Creating Authentic Connections

Developing authentic brands and creating real connection with clients and customers is a process. It requires knowing who you are, defining your business intentions, committing to your values, and understanding your distinct community of customers. There is no “greenwashing,” “bait and switch,” or “story spinning” here. You get to be yourself, and it’s my job to get to know you.

The Voyage to Yourself

(and/or Your Business)

It’s relatively easy to tick off the boxes of the ‘by default’ marketing practices that promise successful brands. While some of these best practice strategies are relevant to being in flow with culture and how people relate, connect, and make choices, it’s important to clarify how your business is different, and be real. Understanding how your authentic voice and the needs of your customer community intersect is your baseline for authentic connection.

When working with clients, my intention is to become a steward for your brand, so that we can reflect your authentic intentions out to your community through design, messaging, and promotional communications.

If knowing who you are and who your customers are is journey, the following Codes of Conduct are the tools to make the path for your authentic business.

Consistency & Intentionality

Cohesive brands build trust and visibility. Whatever feel or tone your band conveys, cohesive design and consistent messaging creates recognition for your existing customer community, and a feeling of trust from potential communities. When my clients have the instinct to shake things up in the brand I ask a lot of questions, not to discourage, but to understand where the urge is coming from, and to bring intentionality to that shift. Guiding clients through thoughtful approach to brand shifts, changes, name changes, and how these roll out and ripple out are a few of the long-view insights that sustain good brand stewardship. It’s necessary to grow and shift. As brands develop, I help business owners and organizations think through all the details involved in order to reduce or eliminate process issues and customer confusion or frustration.

Honesty & Transparency

No one likes the feeling of being aware that they are being targeted as a consumer. Most people prefer to be considered as humans. It seems ridiculous to even write that sentence! But, the reality is, in marketing, people can easily be reduced to numbers and trends can be touted as “you musts” in order to succeed. That’s the dark side of promotion, but here we try to stay in the light. Understanding the value that your products, services, or offerings bring to your customer community inspires authentic connection with less emphasis on ‘selling.’ This value message will be embedded into visuals, messaging, and the way you approach communication with customers. Discovering authentic voice for your business, and reflecting that out to your community, will engender engagement and loyalty.

Keep It Simple

Word clutter and visual confusion diminishes impact. Too many bolded words, fonts, competing messages, and non-guided actions are common mistakes I see from DIY-ers. I fully support the world of DIY, and I’m always here with fresh eyes, ready to help with refinement if you need it. For those of you managing content for your own websites, email campaigns, and print promos, the following simplification model can help make communication for products, services, and long reads more effective.

Know Your Story & Simplify

For increased engagement, keep the message, visuals, and action simple and clear. Our culture is inundated with information, digitally and in the real world. You can stand out by applying the “less is more” rule. The key to “less is more” is clearly communicating the one message you want to relate right now. Rather than putting as much information possible in promotions, think of your communication as spacious experiences (whether motivating, creative, energizing, or relaxing) that leave your readers following little breadcrumbs to the big dinner of engagement. If you do need to relay more than a single message, think about creating hierarchy by prioritizing one story, and allowing the reader to scan over 2 to 4 additional sub-stories.

Keep your voice strong, your values up front, and remember (and continue to discover) who your community is. You have a relationship with your customers, so you can guide them with ease. You don’t have to “sell,” but you do have to make it clear how they can participate, buy, or sign up. Imagine that you have all the space and time in the world to bring them along on your voyage—that spacious feeling will come through in your visuals and messaging. Be authentic in how you share the story of your business, services, and products. The more ease and clarity people feel, the more people want to be part of that experience in a healthy and genuine way.

Paper & Environmental Certifications

Environmental Stewardship, Paper & Design

Neenah Environment paper was my go-to primary paper recommendation to clients for over a decade. The papers available in this line hold ink beautifully (color pops) and all of these papers have Post-Consumer Fiber content of at least 30%. Within this Environment line of papers, they also offer 100% Post-Consumer Fiber in their PC 100 White and PC 100 Natural. Recycled paper can have as little as 10% Post-Consumer Fiber, so 30% is actually quite significant.

