Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…
Company News & Updates
We’re excited to let you know that we’re entering the final stretch of the desktop and mobile optimisation of the platform redesign – keep your eyes peeled for more very shortly!
Once this is completed, we’ll begin work on the new progressive web app, which will soon become a vital companion tool to your platform.
Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.
Feature Spotlight
Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the Forum / Private Threads area.
Did you know?
You can host your own private threads within your forum area, allowing your community to house closed-off discussions and focus groups.
Last month, we outlined all of the areas of the platform where discussions can be facilitated. As promised, this month, we’re shining the spotlight on a relatively new feature: the private thread tool found within the Forum area.
We added the private thread tool following the feedback we received from a variety of clients across a range of sectors.
Interestingly, no matter the industry or business type, there’s always a need for your communities to host private discussions. Whether it’s a focus group for market research or volunteer-only threads and private admin discussion areas to smoothen internal processes, this solution serves a range of needs.
How to use this feature
The tool can be utilised in 2 ways – we’ve found both ways simple and user-friendly.
First, the admin can adjust the accessibility so that only admins can create private threads, giving you full control over the Forum area. Alternatively, you can open it up to allow your members to create their own private threads, empowering your community to start closed-off discussion areas.
Whichever option you pick, setup is easy.
When you start a thread within the forum area, to make it private, all you need to do is click the new ‘private thread’ button. Once activated, the thread is immediately set to private. To choose who you’d like to include in your secure thread, simply tag (@) the members in the thread – this will grant them the permissions they need to participate within the thread.
Finally, when you’ve created and/or been included in private threads, navigate to the Forum area and locate the private thread section at the top of the page. This will house all discussions you’re involved in for quick and easy access.
If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these features, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch
When your brand builds a community, the shared experiences and collective impact can enable customers to feel seen and heard by your brand in a distinctive way. Better yet, it makes them feel a part of something.
We’ve covered all of the hows and whys of building your community here on the Six Circles blog before. But with your community established, it’s all too easy to slip into a false sense of security, kicking back in the belief their work is done.
But that isn’t the case.
Without consistency, strategy and the right amount of know-how, your community can quickly become old news and engagement can swiftly begin to dwindle.
With your community established, the next step is to strengthen it.
That’s why, in today’s post, we’re exploring six ways you can strengthen an existing community to keep your members active and engaged in the long term.
Start with your team
Your brand identity is the foundation of your community – it’s the core of who you are and what you do. After all, without a clear and established brand identity, how will you relate or appeal to customers?
With this in mind, you’ve likely ticked some of the right boxes when creating your brand identity, from brand voice and tone to design and style.
However, with the emphasis often being placed on the customer-facing elements of this identity, internal factors can often be overlooked. In particular, your company ethos.
Your company ethos should encompass your brand’s traits, goals, mission, vision and community. This entails creating a company culture where employees are not only aware of your identity, but also actively embrace and champion it in their day to day.
The benefits here at twofold. Firstly, you can ensure consistency across the board – every engagement and interaction will be driven by the same values and attitudes to create a cohesive brand experience.
Secondly, and just as importantly, you can ensure these experiences are authentic. Today’s marketing-fatigued consumers have become increasingly insensitive to old-school marketing approaches in the vein of ‘who can shout the loudest?’. Capitalise on this by ensuring an authentic and distinctly ‘real’ brand experience at every opportunity.
Embrace a social cause
One effective means of strengthening your brand community is to make your community go further. As we’ve already touched on, community members want to feel part of something bigger, and one particularly effective way of achieving this is through embracing social causes.
This isn’t merely a case of jumping on the latest bandwagon, though. Again, customers are seeking authentic experiences within your community, so choose to champion a cause that aligns with the core values of your brand.
How exactly you embrace this cause is up to you. Whether it’s through donations of a profit percentage or simply an awareness campaign, the trick is to ensure your chosen cause is one your community will engage with.
Provided you’ve built your community on the right foundations, you’ll find this is easily done. Your values should already resonate with your community members, meaning any cause that aligns with the values of your brand likely aligns with the values of your customers, too.
Incentivise participation
Sometimes, all it takes is a little nudge in the right direction.
