Your branding should be everywhere! It doesn’t stop with logos and brochures. You must bring your brand to every corner your communications and interactions reach, both digital and physical. And this certainly includes branding apartment emails for both prospects and residents of your multifamily community.
Emails are the perfect opportunity to showcase your brand to 1) remind people who “already know” and 2) attract and inform the people who want to learn more. Well-branded emails both establish and reinforce your visual and verbal identity, creating a connection between what is seen, understood, and ultimately, what’s experienced by your residents.
We can hear you already: “But it’s just an email.”
Yes, and one sub-par or off-brand email can ruin the progress you’ve made with the rest of your branding efforts. Go all the way.
Now, for the how of emails with excellent apartment branding.
Branding Apartment Emails for Prospects
Prospects need to be wooed. Make sure you’re using the right words and colors and don’t scare them away.
WHAT’S THE SUBJECT?
The subject line you craft should absolutely reflect your community’s brand and values. Is your brand voice funny? Crack a short joke. Is your brand voice serious? Bring that to the subject line, too. Everything about the email, starting from the subject line (that’s meant to get your readers to open it) has to align and be true.
MAKE IT PERSONAL
Adding in the recipient name, either into the subject line or into the greeting in the email can be a way to grab attention, and get your email opened. It may also be in your best interest to segment your emails and send different versions out depending on where the prospect is in the funnel. But that’s more marketing than branding. Whichever version you send out, make sure you’re highlighting the goods.
HIGHLIGHT THE GOODS
What goods? Simply outline (your community as) the solution to your prospects’ problems. There’s almost nothing better than a good listener—finding the pain points and solving them with your messaging and reminding them that you exist and why you exist can get leads one step closer to signing a lease.
ADD THE ELEMENTS
Have the end in mind before you begin your branding apartment email. The colors, fonts, and craft headers and footers must work within your apartment brand guidelines in order for it to be recognized and perceived as your apartment community’s brand specifically. It’s not an afterthought, but it will come right after you’ve got your content and messaging down.
Branding Apartment Emails for Current Residents
The emails you send current residents aren’t for introductions. They’re a chance to underscore what you’ve been doing all along. Particularly for current residents. Use email to update residents with community news, events, and initiatives that reinforce your brand—and what you care about most.
CONSISTENCY
With consistency comes trust, and with trust, loyalty. That’s a key part of getting renewed leases. The expectation for specific colors, fonts, logos and messaging points becomes the standard. If you deviate from the standard, it could jar your residents and cut your brand consistency off at the knees.
TEMPLATE USAGE
Easy way to brand your emails for current residents? The wonderful email template. Save a few versions, swap out the photos and content, and you are ready to go in a lot less time than it took you to create that first template. Don’t start from scratch every time. Time saver and it lowers the possibility that you’ll grab the wrong color or font.
STORYTELLING THROUGH BRAND NARRATIVES
Create your content outside of the email template and drop it in when it’s ready. By “ready” we mean it’s passed the verbal branding test. Does it sound like you? Does it communicate clearly? Does it include the thread of the brand narratives that you’re consistently weaving (thing values and vision)? If it doesn’t, take another crack at it before you drop it into the template. It’s a lot easier to edit and use comments from multiple users in document form, anyway.
EVERY EMAIL
Your community’s values and your brand’s mission should be tucked into every email, along with the visual aspects of your brand. Don’t take a day off. Don’t send an email that doesn’t look or sound like you, or it might get marked “spam”.
Email communication is your opportunity to insert your brand in the midst of your residents’ and prospects’ daily life. It shouldn’t be an afterthought, but instead, another extension of how far you can take your brand. Use it to strengthen relationships with current residents and to reach the people that don’t live at your community (yet).
Use your brand guidelines to create clear, consistent emails that could only ever be attributed to your community.
*The image in this post is ©Fairfield Residential | Work executed by Stacey Feeney, owner of zipcode creative, while under creative direction and employment at Fairfield Residential.