Neenah Environment Certifications

All Neenah papers in then Environment line hold certifications for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) (see below for FSC vs. SFI), Green-e (clean energy and carbon offset), and Green Seal (environmental impact reduction). Fifteen of Neenah papers hold the Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) certification, including the above mentioned PC 100 White and Natural, which are the only two PCF options in the Environment line.

Printers Drive Paper Selection

Local digital and offset printers offer select brands, colors, and weights of paper. When a printer does not have your preferred paper brand on hand, you can ask to have it ordered. If the printer is willing (and/or able), it’s on the customer to buy their own large reams which is typically hundreds of dollars. If the printer makes a mistake with the print run, that paper cost is likely going to be on the customer, not the printer. So it’s best to find printers who offer the kind of paper you like. Printers often have an affordable “house paper” that they offer as their high-volume paper of choice. If you’re lucky, their house paper supports improvements toward environmental stewardship, and the print team will help you make better design decisions on product sizing to reduce paper waste and cost.

My preferred local printer keeps a select set of colors and weights of Neenah Environment in house, so it’s the paper and printer I recommend to my clients every time when they are not ordering from gang-run printer like Moo or VistaPrint (meaning that several customers share the same glass plate, which keeps costs low, but with no ability to manage on-press color adjustment.)

Honorable Mentions

Paper is not a clean industry, so when I began thinking about paper and environmental stewardship, I ditched my extensive library of paper sample books, only keeping books from companies that were actively taking steps forward in industry practices.

Domtar Cougar has been another standard paper choice for me when printers could not source Neenah. Another beautiful paper, but the recycled content is only 10%. Higher recycled content would be optimal, but Cougar does carry certifications for FCS and the Rain Forest Alliance. Also, nearly half a million dollars per year is contributed to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) from the sale of their FSC-certified EarthChoice products.

I’ve always been intrigued with French Paper, but don’t have much experience with their product other than their super cool sample packs and swatch books. They installed fully renewable hydroelectric generators in 1922. As pioneers in recycled paper, they were the first paper company to intentionally keep the speckled flecks in the recycled paper, and this became their trademark paper look. I have my eye out for opportunities to use this paper with clients, but have yet to find a local printer that warehouses this particular paper.

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Recycled Paper Greenwashing Tip

Paper that displays the recycled logo may not have any recycled content, but is actually an indicator that the paper can be recycled.

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FSC Vs. SFI

Over 10 years ago, I began researching paper and environmental sustainability, and like everything we do on the planet, it’s still far from perfect. Still, when making paper recommendations, it’s important to me that paper companies are taking steps toward better outcomes.

All those years ago, after researching the standards for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) I leaned toward products with FSC certs, because their certification requirements included a 10% reforestation effort. Meaning, if 50% of forest was cleared, 60% needed to be planted to obtain certification. In 2020, certification processes are much more complicated and not as transparent, so I can’t really claim that I understand the scope, or even key stats, for the certification processes for SFI is or FSC.

Watching How Industries Respond to Public Pressure

Over the years, I’ve come to trust FSC in the same way that I trust my food coop, while I’ve always been wary of SFI. Even Fortune 500 companies have started ditching SFI for FSC around 2011. In my recent, continued research, I found an article that highlights SFI criticism for greenwashing, and this organization which claims to expose SFI corruption. To be fair, I also found criticism directed toward FSC. However, the article that put the whole debate to bed for me was the one that stated FSC was founded by environmentalists in 1933, while SFI was founded by the North American forest products industry one year later. This FastCompany story goes so far as to say that SFI very well might be a timber industry-sponsored scam. Like other industries that haven’t been stewards of ethical practice, there is always a chance that public pressure and bad press will encourage internal clean up. But for now, I’m in the FSC camp.

Email Campaigns That Open

Deeper Thinking on Subject Lines

Email campaign subject lines can make or break open rates. With a quick search, you can find a lot of information about subject lines. From there, you have to sort out the over-recycled content that lists rote suggestions from real strategic insight that requires deeper thought work. Rather than create another oversimplified list, I wanted to provide reality-based guidance along with some thought-provoking questions.

No matter how hard you worked on the content, if the subject line falls flat, fewer people may open the email. Most of my clients are surprised when they learn that the average email open rate across all industries falls between 15% and 21%. If you have a 30% to 40% open rate, you are either rocking your emails or you have a very loyal customer base. The email subject line is one component in your email campaign strategy that can increase open rate. When writing email subject lines, following best practices is a good start; experimenting and A/B testing headlines, even better.