Incentivising participation is an effective way of strengthening your brand community in little to no time. The logic here is simple: the more reasons a member has to engage, the more likely they are to do it.
Of course, it’s key that any incentive is sustainable over time. Building a community is all about retention, so consider how you’ll incentivise not just one-off engagement, but long-term engagement.
From competitions to loyalty schemes, take the time to survey, poll and research your audience to better understand what incentivises them.
Respond and nurture
Engagement is all very well and good but, if this is a one-way street, your community will soon lose interest.
Whileorganic, customer-driven community engagement is the dream of any brand, this doesn’t mean you should step away and leave your members to it. On the contrary, actively participating in your community ensures customers view your brand as central to their community experience.
To do this, ensure you remain responsive to queries, problems and concerns, nurturing each and every customer interaction towards your desired goal.
Of course, this requires your community members to know both how and where to reach you. So, strive to be as accessible as possible to your community members, whether that’s a dedicated customer service number, a responsive social media team or private chat functionality on your community platform.
Champion versatile content
The best way to keep an audience engaged? Keep them interested.
The easiest way to strengthen your brand community is to give customers a reason to keep coming back for more. If you’re posting repetitive, outdated or uninspiring content, community members will quickly switch off – the novelty unfortunately doesn’t last long.
This makes it vital to pay close attention to what you’re offering your members – in particular, what’s incentivising them to return. We’ve already touched on how to incentivise participation when it comes to engagement and conversions, but the easiest way to incentivise over a longer period is to, quite simply, give your customers what they want.
Keep creating fresh, varied and valuable community content that offers genuine benefit to the reader – you can learn all about how to do that right here.
Give it time
Community building doesn’t happen overnight.
To ensure the longevity of your community, build it organically – and give it time. Strengthening your community isn’t about finding short-term gains; it’s about building long-term relationships through authentic growth.
Strengthening your community requires you to understand your brand and audience on a deeper level. Take the time to conduct thorough audience research, map out realistic business goals and develop a strategic approach to achieving them.
Only then will you be able to begin strengthening your community in a natural, sustainable way. Sure, you’ll likely pick up some quick wins along the way, but never mistake these for a job done. Strengthening your brand community is, in fact, a never-ending task – it requires ongoing maintenance in order for you to truly reap the rewards.
The importance of strengthening your brand community shouldn’t be ignored – ultimately, it means more loyal customers for your brand. The trick to getting it right? Keep authenticity, strategy and organic growth at the forefront of your community goals.
Need a helping hand establishing, strengthening or growing your brand community? Here at Six Circles, that’s our speciality. Get in touch now to request a demo of our state-of-the-art community engagement platform.
Here’s your monthly roundup on everything Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…
The year so far
The constant evolution of the Six Circles platform enables your business to stay at the forefront of community engagement.
With Q4 of 2021 on the horizon, we thought we’d take a look back at all the exciting developments we’ve seen on our platform so far this year:
Email notification centre / email digest updates
Our newly structured email notification centre went live earlier this year, along with some further improvements to our email digest.
Giving you greater control over your community engagement than ever before, admins now have the ability to choose the frequency of your email digest (choose from weekly, fortnightly or monthly).
But that’s not all – further updates were added, allowing even greater notification integration. This included alerts for:
New forum discussions
New direct message
Connect request accepted
New event created
New event approved
New news story created
New news story approved
New promotion created
New promotion approved
New notifications were also introduced to alert members of a new poll, resource or package post, as well as admin alerts for new subscriptions and member signups.
Forum updates
Elsewhere, the private group integration within the forum area was pushed live, allowing users to create closed areas for specific members.
Category updates
We also introduced a series of category features updates, like the ability to reorder and reorganise, granting you greater flexibility when customising your platform.
Settings update
Our new custom updates allowed you to update your browser icon to match your website.
Permissions updates
New permissions were added, giving you the ability to grant members permissions (depending on their roles or subscription) to see certain feature pages.
Future roadmap
Work continues on the platform redesign we’ve been conducting over the past few months, with some exciting new developments coming soon!
Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you would like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.
Feature Spotlight
Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the private discussions feature.
Did you know?
Within the platform, there are a couple of areas where your community can engage in private discussions with either yourself or fellow members.
