Best practices for marketing newsletters

A marketing newsletter is an extremely effective marketing tool at every stage of the customer journey.

Its return on investment of 28.5% makes it one of the most valuable marketing channels (source: Monde du Mail).

So, what are the secrets to structuring, setting up and optimising a marketing newsletter for your e-commerce marketing strategy?

Effective themes for your newsletters

Start by defining your goals. They should answer this question: why would this segment of your audience want to receive your newsletters?

Every newsletter can have a secondary objective, but it should focus on a single main objective.

Showcase your products

Mix your products with additional content to justify the email and give your audience extra motivation.

Examples : Product category or featured product ‘of the moment’, ‘in the spotlight’, ‘of the month’, ‘seasonal’, from a smart list, …

Example of a newsletter campaign by Lyst

Convert or build loyalty with your offers

Share your offers on key dates such as Christmas, Black Friday or your brand anniversary. Use smart product lists to suggest products that match each customer’s preferences.

Examples : Promotions, sales, loyalty or referral programme, new or back-in-stock star product, private sale, …

Example of a newsletter campaign by Yves Rocher

Build brand awareness and boost engagement

For this goal, use your storytelling to create and strengthen your connection with customers.

Examples : Premium or mystery product, samples, contests, surveys, engaging social media posts, top contributions from your partners or customers, news from your e-commerce or partners, customer reviews, team and workspace, …

Build a credible image of expertise

If you send a regular newsletter, keep the same structure to avoid confusing your readers.

Examples : Blog post, e-book, white paper, webinar, tutorials, support offers, answers to your customers, industry anecdotes, informative sections, customer or influencer testimonials, …

What your newsletter contains

A newsletter consists of four distinct elements:

1. Email subject line : “Discover our new catalogue”
2. Sender name or sender label: “My business”
3. Sender email address: “communication@email.my-business.com”
4. HTML content: The content your recipient sees when they open the email

Between your email being delivered and your recipient taking action, there are two steps:

Encourage opening with a compelling subject line and sender name. If your recipients don’t open your newsletter, all your hard work is wasted.

Prompt your customers to act through relevant content and a trustworthy sender email address, which recipients may check for reassurance.

Encourage opens

The subject line

The subject line is the first thing your customers see, after spam filters.

Take a look at your own inbox at the emails that land in spam or your inbox, and those you actually open. The latter usually follow these best practices:

• Avoid excessive capitals, emojis, punctuation and Spam Words (“Free”, “Enjoy”, “Discount”,…) ;

• A clearly communicated subject in 30–50 characters, with 100 characters maximum ;
• The most important keyword or main information at the start — especially important as most people check emails on their phones ;
• A personalised subject line can sometimes help.

Example of an effective subject line: “Christmas offer: 40% off your ShopiMind Newsletters 🎁“

Example of a subject to avoid: “🤩🎁 CHRISTMAS!!! AMAZING DEAL!!! Enjoy 20% off ALL your email campaigns 🎁🤩“

Your sender name

There are three key rules for your sender name:

• Use a label that makes you easy to recognise (your brand name) ;
• Stick to a maximum of 25 characters ;
• Avoid email addresses, emojis and punctuation unless they’re a core part of your brand name.

Your sender email address

Create your address and link it to a mailbox by following these two rules:

• Pattern before the @: Reassures users about the sender’s identity and the type of emails: communication@email.my-business.com ;
• Domain name: Makes it easy to recognise your website: communication@email.my-business.com ;

Sub-domain: Lets you control your deliverability reputation: communication@email.my-business.com.

Your timing

For maximum impact, pick the days of the week with the highest open rates. Stick to these days to establish a consistent schedule and get your contacts into the habit of reading your emails.

Feel free to use the “perfect timing” feature to send emails throughout the day, based on your contacts’ usual open times.

Encourage your customers to take action

Start by ordering your content, putting information in order of importance in separate, clear blocks: your main subject first, followed by products and then your secondary point.

Text

Just like with subject lines, avoid overusing Spam Words, emojis and capital letters.

Personalise your content using smart product lists and variables like “Hello {FirstName_customer}”.

Favour short, punchy headings and copy. A few impactful lines are far more effective than a lengthy paragraph.

To find out more about spam words & discover all our deliverability tips, check out our article “Email deliverability: technical optimisation checklist“.

Example of a newsletter campaign by Petit Bâteau

Links

For each goal, spotlight your Call to Action buttons or visuals (CTAs), keeping it to a maximum of two to avoid scattering clicks.

Additional links can be added to every visual—whether that’s a product, a promo page or your logo.

Add your social media links to the footer and an easy-to-find unsubscribe link at the top or bottom of every newsletter.

Visuals

The optimal ratio, widely considered a best practice for designing newsletters, is 60% text and 40% visuals.

You can mix visual types (photo, infographic, icons, video, etc.), but always keep the same visual identity as your e-commerce site.

Conclusion

You now have all the essentials to run winning newsletter campaigns!

But before you send a newsletter to your full list, remember to test it with different email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, …).

If your newsletter goes to spam, test different sections of your content to identify what might be getting blocked.

Finally, don’t hesitate to try A/B testing. Send two different designs to a small portion of your mailing list, compare the results, and optimise your campaign based on what works best.

Now it’s your turn!