Guide: Create Truly Effective Marketing Emails

Email marketing is an incredibly effective marketing tool for every stage of the customer journey, from acquisition to loyalty.

With an average ROI of 28.5%, it remains one of the most important marketing channels (source: Monde du Mail).

In this ShopiMind guide, we’ll cover every aspect of email marketing: its structure, key settings, how to optimize for better deliverability, and ensuring each campaign has a clear goal.

Let’s start by reviewing the topics you can feature in marketing emails or newsletters.

Content: What to talk about in your email marketing?

One of the most common obstacles to sending newsletters and email marketing campaigns is not knowing what to say.

Don’t worry—emails don’t need to be long. Some social posts, like on Instagram, are often longer than many newsletters today.

To decide what to share, start by defining your goals: brand awareness, brand image, conversion, retention, and more.

These goals may vary depending on your segmentation, but must meet a need: why would this target audience want to receive your emails?

Only once you’ve identified your objectives should you move on to execution. Each email can feature a secondary objective, but always stick to a single primary goal.

In short: Don’t start an email campaign just because “everyone else does”—do it because it fits your marketing strategy.

Here’s a list of common email objectives and topics to combine in your campaigns to achieve them.

Showcase Your Products

• Product category
• Featured, trending, monthly, or seasonal product
• Smart list products

Product highlights must always be combined with additional content.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: you wouldn’t click on an email that simply says “This is a product. It’s good. Buy it.” You need to offer more motivation.

Convert or Retain Customers with Your Offers

• Standard promotions and sales
• Loyalty program
• Exclusive announcement of a new product release
• Back-in-stock announcement for high-demand products
• Announcement of products or offers exclusive to subscribers, or a private sale
• Flash promotion or limited offers for early shoppers
• Referral program to gain new leads

Don’t overwhelm your audience with too many offers. Share promotions only on key dates.

Popular periods like Christmas, Black Friday, or your brand anniversary are obvious choices, but every industry has its own unique dates too.

For example, if you sell fish soup, consider launching a promotion—and a matching email campaign—for World Oceans Day.

Again, make sure the products are relevant to your customers’ needs and recent purchases.

Use smart product lists in your ShopiMind editor to do this.

Inspire, Build Awareness, and Drive Engagement

• Premium product or mystery item
• Your most engaging post on your top social network
• Top posts from partners or customers on social media
• Latest news about your e-commerce
• Partner news (to encourage reciprocal sharing)
• Sample product trials
• Competitions or giveaways
• Outstanding customer testimonials
• Meet your team or showcase your offices
• Announcements or recaps of event or tradeshow participation
• Surveys

To achieve this, it’s essential that your clients feel connected with your brand. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to do this.

Establish Yourself as a Trusted Expert

• Blog post, e-book, or white paper
• Webinar announcement
• Support or helpful advice
• Answers to questions from your customers
• Product tutorials
• Tips, insights, or interesting anecdotes about your business
• Fun-fact or educational features with surprising but true info
• Customer or influencer experience stories

Pro Tip: If you send a regular newsletter, stick to the same goal and therefore the same structure each time, to keep your readers engaged.

Format: The Anatomy of an Email

An email is made up of four distinct sections:

Email subject line: The topic your readers see in their inbox

Example: “Discover our new catalog”)

Sender name: This is the name shown to identify the sender

Example: “My Company”

Sender email address: The sender’s reply-to address

Example: “communication@email.my-company.com”

HTML content: What’s displayed when your email is opened 

How you choose each element plays a vital role in your marketing strategy and improves your deliverability.

Between your email landing in the inbox and your recipient taking action, there are two main steps.

The first is to motivate email opens. This relies on the subject line and sender name. If people don’t open your email, none of your other efforts matter.

The second step moves your audience to take action. This is driven by your content and sometimes by recipients checking the sender’s address for reassurance.

First Impressions: From Delivery to Open

Your Email Subject

The subject line is the first thing your customers see in their inbox.

And even before reaching their inbox, your subject is screened by various filters on webmail services and ISPs. It’s a crucial factor for your deliverability.

The subject is considered critical to whether or not people open your email. Choose it carefully to draw recipients into your conversion journey.

However, grabbing attention and sparking curiosity doesn’t mean you can do just anything — follow these key rules:

• Use capitalization, emojis, and punctuation with extreme restraint;
• Clearly state the main topic of your content;
• Try personalizing the subject with the recipient’s name or their most recently viewed product;
• Avoid using spam trigger words where possible, such as “Free,” “Take advantage,” “Discount,” etc.;
• Stick to a maximum of 100 characters—ideally keep your subject between 30 and 50 characters;
• Put the main keyword or most important information first. Most emails are read on phones today, and some on tablets—these devices only show the first few words of your subject, so you have limited space to grab attention.