How to use this feature
Private discussions can now be facilitated in the following areas:
Connect area / My Messages tab: providing you have connected with a member (and they have accepted), you can engage in direct messaging that’s only visible to you and the recipient (not even admins)
Event ‘Let’s meet’ area: once you’re booked onto an event you can introduce yourself and start a private discussion with a fellow attendee
Forum area / Private Threads – a relatively new addition to the forum (and one that’s proving very popular) is the ability to create group private threads – more on this next month!
If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these features, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch
So, if your brand is embarking on email marketing campaigns, is all hope lost? Not at all! It’s all about sending the right type of email, or to put it more bluntly, sending emails your customers actually care about.
Whether welcoming a new customer following their first order or thanking a new subscriber immediately post-signup, welcome emails serve two distinct purposes.
Firstly, they provide reassurance to the customer – their signup was successful, their account has been created, their order has been confirmed.
Secondly, welcome emails can serve as a warm embrace to new members of your community. Introduce who you are, what you’re about and why your customer should join you. Do it right, and you may have sparked a new long-lasting relationship.
The proof’s in the pudding when it comes to welcome emails, too. More than 8 in 10 consumers will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many opens and 10x as many clicks as other email formats.
With this in mind, seize the opportunity to inspire customers and drive action – whatever form that desired action may take.
Promotional offers
‘Customers like promotions’ is perhaps email marketing’s worst-kept secret.
But the fact of the matter is that customers like promotions so much that promotional emails are an all-but-guaranteed way to bolster your open rates, click-through rates and, ultimately, conversions.
Email marketing is often the most lucrative channel to shout about any promotions on the horizon. That’s because your email leads have already expressed some form of interest in your brand, whether through signing up to your newsletter, placing orders or being an active member of your brand community.
However, it’s key to remember: no matter how much customers like promos, nobody likes spam.
With this in mind, don’t overload customers’ inboxes with ‘sale, sale, sale’. Instead, find a creative way to communicate friendly reminders about sales and offers that doesn’t feel spammy or intrusive.
Ensure every email is offering something unique and valuable to your customer. For example, if you’ve already notified a user of a sale, don’t notify them again until there are new products, further reductions or some other additional incentive.
Discount codes
Businesses often think they know exactly what their customers want. In fact, according to a recent survey, 84% of small businesses are “very” or “extremely” confident they know what their customers want.
Yet the data suggests otherwise. While small business owners placed customer wellbeing check-ins at the top of their customers’ priority lists, the customers themselves begged to differ – with 67% placing coupons and discounts at the top of the list.
So, what’s the appeal of a discount code? Well, to state the obvious: customers like money off. But the advantage discount codes hold over promotional offers is the element of personalisation they allow.
If you’re promoting a discount code to a specific segment of your audience, make sure you shout about it. From rewarding high-value customers to working to win back disengaged ex-buyers, ensure your customers know that you’ve targeted them specifically.
The advantages of this are twofold. Firstly, consumers like exclusivity – don’t be afraid to play up to this by including words such as ‘exclusive’, ‘secret’ or ‘personal’ in your email content.
Secondly, consumers like personalisation. By telling them why they’ve received a code, you’re offering a tailored brand experience that’s likely to win more community members as a result.
Personalised suggestions
On the topic of personalisation, according to a recent survey by Bluecore, 74% of baby boomers believe email is the most personal channel to receive communications from brands. This is generally agreed across generations, with 72% of Gen X, 64% of millennials and 60% of Gen Z believing the same.
With this in mind, don’t be afraid to get personal in your emails as a means of driving engagement and growing your community. Not only that – with 70% of millennials being frustrated with brands sending irrelevant emails, personalised emails are a sure-fire way to demonstrate relevance and, most importantly of all, value.
How do you do it right? Drill down into your customers’ behaviours, interests and habits and use this as your inspiration.
For example, 56% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a website that recommends products. So, based on your customers’ previous browsing and order history, why not suggest similar or complementary products and services? Alternatively, if customers are engaging with particular content, why not recommend further relevant resources and information?
Cart abandonment
Cart abandonment emails provide a tried and tested means of driving email engagement. Why? Because customers care about them!
Cart abandonment emails hold a trump card – your customers have demonstrated some form of intent. Whether they intended to buy later or simply forgot to buy at the time, cart abandonment emails are a friendly nudge often welcomed by customers.
