Last updated on January 31st, 2023
A logo is your brand’s physical representation, both online and offline. You use it everywhere from employee uniforms to social media campaigns. The one place you might not have thought about is your email marketing. Putting a logo in the email may seem like a no-brainer, but there are some tweaks you can implement to make the logo work best for you.
Why Do I Need To Put A Logo In The Email?
The marketing skeptics out there may be surprised that putting your logo in the newsletter has more sense behind it than merely being a convention. Here’s why you should design your own logo and incorporate it into your company’s emails:
i. Easy Recognition
A logo is your brand’s icon. It’s an easy way for the customer to recognize your brand instantly. It’s a fact that humans process images faster than text. A passing glance over your logo at the top of the email reminds the person reading it – who they are dealing with.
This is especially relevant for cart abandonment emails. It may be difficult to remember where you abandoned the cart. Your company logo — together with the main colors of your website — creates a slight cue for the customer to remember about the shopping they’ve dropped.
ii. Depersonalization
No, you should keep your emails as personal as it gets. This depersonalization is about the sender, not the receiver of the newsletter.
A business logo and the absence of your personal details as the sender let you develop a relationship between the customer and the abstract concept of the company rather than a salesperson.
iii. Building Brand Identity
A fresh logo is an empty vessel. Putting the right message into it is your job. The more exposure the logo gets, the easier it is to create strong associations with desirable values in it. A newsletter is a great way to expose your logo to millions of people in a week.
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How To Place A Logo In The Newsletter Template
Now that you know why you need to include the logo in the newsletter, let’s get to the details.
a. Scale The Logo To Fit All Screen
Many marketers think about email marketing as a desktop practice while optimizing social media campaigns and AMP pages for mobile. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
IBM research shows that 49% of emails are opened on mobile devices. This means both — your email template as well as all imagery in it, have to be scalable for the different screen width. Mess this up, and your readers end up seeing an oversized logo on their phones.
b. Use Alt Text Tags Strategically
When something goes wrong with the server that hosts a logo or a user’s device, the image doesn’t load. The user sees an ugly substitute for the picture that was supposed to be there.
A professional graphic designer use alt text tag to make sure anyone can see the gist of the email even without a logo or other images. Here’s how Quora manages that.
Payoneer doesn’t handle it that well. The logo is positioned right next to the company’s name, and the alt text says, well, “logo.” In this case, it would look better without alt text.
[Source: Payoneer ]
c. Use The Transparent Background Version
It’s a basic tip, but many beginners make this mistake; so it’s worth paying attention to.
Logo design with color background creates the need for unnecessary optimization of the whole email template. If you have multiple versions of the logo, put up the one with a transparent background.
d. Fit The Logo Into The Visual Hierarchy
Many inexperienced business owners fall into the trap of trying to show off their logo. They feel great about their newly created logo and make a template that is all about it. That’s counterproductive, to say the least.
When you’re creating an email newsletter, make sure the logo falls into the visual hierarchy of the newsletter a whole. This is extremely important for logo placement.
Where To Place The Logo In The Newsletter
Placement is probably one of the critical aspects when it comes to using a logo or email signature in newsletter design. Here are your options.
i. Top Left Corner
This place is a classic for all logos, whether it’s a website or an email template. The thing is that most people tend to scan the email left-to-right, so the logo is one of the first things they see. Being the first helps a lot.
NNG research found that logos placed on the left have an 89% higher brand recall. Placing your logo on the top left corner works well with how our brains are wired. This is why it’s so popular.
You should probably stick to this placement as well. Don’t worry! It won’t look primitive or copied. You just have to put a little twist on it to make the common logo placement look fresh.
A clothing brand does that by leveraging white space around the logo. The color of the logo is in contrast with the space around it, to make the logo instantly more visible.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
Payoneer goes for a simplified version of the logo design. The full logotype would look too bulky in an email client, so the company just puts a small icon next to the company name.
[Source: Payoneer ]
Adidas is among the brands that don’t need an introduction, so it doesn’t need to make the logo prominent in the email. The company pulls off the classic top left logo placement with style.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
The key takeaway from Adidas’s email is making the header of your newsletter look like the navigation panel on the website.
Here’s a pro tip: consider changing logo placement to the right corner for right-to-left languages like Hebrew or Arabic. Speakers of these languages scan the page the other way around, so a logo placed on the left won’t be as effective.
ii Centered On Top
Centered on the top is the next most popular place to put a company’s logo. According to NNG research, it won’t make for better brand recall, so centering your logo is a stylistic, not a functional choice. It still works better than placing your logo on the left corner, so it’s a valid option.
This type of logo placement is ideal for big, bold imagery tailored for smartphone users. This Starbucks email is an excellent example of how a centered logo works best.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
Centered logos and logotypes work exceptionally well for big images. Consider placing the logo on the top left corner if your emails are mostly text, and on at the center if they feature a wide image right under it.
[Source: Awwwards ]
The formula “small logo, big text” works well for big brands like Apple and National Geographic.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
These brands are established and well-known, so they can afford to sacrifice a bit of recognizability for more focus on the main text. After all, you don’t need to see the logo to be happy to open a letter from National Geographic.
Smaller brands may want to stick with the more visible logo placement. This Maude email doesn’t show the logo that well. The colossal image, combined with little contrast between the logotype and the background, makes it almost invisible.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
Where centered logo placement works well is mobile devices. This is why eBay changed their logo position from top left to center on mobile.
[Source: ebay ]
iii. In Text
For optimum result from your email marketing campaigns, make sure that you don’t place the logo is inside the body of the email. The conventional place for the logo is at the top; so many users have trouble finding the logo on the page, especially when they’re skimming.
The only way you can recognize the logo in this email from the first glance is if you are a long-term follower of the company.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
iv. Signature Logo
Most logos are placed on the top of the email. Placing it on the bottom can work as well. Placing it in the signature of your sales agents is an excellent way of reminding the clients about the company they’re working with.
It also works well for universities and NGOs.
[Source: Johns Hopkins University ]
You can consider putting your logo on the bottom of the email if it’s a long one and needs footer. The email giant Mailchimp does it, so it can’t be wrong.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
v. Unorthodox Logo
To be fair, few companies can pull off an oversized, funky logo. If your company is centered on creativity or already sports a bold website design like Great Jones, it’s probably the way to go.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
Surprisingly enough, Lyft has an unorthodox logo in emails that works. It works because the rest of the email is big and bold as well.
[Source: Really Good Emails ]
For a regular ecommerce store, it may be overkill. Both professional and amateur logo designers can bring variations in their design by taking inspiration from these two examples.
The Bottom Line
Whatever logo placement you stick with, remember one thing – your design has to be consistent. Sure, split testing emails is always a great idea, but you have to end up with a consistent design and stick with it. Email marketing is an affordable yet effective marketing tool hence makes sure your emails communicate to users “This email is from that great company I’ve bought something a month ago” is a tough job that takes time. Continually changing the email template sabotages the progress you’ve already made.
Cheers!!!