Example of an effective subject: “Back-to-school Offer: 20% off your ShopiMind Newsletters 🎁“

Example of a subject to avoid: “🤩🎁 BACK TO SCHOOL!!! UNBELIEVABLE DEAL!!! Get 20% off ALL your email campaigns 🎁🤩“

Pro Tip: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Check your own inbox—note which emails hit the spam folder, which land in your inbox, and which you actually open. You’ll find lots of inspiration for writing your own subject lines.

Your Sender Name

This also affects your marketing strategy and deliverability. Follow these 4 simple rules:

• Use a sender name that is clearly recognizable (Brand / Company / Organization, etc.);
• Stay within 25 characters max;

• Don’t use an email address as sender name—that belongs in the sender email address field;
• No emojis or punctuation unless it’s an essential part of your brand name.

Your Sender Email

The sender email address is a key element for deliverability.

We strongly recommend creating the address and linking it to a real inbox so you can catch any replies.

Pay careful attention to the pattern before the @ (communication@email.my-company.com) as it can reassure the recipient about who the sender is and what emails to expect.

Never use abuse@[…] or postmaster@[…] addresses for sending your campaigns.

The domain should also be clear and immediately recognizable as yours. For consistency, the email domain (communication@email.my-company.com) should match your website.

We strongly suggest creating a dedicated subdomain (communication@email.my-company.com) exclusively for your marketing emails.

Your email sender reputation is partly built on your domain or subdomain—manage it for better control.

Pro Tip: If you want to manage your sender reputation for different email programs, you can create a separate subdomain for each type of message.

For example: newsletter.my-company.com for newsletters, and info.my-company.com for automated scenarios.

Content: From Open to Action

Now, let’s focus on your email contents. ShopiMind sums up the golden rules for creating top-performing email content designed to boost both deliverability and audience engagement.

To organize information, always arrange content by importance: lead with your main topic, then present products, then any secondary message. In this case, use multiple content blocks. Space out your email well for easier visual browsing.

Text

Just like with the subject line, avoid overusing Spam Words, emojis, or ALL CAPS.

Personalize your emails with smart product lists and common tags such as “Hello {Customer_FirstName}”.

Use short and catchy headlines. Your readers won’t go searching for information—bring it straight to them.

Stay focused on your goal so your email doesn’t lose direction. Even if you share blog articles, don’t turn your emails into full posts.

A few impactful lines are far better than a lengthy paragraph. Plus, shorter text lets your visuals and CTAs shine.

Keep longer content for your website and summarize it in your newsletters. Think of these as teasers to encourage readers to visit your site.

Links

For each goal, highlight your CTA buttons or visuals (Call to Action): sell a product, redirect to your site, invite recipients to a contest, collect feedback, and more.

If you’ve chosen just one or two objectives, you should have one or two CTAs, no more. If you have too many, refine your priorities so you don’t dilute clicks and attention.

Additional links can be added to each visual depending on what they represent: products, a promo page, or your main site for decorative images or logos.

Include your social media links in the footer and a clearly visible unsubscribe link at both the top and bottom of every email.

Doing this reduces the chance of complaints or bad publicity, and keeps you compliant with French and European law.

Visuals

For best results, aim for 60% text and 40% visuals in your emails.

Of course, if you’re highlighting products, feature photos of each one or of the full package in your email.

Mix up your visuals: from photos and infographics to icons that energize your design.

If your budget allows, add a video—this media’s interactivity increases email click rates.

Make sure you maintain the same visual identity as your website to ensure a seamless customer journey.

Pro Tip: Don’t forget to adapt your code for deliverability.

The code generated in ShopiMind follows all deliverability best practices. No extra work needed.

However, you can still access it if you want to add custom components or experiment with unique designs.

Ready? 3… 2… 1… Test!

Always remember to optimize how your email displays for the best impression. We strongly recommend sending yourself test emails to a professional or personal address before your final send.

Don’t hesitate to set up multiple test email addresses with different email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.).

If your email mostly lands in spam, test different sections of your content—try changing the subject, the wording, the images, or links, to find any issues.

You can also check your email and get a Deliverability Score using free online tools such as Mail Tester.

Now it’s your turn!