Key takeaways
- The halo effect is a cognitive bias where a shopper’s overall impression of your brand creates a ripple effect that influences perceptions of products and messages.
- In email marketing, the halo effect extends reach beyond measured opens and clicks. It can drive extra site visits and conversions via general awareness and name recognition.
- Measure the halo effect by looking for disproportionate rises in page visits and conversions that originate from indirect awareness, not just from email clicks or opens.
- To benefit from the halo effect, keep a consistent, regular email cadence, expand and stay connected with your audience and use strong subject lines to maintain top-of-mind awareness.
- Don’t confuse impressions created by the halo effect with product substance. The cognitive bias can produce favourable perceptions that aren’t always aligned with actual product attributes.
Introduction
The more the world studies marketing in general, the more the lines between this discipline and the realm of psychology tend to blur together. It’s no big secret that the great advertising campaigns of any era play to the mental constructs of that time’s society. A quick look at this concept from Margarita Tartakovsky of PsychCentral shows that plenty of brands have had great success portraying consumers that purchase specific products as happier, healthier, and more attractive.
However, with the added digital barrier found within marketing across the web, do these concepts still hold the same weight? One such ideal in particular, the “halo effect,” is starting to gain major ground in the email marketing discussion. To help bring you up to speed on this concept, and what it might mean for your branded messages in the future, let’s spend some time breaking down the halo effect and its potential role in the world of email marketing.
What Is the Halo Effect?
At this point, if you didn’t spend your undergrad years majoring in marketing or psychology, you’re probably wondering just what the heck the halo effect is and why it has any bearing on your email content. To make it a little easier to understand, Yaro Stark of Entrepreneurs-Journey explains that this cognitive bias comes from a shopper’s perceived image or impression of a brand, person, good, or service. Essentially, it’s the ripple effect a person, or in this case your content, makes as it works through the general populace and builds a reputation.
In some cases, psychologists label this heuristic as a cognitive error. That’s not to say that it is wrong, just that individuals could create an impression based on this process that isn’t in accordance with the actual substance of a person, brand, or product. Fortunately, we can leave the philosophical side of this debate to the academics. Instead, we’ll just focus on maximizing your email marketing returns based on the known power of the halo effect and how it affects shoppers who connect directly, or indirectly in this case, with your brand via the inbox.
Understanding Its Role In the World of Email Marketing
To understand the halo effect and its role in your email advertising initiative, Dela Quist of MarketingProfs lays out the process in a series of steps that illuminate the power of this cognitive construct. To start, the halo effect plays an important role in helping provide an accurate scope of the reach of your messages. As Quist points out, plenty of companies struggle with gauging the impact of email marketing, primarily because the usefulness of this digital tool goes beyond simply measuring clicks and opens.
To bridge this gap, the halo effect seeks to quantify the true benefits of your strategy by connecting the marketing and sales process into a big picture approach. Essentially, instead of just relying on clicks and open rates, your brand will look beyond these metrics and find trends related to the actual transmission of these messages.
For instance, Quist notes that virtually all brands receive page visits and conversions that originate from “another route” or basic awareness factors that come with having name recognition. When an email campaign kicks into full gear, these numbers often rise in a disproportionate manner when compared to click and open rates. To put it in far simpler terms, this rise in activity comes from the power of emails that viewers might only see in passing as they surf through the inbox – a prime example of the reach of the halo effect.
Building Around this Effect
So if the halo effect is simply the added reach that your emails generate online, as well as in the traditional marketplace, how to do you build around and maximize the utility of this concept? Considering the deep psychological undertone of this discussion, the answer to this question is surprisingly straightforward – be active and stay connected. Basically, you can’t take advantage of the halo effect if you’re not constantly reaching out and expanding your email audience, so it’s exceedingly important to stay in touch whenever possible.
This doesn’t mean you need to spam your readers with flashy messages at all hours of the day to reap the reward of the effect. Instead, build a consistent, regular campaign that relies on attributes like strong subject lines to keep your brand message in the back of consumers’ minds. This way, even if these shoppers don’t open your email, you can still lay the seeds for a future relationship thanks to the expanded reach of the halo effect.
FAQ
The halo effect is a cognitive bias where a consumer’s perceived image of a brand, person, good or service creates a ripple effect across the audience. In email marketing it describes how brand impressions from your emails, even when not opened, can generate broader awareness and influence behaviour beyond measured email interactions.
Instead of relying only on opens and clicks, account for indirect outcomes: look for disproportionate increases in site visits and conversions that come from general awareness or other routes tied to name recognition while a campaign runs. The halo effect helps explain these extra gains.
Signs include rises in page visits and conversions that don’t map directly to email clicks or opens and increased activity originating from ‘another route’ or basic brand awareness during or after an email campaign.
Remain active and continually expand your email audience. Run consistent, regular campaigns (avoid spamming) and craft strong subject lines so your brand stays top-of-mind. Even unopened messages can seed future relationships via the halo effect.
Yes. Psychologists call the halo effect a heuristic or cognitive error because impressions formed this way may not reflect a product’s actual substance. Be aware favourable perceptions driven by the halo effect might not align with the underlying value of your offering.
