer, ask again: Why did you pick that particular moment?

Answering these questions is a great way to identify who your business is as a brand and what it stands for. Let’s look at how an imaginary SaaS provider could go through the different steps to identify and tell its brand story:

“I realized our VoIP calling services SaaS business had become a reality when we secured our first client.”
“It was at that moment that I realized that the gap in the market I had seen was real.”
“Then, my team and I focused on providing something that truly helped businesses.”

When creating your brand story, you should consider the following elements:

Brand history: To tell your brand story properly, you’re going to need to consider where you began, where you’ve got to, and what milestones you’ve achieved along the way.
Brand values: Work out what your business stands for and find a story that exhibits that. The crucial thing here is to ‘show, don’t tell’.
Brand mission: Whether you want to achieve a certain business goal or you have something more noble in mind, customers like to know they’re supporting a cause they can get behind.
Brand impact: This could be social impact endeavors or sustainable practices your company engages in. Alternatively, it could simply be the story of how an inbound call center solution helped improve one of your customers’ bottom line.

Incorporating storytelling into your email marketing strategy

Whilst brand story email marketing is a place to be more creative, let’s not get carried away. Crucially, this is still a marketing strategy.

As such, it’s important to keep your marketing to-do’s in mind before hitting send. Try to think of ways of naturally incorporating different techniques and methods of pushing the desired action from your subscribers.

For instance, if you’re looking for a cost-effective approach, consider incorporating cheap email marketing solutions that align with your brand story and match your budget. Or, if you’re looking at targeting a specific demographic, make sure your email marketing is aligned with this.

To this end, here are some things you’ll want to give a try:

Use personalization

One of the greatest benefits of sharing your brand story is it can help to build a relationship with customers and so inspire brand loyalty. Be sure to capitalize on this and strengthen that connection further with personalization.

It’s 2023, after all, and you should be personalizing all of your email marketing anyway. Brand story emails are no exception. Use techniques including the recipient’s name or past purchase history. For example, if you’re emailing businesses with .ai domains, ask them how the weather is in Anguilla, and make it crystal clear that you are truly talking to them, and nobody else.

Measure impact

Of course, the secret to any successful marketing campaign is to monitor progress and adapt as necessary. Be sure to put your brand story emails through iterative cycles like A/B testing.

A top tip here: include both quantitative feedback (click-throughs, stickiness, etc) and qualitative (surveys and reviews). This way, you’ll get a good idea of what metrics your email marketing is accomplishing, but also how your customers are responding emotionally.

Be consistent

That’s right. Once you’ve done all that, rinse and repeat.

The trick to effectively communicating your brand story with email marketing is that it’s not a once-and-done procedure. If you want your customers to connect with your brand, you’re going to have to keep them posted on your story regularly. Ideally, you want to produce an email sequence and schedule brand emails across the year.

Here are some different types of brand story emails you might want to consider:

Introduction email: Sent when customers first subscribe to your mailing list introducing your brand. This should include a brief summary of your brand story, highlighting a few of your key values and goals. Keep this one brief though. You don’t want to come on too strong and immediately start flooding customers’ inboxes with essay-length emails.
Origin story email: Whether you operate a call center on cloud or an eCommerce store selling jewelry and watches, you will always have a specific origin story. Your brand’s origin story is like the foundation of a building. It’s where everything began. Detail the journey from your brand’s inception, highlighting the challenges, inspirations, and pivotal moments that led to its creation. By sharing this narrative, you allow your audience to connect emotionally and intellectually with the roots of your brand.
Founder’s story email: People are naturally drawn to stories told by individuals. A personal message from the founder or CEO humanizes your brand, showing the faces and personalities behind the products or services. This kind of email is an opportunity to share the passion, beliefs, and vision that drive your brand’s mission, fostering a sense of familiarity and trust.
Behind the scenes email: Everybody loves a peek behind the scenes. This is a chance to give your customers a glimpse into your company’s inner workings. Tell them about what a day in the office looks like or introduce some of the staff that contribute to your brand’ success. By revealing the human side of your business, you’ll cultivate authenticity and connection.
Social responsibility email: Brands that show they care about more than just profits tend to resonate strongly with customers, especially among younger generations. So, share stories of social movements or other brands you wish to be associated with. Highlight your involvement in environmental causes, philanthropic endeavors, or any other socially responsible practices you engage in. By doing so, you’ll foster a sense of purpose-driven engagement with your audience and solidify your brand’s image as ‘one of the good ones’.
Holiday email: Tapping into the sentiment of the holidays or specific seasons can help to create an emotional connection with customers. Try coming up with a story that captures the values of the season or holiday and highlight how your business aligns with those values. Perhaps you could share a story of how your company celebrates the holidays or what you plan for your breaks.

Include a call-to-action

A call-to-action (CTA) is a clear and compelling prompt encouraging subscribers to take a specific action. This might be clicking a link, making a purchase, signing up for a service, downloading content, or any number of things that make sense for your business. It aims to guide the recipient towards the desired conversion or engagement goal.

A clear, direct, and actionable CTA is a vital part of any marketing email. It’s what achieves conversions and the reason you’re reaching out to customers. Without it, you’re just wasting your time and cluttering their inbox.

Also, it may seem redundant to say an ‘actionable’ CTA, but the point should be stressed: a CTA is no place to be vague. Give your readers a clear instruction and make it as simple as possible to follow it.

Make your emails stand out with brand story email marketing

Email marketing and telling your brand story is a match made in heaven. Email is a very direct and personal channel of communication, which makes it an ideal medium to tell your brand story.

Sharing your brand story is a fantastic way to craft strong emotional connections with customers and foster brand loyalty. So, if you want to start enjoying these benefits start using email marketing to tell your brand story.