This is another great way to demonstrate personalisation to your community. Cart abandonment emails are unique to that specific customer’s browsing habits, and even something as minuscule as a cart abandonment email can make a customer feel important.
Once more, the stats only strengthen this point. 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened, with an average click-through rate of 21%. Of those who clicked, a huge 50% of users then go on to make a purchase, proving that cart abandonment emails can be super-effective in driving sales and retaining customers. From there, it’s up to you to nurture them retained customers into community members.
Customer service
Lastly, never underestimate the importance of high-quality customer service in your email communications.
Customer service can make or break your business. Good customer service can help to retain customers and incentivise them to become community members (even if they had a bad initial experience), whereas bad customer service is often enough to drive a consumer away from your brand forever.
With that in mind, always ensure you’re placing value and efficiency at the forefront of your customer service. Even if you utilise chatbots or landlines, ensure any public email account is being monitored regularly so any customer queries or problems can be addressed as a matter of priority.
As a rule of thumb, make sure you’re always providing an unquestionably positive experience through quick responses and open communications every step of the way.
Purposeful email marketing can be a powerful way to grow your brand community – it’s all about sending the right emails at the right times.
At Six Circles, our recent email digest improvements give you greater control over your email content than ever before. To learn more about how this freedom can help you to build your brand community, get in touch today and request a demo of our platform.
Here’s your monthly roundup on everything Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…
Company news
In July, we were excited to welcome a new member to the Six Circles family. Meet Reece Priest…
Getting to know you
Reece is our new Business Development Executive. Powered by coffee with milk and two sugars (which he shamelessly claims to be “almost as sweet as him”), Reece is joining our sales team to help us continue to grow our client base.
In his spare time, Reece loves nothing more than getting stuck into some DIY or, following an athlete’s dinner of mince and dumplings, working on improving his long-distance running. Having finished just one hour behind Mo Farah in the Great North Run, we’ve no doubt we’ll be seeing gold in the Six Circles office soon…honest.
Future roadmap
Work continues on the platform redesign we’ve been conducting over the past few months, with some exciting new developments coming soon!
Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you would like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.
Feature Spotlight
Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the email digest feature.
Did you know?
Within your Six Circles community platform, we’ve made improvements to our email digest system to help you keep your community informed and coming back for more.
How to use this feature
Last month, we shared with you the second part of our new notification centre found within your admin area. This month, we’re bringing you more information on the final piece of the puzzle: the email digest tool.
When selecting ‘email digest’, you’ll be taken to a simple and easy-to-use area that allows an admin to tailor your email digest for your members.
With our new improvements, an admin user can now personalise the digest in a variety of ways. Firstly, you can create your own content (which will be situated at the top of your email), such as a custom welcome message or a community update.
Next, you’ll find the ‘feature selection’ option. All you need to do here is select which features you wish to include from a simple tick box – we’ll take care of the rest! Every month, the most recent content from your selected features will populate your email digest, keeping your members up to date with the latest from your business and community.
Last but by no means least, you’ll find our new scheduling feature. Now admins can choose how often an email digest will run out to its members – better yet, you can even choose the day
If you would like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these features, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch
Every day, we receive an influx of push notifications across our mobile and desktop devices. In fact, the average US smartphone user receives 46 app push notifications per day.
With so much competition, you’d be forgiven for assuming that push notifications have begun to lose their pulling power. But this isn’t true – it’s all about knowing how to utilise them the right way.
That’s why, today, we’re exploring 6 undisputable reasons your brand shouldn’t be ignoring push notifications when it comes to engaging (and re-engaging) your customer community.
Effortless marketing
Marketing isn’t easy.
But as opposed to more traditional methods of marketing, push notifications enable you to sell and upsell at very specific touchpoints. For example, whereas alternate methods of marketing require you to target a generic stage of the sales funnel, notifications enable you to target specific points of the user journey based on their micro-behaviours. This means you’re able to stay in touch with your community far more efficiently and with a greater sense of subtlety that will feel less intrusive to your customers.
Send real-time reminders and updates that encourage your customers to engage in your desired way. These updates could relate to new products, sales or special offers to name just a few – the trick is to provide an incentive that means users can’t help but click.
