This is a story about the sendXmail rebranding case study process.
Nothing brings more joy 😃 than finally doing a showcase of one of our clients. Why?
Because it isn’t usual to have a client who let’s show our work. It’s completely understandable since we live by our NDAs and privilege information safeguards.
But it’s very frustrating when you don’t have real cases to show to future clients. There’s a workaround for this, however.
We’re the team behind the latest rebranding of our sister company, sendXmail. ZOPPLY’s team did the rebranding process, AND they’re under our full-service plan.
So, it’s a great rebranding case study for today and to showcase future results.
But enough talking about us.
Let’s show you the entire process which led us to the final rebranding result.
The Rebranding Process
If you think a rebrand is just changing a few colours, a new logo and a website redesign, you’re missing the most crucial point.
A rebranding should harness your business to be relevant for your present, but most of all, for your future.
When you ask WHY you’re even thinking about a rebrand, that answer usually circles these topics:
- My brand feels dated;
- It feels it doesn’t represent us anymore;
- Our competition seems to have the edge over us;
There are many reasons circling these, but it all comes around the same frame. Your brand seems out of touch with what you represent and what you want it to be to take you to the next level.
Humm, it’s a Redesign, After All.
A rebranding only becomes “real” when you see the changes, which implies a complete redesign of your brand’s logo, images, colours and graphics.
It doesn’t need to be a drastic change. In some cases, it’s not even good to change it completely because you’ll be losing a lot of historic brand identification and recognition.
A brand has immense power and value. Imagine if Coca-Cola decides to change their logo and colours drastically. Imagine if Apple does the same.
It will lose a lot of the brand’s equity in minutes. Why? Because the power of a brand is making it recognisable and transporting values, purposes, stories, and reputation.
There are a lot of studies claiming that brand impacts directly any business for the good and the bad. It’s called brand value.
The redesign needs to foster a bit of the previous brand conceptual design but adapt to what is the direction for the future.
That’s what we tried to do with our sister-company sendXmail. After 11 years in the market, the brand already had some value that we couldn’t dilute entirely.
We kept the exact structure of the X being the main connector between the two words (send & mail), and the original idea of the X styled as an envelope.
Original 
New Rebranding Having said that, it was almost the only thing we kept the same since all the other graphics, colours, fonts and tone of voice changed completely.
Why have we Changed Almost Everything?
Because the audience, branch of services, and the company’s context changed entirely since its birth.
It’s not only an email marketing agency. It’s not only doing email marketing automation sequences.
sendXmail can use several channels besides email to send personalised messages to their clients’ audiences using advanced technology and Artificial Intelligence.
Instead of only working with medium-large companies as they started, it’s now possible to also do it for small companies due to the more democratic access to these technologies availability.
The blue colours, the iconographic style and the slick design on their new website reflect precisely this approach to a more technological and accessible company.
That same approach was transversal to all their web properties, such as social media profiles, landing pages or publications, keeping brand consistency.
New Structure and Usability in Mind
Let’s say that everything changed on their website except the content of their historical articles sharing their knowledge on email marketing and automation.
It was not ONLY a redesign. It was a complete structure revamp from the ground up.
From the homepage to the solutions and products page, everything was new. One big novelty with the new website is the pricing page.
It’s very uncommon for a big-tech service agency to showcase their pricing range out in the open. But sendXmail is now completely transparent on how they do business.
It makes sense for the market to understand what they can expect even before reaching out for their solutions.
This structure also makes sense as an information organisation AND for SEO purposes as well. It’s a neat and easy way to access the entire suite of solutions and products or other key website elements.
Most importantly, it reacts differently depending on which device you’re accessing the website. If you’re on a mobile, some content sections can be pretty useless, so we remove them from the mobile version of the same website. The same happens the other way around.
We tested everything out in several browsers, devices and platforms to ensure accessibility was up to standards.
Privacy and Ethical Concerns
With this new website, sendXmail implemented a series of changes to protect its audience’s privacy.
These changes included a new cookie tracking consent information, visuals and the adoption of GDPR compliant analytics platforms to substitute the usual Google Analytics issues.
It inspired us so much that we applied them on our own website as well.
We also produced an entirely new privacy and cookie policy to comply with the changes. It’s more transparent and complete.
Rebranding Case Study Process
It’s time to share our rebranding process. Maybe you can use this same process for your rebranding as well.
Step 1 – Research
- Quantitative and Qualitative Brand Research.
Step 2 – Analysis
- Strategic Positioning & Company Uniqueness.
Step 3 – Identity
- Brand Identity to Reflect the New Positioning.
Step 4 – Tone of Voice
- Compelling Messaging and Brand’s POV.
Step 1 – Research
It is one of the most critical steps because you need to understand your current brand perception from all stakeholders.
Your collaborators, your clients, your partners, your community, your audience; Everyone has a saying about this, and we need to hear them all.
What is your brand known for? What are you trying to change in that perception?
Also, what do they think could be the next evolution?
What problems do they want to solve in this area?
What brands are they suggesting associated with values similar to what you want to express? It can serve as inspiration as well.
Step 2 – Analysis
It’s time to analyse everything we gathered and find the common points and what you are known for.
Extract all the information and combine it to produce insights. Those insights about your current state of branding will define where you want to go next.
For example, suppose they associate your brand with a corporate bureaucratic style and want to please agile startups and state of mind. In that case, your ideal audience will feel disconnected.
At this point, you define your value proposition, what differentiates your brand from competitors, and what your core competencies are.
Step 3 – Identity
As you may already know, we have a vast list of skilled professionals that supports unique components of our clients’ needs.
It was the case with sendXmail rebranding, which needed the mastery of the same professional who made ZOPPLY’s visual identity as well.
Vitor Caneco is a long time partner for exquisite and genius design, and this was no different. After everything was defined and the briefing delivered, it was time for execution.
And, oh boy, did he deliver.
Every graphic in the following websites and web properties is a declination from the original logo set.
Original 
New Redesign If you pay close attention, even the illustrative graphics have a blue arrow that you can relate to the logo.
It creates coherence and familiarity across all designs.
We also merged that graphical change into the new social media profiles, forums and every communication creative.
Original 
Rebranded Step 4 – Tone of Voice
It doesn’t matter to change your visual identity and keep communicating and producing content as you used to.
To cater to a different audience, you also need to change how your brand communicates or “speaks” as you prefer.
The entire sendXmail web presence changed according to their new way of expression. Lighter, using their audience’s language and words.
Their approach is now more transparent, explaining everything and making it more accessible, even for non-technical people, what they’re doing and why.
sendXmail’s story is now clear and part of their continuous messaging along with their new positioning.
We changed even the tagline to comply with this new approach, as seen in their rebranding explanation.
One of the most significant changes from the previous website was letting their Portuguese version go.
It would only make sense since their target market is primarily international. Their Portuguese version existed just because their founder —which is our founder as well— is Portuguese.
It doesn’t make sense to keep a website presence without any business goal except to keep providing insights to the Portuguese audience.
We are thinking of dropping our Portuguese version as well soon.
Let us know what you think about this new rebranding and what would you do differently.
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