Join Me In This Experiment

While reading this story, notice how you feel as you read each headline. Imagine each headline as an email subject line. Did it intrigue you, did you gloss over it, was there a disconnect, or did it make you want to keep reading? You’re already reading this story, so if you care about improving open rates in email campaigns, you will probably keep reading whether the headlines grab you or not. An unopened email is not so forgiving.

1 of 6 Truths About Open Rates

Using numbers is a common tool that has been shown to increase engagement. Be aware that this strategy is frequently embedded into article headlines and email subject lines to encourage clicks through overly simplistic or empty content, aka “clickbait.” In other words, use numbers wisely, and make sure that your headline reflects the spirit of the content.

Email Subject Lines Are #Waaayy More Important Than Instagram Hashtags

Consider spending as much time, or more, in concept of your email subject lines as on Instagram hashtags. While Instagram touts 12.6% more engagement with hashtag usage, research from Mention.com reports that, in general, Twitter hashtags don’t engage at all unless you happened to be interested in a South Korean boy band in 2017. Another report finds that Instagram hashtags are super important AND they do not increase post engagement at all, which I am still trying to unpack. (Of course, hash tags can be useful at times, for example, during events, rallies, protests, or for special promotions, but this requires a tipping point of agreed upon engagement.) Your email subscribers, on the other hand, are already poised to engage. If you spend 3 minutes per day creating hash tags for 5 posts per week resulting in a smattering of engagement, consider how 15 minutes could be used instead to craft an email subject line that will engage your existing subscribers. Your subscribers already like your cause, products, services, and value what you have to share. There is an art to crafting email subject lines, and experimenting with this is a great way to learn how to best engage the people who are ready to participate or learn more.

What Do People Want?

It’s a commonly overused and under-researched technique to use non-specific subject lines that attempt to create intrigue. Mystery is a difficult technique to wield when recipients are already overloaded with things in the inbox. An important rule in user experience is that people hate to think. “Winter Newsletter” is another example of a subject line that doesn’t offer any indication to what’s inside, so recipients may perceive it as uninformative. And… click, delete.

Note: In an upcoming post on Long Reads & Rule Breaking, I will explore best-practices rebellion and breaking the rules for some of the guidelines provided here. My disclaimer is that most of the time generic subject lines and content-heavy email campaigns are not effective. There is a certain “je ne sais quoi” required to breaking the best-practices rules, which you can read about in that upcoming story.

If the winter newsletter is for a restaurant, for example, a more descriptive subject line might highlight the winter specialty soup, “It’s cold out there! Drop in for a bowl of Butternut Squash Pasole.” Other subject lines might appeal to a recipient’s sense of community, solve a problem for them, ask them to help you solve a problem, capture their curiosity, or create a product availability timeline: “Select origin Colombian: Available through Friday, January 7.”

Your Package Is On Its Way!

Different kinds of content require different subject lines. If the email is transactional, for example, alerting the recipient about a subscription or the arrival of a package, the subject needs to be acutely clear and informative, like: “You’re package is on its way“ or “Your package is about to arrive.”

The Cast of Characters (In the Email Subject Line)

Watch subject line length (41-50 characters or less is a good benchmark). Could there be a benefit to using fewer words? Emails are segmented into a Promotions tab in Gmail, so consider how you will (or won’t) stand out in the sea of newsletter campaigns sent to Gmail recipients. In this case, very short may be better.

It’s Like a Yoga Class for Your Brand

The above headline is an example of a subject line meant to spark curiosity. The other day, I was describing my brand refresh to a friend, to which she said, “It’s like a yoga class for your brand!” I thought this was clever and decided to use it here to illustrate a point. When using a catchy headline, It’s also important that your content supports it. If subject lines doesn’t pay off and the content doesn’t generate any value or fulfill a need, users may feel like they are being marketed to. Clever statements need to resonate with the content, especially if the subject line makes a promise or connects with users on an emotional level. Like any relationship, when your language is clear, transparent, honest, and represents who you really are, the more likely that relationship is to thrive. So, yes, experiment with how you capture your readers' attention, and be conscious of the line between being clever and being real.