Better targeting
Push notifications can be targeted to specific users, making them ultra-effective in retargeting and re-engaging dormant users.
Has a particular user been inactive or unengaged for a period of time? A push notification is a great way to remarket your brand by simply reminding them you’re there – often, that’s all a customer needs.
This simple reminder works wonders with semi-engaged customers, too. From cart abandonment nudges to tailored reminders based on browsing history, there are plenty of ways push notifications can be used to ensure that conversion makes it over the line.
Simple personalisation
Personalisation is all the rage right now. So much so that it’s almost become an expectation from customers – consumers expect businesses to care more about them as an individual.
Unsurprisingly, personalised content receives far greater engagement. In fact, a huge 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences.
So, look to personalise your push notifications wherever possible. It can be something as simple as including the customer’s name in the content or, for best results, you may look to personalise your push notification campaigns by analysing user behaviours and preferences.
Real-time delivery
In today’s digital world, so much is instantaneous. Isn’t it about time your marketing efforts caught up with the times?
Real-time delivery enables you to heighten the sense of urgency among your customers, playing on psychological triggers such as FOMO to inspire action in users. Limited time offers and low stock notifications work particularly well in these instances.
Plus, with the average consumer spending a shocking 50 days on their smartphone per year, you can rest assured your customers will see your notification. All that’s left is ensuring your content is powerful enough to drive the engagement you want to see.
Improved efficiency
From resources to blog posts, emails to newsletters, we don’t need to tell you that content takes time.
Push notifications, on the other hand, prove you can reap maximum rewards with minimal content. Providing you get your message right (through a combination of data-driven strategy and on-brand messaging), push notifications can be an incredibly efficient way to market and engage.
After all, the focus here should be on delivering a powerful and succinct message in as few words as possible. This should save you internal time compared with the content and design of other communication methods, all while providing just as much (if not more) positive engagement.
More engagement
One of the greatest benefits of push notifications is that they demand to be noticed.
Though the success of channels such as email speak for themselves, you’re always running the risk of your message being lost amidst a stuffed inbox. Push notifications, on the other hand, will appear on users’ screens – and best of all, it won’t disappear until they’ve next engaged with their device.
Compare this with the email marketing process, for example. Whereas you need to utilise the power of an irresistible subject line to entice users into reading your content, with push notifications, the content’s ready and waiting. Without having to worry about click-through, users are far more likely to engage.
Here at Six Circles, we’ve seen our push notification feature help brands tailor how their platform engages their members. To learn more about how this could help your business, get in touch with Six Circles today and request your free demo of our community engagement platform.
Here’s your monthly roundup on everything Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…
Company news
In June, we completed a series of security and infrastructure improvements across the Six Circles platform. This, combined with the routine bug fixes also completed this month, ensures our platform continues to run smoothly and remains secure.
Future roadmap
Work continues on the platform redesign we’ve been conducting over the past few months, with some exciting new developments coming soon!
Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you would like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.
Feature Spotlight
Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to guarantee you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the push notifications feature.
Did you know?
Within your Six Circles community area, there’s a new feature that allows you to tailor the notifications your members receive.
How to use this feature
In last month’s bulletin, we shared more details about our email templates feature. This feature is just one of three exciting components of our new notification centre, though.
So, this month, we’re bringing you part two of our notification centre developments (found within your admin area): the push notifications tool.
When selecting push notifications, you’ll be taken into a library of notifications that are available across the platform. These range from your standard activation/password resets to more complex options like activity updates (such as new post notifications, etc).
We’ve seen the push notifications feature help communities tailor how their platform engages with its members. This often drives community members to keep returning and getting involved across the platform.
The tailoring doesn’t end there, though. Members now can control their own notifications within their member profile, giving them the ability to personalise their platform experience based on what engagement best suits them.
If you would like to see a short demonstration on how to make the most of these notifications, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.
Whether you’re an ecommerce or B2B business, trade body or nonprofit organisation, your brand can benefit from best-practice email marketing.
From amplifying brand awareness to securing, nurturing and converting leads, email is a channel capable of single-handedly transforming first-time site users into loyal, long-time brand advocates.
That is, if the emails themselves are up to scratch.
