4 Essential Email Marketing Principles For Cosmetic Brands

For cosmetic brands, email marketing has become an essential tool to drive customer engagement and traffic to both physical as well as e-commerce stores. Email marketing campaigns are not only cost-effective, but they can build strong customer relationships, brand recognition, establish credibility, as well as drive excitement around new products and the brand. However, like every digital marketing strategy, there are essential principles that every brand should follow. Therefore, I have outlined the top four essential email marketing principles cosmetic brands should follow.

#1 Brand Centered & Purposeful Design

For cosmetic companies, the customer brand experience is part of every facet of their digital marketing strategies. On social media, cosmetic brands engage with followers in a unique and personal way through brand centered messaging. Therefore, for email marketing, the same brand experience should be conveyed to subscribers. When these subscribers open the email, they should be greeted with graphics, messaging, and imagery that are brand relevant. Additionally, when designing email campaigns, the layout should purposeful in driving the customer to see relevant information and call-to-actions.

A great example of brand centered and purposeful design is the welcome email subscribers get from the brand Glossier. Glossier's brand is all about natural minimalism as well as simple and thoughtful beauty. Therefore, in their email, Glossier carriers over the minimalist aesthetic across all their digital brand touchpoints. At the top of the email, Glossier places their greeting message and communicates its brand mission. Below, Glossier uses a grid layout to place minimal product images, along with descriptions that convey key features. All of these design elements have purposely guide the customer through the email and to the "shop now" call-to-action.

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#2 Personalization

With marketing teams having access to broad analytical data and customization tools within email marketing platforms, each email should be automatically personalized. For cosmetic brands, every aspect of the email campaign from the graphics to the subject line can be tailored to fit an individual subscriber or market segment. By leveraging these tools and data, brands can help guide a customer through their lifecycle journey.

#3 Device Scalability

According to a 2018 email analysis study conducted by Litmus, 56% of emails are read on mobile devices. Therefore, when designing an email campaign, each digital asset should be scalable to mobile devices. For cosmetic brands, this is an essential principle as the primary method of customer and brand communication is conducted through mobile-first social media platforms. According to a 2019 eMarketer study, 67% of e-commerce sales made through mobile devices. Therefore, emails received by subscribers should be supported on the primary device in which they make their purchases.

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One of the cosmetic brands that demonstrate this device scalability in email design is Morphe. In this email, Morphe purposely rescales each image, copy, graphic, and button to be both readable as well as accessible on a mobile device. At the top, the text is scaled larger with increased leading allowing viewers to read the message quickly. In the middle, the hyperlinked image sections and buttons are separated by increased padding to decrease user error. This same salability also translates to the quick links in the footer of the email.

#4 Captivating Call-To-Actions

For cosmetic brands, one of the most important objectives of email marketing is driving conversion rates. However, to encourage customers to make the final click in their shopping cart, they have to be driven by a captivating call-to-action. Such call-to-actions depend on their placement within the design, the copy used, and where the link leads. According to Campaign Monitor, conversion can be increased up by 28% by using individually relevant hyperlinks.