If you’re new to the world of email marketing, you should know now that you’ll be in constant pursuit of perfection from your first email to your last. There are always new optimisations to be made, new variables to test, and new data points to harness.
There are, however, a handful of essential features that are the foundation of any great brand email. Together, these elements form your recipe for email marketing success from your very first campaign.
Here are those key ingredients.
A tantalising subject line
The first element of your email a user is exposed to is the all-important subject line.
This is your opening gambit. The promise you make to users about what’s contained within your email and why they should care.
Your subject line should be punchy, succinct (no more than 9 words or 60 characters) and reflective of the contents of your email. This gives users maximum incentive to open the email rather than leaving it unread and unloved.
While the impact of emoji use in subject lines is limited, appropriate usage can catch the user’s eye, emphasise your message and convey relevant emotion. Just don’t go overboard with emoji use or your email could scream ‘spam’.
A user-friendly layout
When it comes to marketing email layouts, don’t give users any unnecessary work to do. Layouts should be clean, digestible and engaging. They should adhere to the same user experience (UX) best practices as any page on your brand’s website.
Overwhelming the user with a crowded email design without any clear visual hierarchy is a sure-fire way to see click-through rates plummet.
Your written content and any supporting visuals should be laid out so that they’re immediately visible and effortless to consume and navigate. Leave room for white space and let your key messages do the talking.
Concise, on-brand copy
The essence of any brand email is the copy used to communicate your message.
First, there’s your preview text (or preheader), which will appear right alongside your subject line in users’ inboxes. This is your opportunity to expand on the promise made by your subject line. Give users more context as to the contents of your email and incentivise them to look inside.
Like your subject line, your preview text should be succinct, sparking curiosity and providing a clear incentive for users to open the email. Importantly, though, it should complement your subject line rather than duplicating any elements. This way, you can squeeze maximum value out of the limited space available with these teasers.
Once users have opened your email, it’s on you to communicate your message in a clear, concise, impactful way that reflects your brand’s tone of voice. Not only that but the needs, preferences and behaviours of your audience, too.
Use direct address (think ‘you’ and ‘your’) wherever possible to give the email a personal touch and involve users in your narrative.
Waste no time in getting straight to the point. Use a conversational tone where appropriate to build rapport with users. Never use 100 words when 10 will do the job.
Relevant, high-quality imagery
Think of multimedia content as the companion to your carefully crafted email copy.
Imagery in email shouldn’t be an afterthought. Copy and imagery should be relevant to one another and should be mutually supportive in order to truly enhance your email’s message.
Authentic brand imagery is the ideal, whether branded graphics or relatable, real-world photography of your product, service or team.
Naturally, though, not all businesses will have high-quality branded assets at their disposal, or access to a professional photographer. In these cases, you may need to go to plan B: copyright-free stock photography.
Just be sure to keep relevance front of mind when selecting stock imagery for your emails. Having irrelevant visuals that confuse users rather than strengthening your message is worse than having no imagery at all.
The key is to only include imagery where it supports the message of your email. And don’t forget to honour your brand identity through your use of colour, shape and typography in your email campaigns.
Clear, convenient links
Clicks are a primary measure of any marketing email’s success, making the right links a vehicle for successful email marketing.
From informational links that expand on your email’s topic (such as links to blog posts and white papers) to transactional links users can click to access relevant product or service pages, links are the navigational tools that help users end up where they need to be.
But there are also the secondary links to think about, like clickable buttons for your brand’s social media accounts. Oh, and those links you’d rather no user clicked, like the dreaded (yet vital) ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Whatever its purpose and destination, every link in your email should be clearly visible and accurately labelled so that users are left with no doubt as to where they’ll end up.
The golden rule for linking in emails is to keep primary links within the main body of your email to an absolute minimum. Every new avenue you open to users distracts from your email’s call-to-action.
An irresistible call-to-action
The ultimate goal of any email marketing activity is to inspire subscribers to take action. The nature of that action can vary wildly from one business or organisation to the next – but the fact remains that every effective marketing email has a clear and defined purpose.
Your call-to-action is your email’s rallying cry. The step every user should feel compelled to take after reading the contents of your email.
Whether you’d like users to shop now, sign up, download, donate, volunteer, get in touch, learn more or get started, your brand has a primary call-to-action that defines how users interact with you.
Give every email a clear objective and point all messaging towards this overarching call-to-action. This way, you can make answering this call feel like the next logical step rather than a fulfilling of duty.
Together, these must-have marketing email elements can help your brand to surprise and delight subscribers for years to come. You’ll always be chasing higher open and click-through rates – such is the nature of email marketing – but this best-practice base will get you off to a flying start.
Our community engagement platform includes a library of effective email templates to take the hassle out of finding a layout that works.
Streamline your email marketing activity forevermore by joining our tribe. Get your free demo of the Six Circles platform now.
Here’s your monthly roundup on everything Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s to come on our ever-evolving community engagement platform…
Company News
In May, we welcomed a new member to the Six Circles family. Meet Georgia Fiddes…
Getting to know you
Georgia is our new Business Development Executive, joining our team to help us continue growing our ever-expanding client base.
A sucker for a scrumptious McDonald’s and a decent cuppa, Georgia has dived head-first into her new role a
nd is enjoying the motivated team environment.
Georgia is an ex-Accident Management Operator who grew up wanting to become a midwife. We just hope her time at Six Circles is a less stressful experience than either of those!
Future Roadmap
We’ve been busy working away on an exciting redesign of the Six Circles platform – keep your eyes peeled for the rollout!
We welcome any suggestions around what you would like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we always love to hear from you.
Feature Spotlight
Each month, we’re shining the spotlight on a different feature of the Six Circles platform to ensure you’re always getting the most out of what we have to offer. This month, we’re focusing on the email templates feature.
Did you know?
Within your Six Circles community platform, you’ll find a library of email templates. These can help you to automate how you communicate with your members once they’ve engaged with certain features.
How to use this feature
Within your admin area, you’ll have noticed our new notification centre (more on this in next month’s bulletin!).
This notification centre contains an email template section that enables greater customisation of the notifications sent from your platform. We understand that every community is different, which is why you now have the option to select which email templates you want to activate.
Better yet, you can even edit the content within each template, meaning notifications can become more personal to your members.
If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of these templates, simply contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch soon!
What is a brand identity? A logo, a colour palette, a set of values, a way of doing business?
The answer…all of the above. Your brand identity can’t be expressed within a single element of your business. Instead, a powerful brand identity is an amalgam of who you are, what you do and how you do it.
Your brand identity is your way of communicating with the word. A strong, well-positioned brand is key to the success of any business, as it forms customers’ perceptions of your brand and drives their experience with you.
So, how do you build a brand identity that’s seamless from one touchpoint to the next? Consistency.
Let’s explore not only why this consistency is so important, but how you can pull it off for your brand.
Your brand’s aesthetic is one key ingredient of your overall brand identity.
As the first things to catch an audience’s eye, visual elements such as your logo, typeface and colour palette shouldn’t just look good – they should also embody your brand, and project what it represents.
Let’s start with colour. You should be thinking clean and flexible when opting for your brand’s colour palette – consider how adaptable your choices will be across different formats, for example. This will ensure consistency is achieved from the off, with your website, social feeds and forums seamlessly complementing one another.
To find the right colours for your brand identity, think about the emotions your palette elicits – do these emotions give users the right gut feeling about who you are?
Next, consider your typography. Of course, this isn’t something you’re always in complete control of – take social media captions, for example (where these networks’ own standardised formatting dictates how all text appears). Where you do have the freedom of typography, though, look to embrace a style that sets the tone of your brand.
From website headers to document titles, think logically about where best to incorporate your branded typeface – and use this to best effect where it counts. The trick is to ensure that each visual element of your brand contributes to a cohesive visual identity.
Refine your user journey
When you think of ‘design’, you’d be forgiven for assuming the focus was solely on visuals.
However, service design can also be an integral part of implementing a consistent brand identity.
To borrow this great analogy from Marc Fonteijn, imagine two coffee shops side by side. Each sells the same coffee at the same price – service design is what influences a customer to choose one over the other.
Service design entails a whole lot of research. It involves getting to know the ins and outs of your audience – their habits, their behaviours, their pain points – and uses these as the foundation for any design decisions.
Service design also takes into account the experiences of all other parties connected to your business – your suppliers, your employees, your marketing team and the rest – to establish must-have features from the perspective of both brand and customer.
This makes collaboration the key to understanding both in-house and outward perceptions of your brand. Armed with this understanding, you can perform the necessary adjustments to create a targeted and satisfying experience for all involved.
The result? Cohesive user journeys across various formats and devices – mobile apps, websites, social media feeds and brick-and-mortar stores – to create a holistic brand experience.
Perfect your tone of voice
You’ve probably heard the term ‘tone of voice’ thrown around often in conversations about branding. That’s because it’s one of the primary facets of your brand identity.
Your tone of voice is the style in which your brand communicates. As such, it should embrace your brand’s personality, values, purpose and vision – easier said than done.
Pinpointing your brand’s tone of voice requires a thorough understanding of both your brand and audience, so spend the necessary time taking a deep dive into user data and personas to get to know who your brand is communicating with.
Use your findings to inspire your tone of voice. Pay particular attention to the words you use and the way you use them. At a minimum, you should be able to define:
Your diction
The formality of your tone
Your syntax
From here, look to create detailed guidelines on your tone of voice to ensure consistency across all communications.
Tailor your blog content
Blog content is often overlooked as a brand identity tool, but, with your tone of voice established, your blog content can be an effective way to reassert who you are and what you do.
The key is to think about the types of topics you address. With a clear picture in mind of your brand’s personality, values, purpose and vision, ask yourself how these drive the sorts of conversations you want to be involved in.
Approach this from two angles. Firstly, that of the topics themselves. Are you creating blog content on topics that matter to your brand?
Secondly, think about the approach you take. If you’ve landed on a fun and informal personality for your brand, is that matter-of-fact how-to guide going to embrace this brand identity? Probably not.
That’s not to say you should actively avoid these formats or topics, though. It’s about being creative and finding the angle that’s unmistakably you.
Let’s say your fun and informal brand is positioned within the tech industry. As we’ve already agreed, a matter-of-fact ‘how to set up your X’ guide is unlikley to hit the mark. To bake your brand identity into the angle, consider a more vibrant take on the same topic: ‘the technophobe’s guide to not breaking your X’, for example.
See how easy that was?
Embrace your values
We’ve already touched on how important your brand’s core values are.
This is because they define who you are as a brand. When it comes to building a consistent brand identity, this becomes particularly important – everyone needs to be on the same page as to who you are and what drives your brand forward.
To better understand how these values contribute to your brand identity, break them down and consider the influence each has:
Social values – if your brand has a philanthropic stance, how will this impact your tone? Do you need to operate or communicate in a certain way?
Epistemic / functional values–if you’re driven by the validation of a mission, how will your brand identity affect your brand’s authority and success?
Emotional values –are you driven by a specific belief or feeling? If so, how will your brand identity reflect with this position?
It’s important to note that this shouldn’t be left to interpretation. Find objective answers and detail them in your brand guidelines to ensure consistency across the board.
Know when to show off your brand identity
With a cohesive brand identity set in stone, don’t fall at the final hurdle. You need to know when to show it off and how to show it off.
Champion the mantra of ‘show, don’t tell’, embracing visuals, values, designs and content to create an all-encompassing brand identity that can (and should) feature in each element of your business.
The skill is in making sure you don’t overdo it. Whether it’s the amount of colour in your palette or the amount of content you churn out on a monthly basis, it’s always best to opt for quality over quantity.
Now, for the matter of how to show off your brand identity.
Never underestimate the power of subtlety. A consistent brand image isn’t about plastering your logo and brand colours here, there and everywhere. Instead, it’s about igniting the subconscious with enough familiarity and connectedness that the user always feels immersed in your brand’s world.
Our online community engagement platform is the key to giving your brand identity a whole new dimension.
“Since incorporating the Six Circles software to further grow our network, we have seen a vast increase in new members and interaction and we are attributing both to the ease of the site’s functionality.
For us, our marketing is now tailored more specifically and effectively due to the inclusion of useful analytics which allow us to form a better understanding of what our members really want.
We would wholly recommend Six Circles to organisations wanting to offer their consumers a platform to meet others, voice their opinions, publish industry news and receive an inclusive and enjoyable customer experience.”
The Mussel Club
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