Guide: Create Truly Effective Marketing Emails

Emailing is an exceptionally powerful marketing tool for every stage of the customer journey, from acquisition to loyalty.

With an average ROI of 28.5%, it’s one of the most valuable marketing channels available (source: Monde du Mail). 

This ShopiMind guide will walk you through every aspect of email marketing: its structure, the essential settings, how to optimise for deliverability and its purpose.

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

The Content: What to Talk About in an Email Campaign?

One of the biggest barriers to running email campaigns and newsletters is not knowing what to write.

Don’t worry – your emails don’t need to be long. Today, some social media posts (especially on Instagram) are actually much longer than a typical newsletter. 

To find your message, start by defining your goals: awareness, brand image, conversions, retention, and so on.

Your goals will vary based on segmentation and should address a need – why would this audience want to receive your emails?

It’s only after identifying your objectives that you should start creating your campaign. Each email may include a secondary goal, but should always focus on a single, primary objective.

In other words: don’t run an email campaign just because ‘everyone’s doing it’; do it because it fits into your marketing strategy.

Here’s a list of common objectives, along with content ideas to combine in your email campaigns to achieve them.

Showcase Your Products

• Product category
• ‘Product of the moment’, ‘featured’, ‘of the month’ or ‘seasonal’ picks
• Products from a smart list

Products are the only topic that you must always combine with additional content.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes: you’re unlikely to click an email that says, ‘This is a product. It’s good. Buy it.’ You need a compelling reason to engage.

Boost Conversions or Loyalty with Offers

• Standard promotions and sales
• Loyalty programmes
• Announcing new product launches in advance
• Announcing the return of a highly requested product
• Promotions or products exclusive to subscribers or private sales
• Time-limited offers or deals exclusive to early customers
• Referral programmes, helping you gain new leads along the way

Avoid overwhelming your contacts with offers, and send them only around key dates.

Obvious dates like Christmas, Black Friday or your brand’s anniversary are great, but each industry has its own additional opportunities.

For example, if you sell fish soup, why not run a promotion and associated email campaign for World Oceans Day?

Once again, ensure your offers are tailored to each client’s needs and past purchases.

Achieve this using ShopiMind’s smart product lists.

Become a Source of Inspiration, Build Brand Awareness and Drive Engagement

• Premium products or mystery products
• Your most engaging post on your top social network
• Best posts from your partners or customers on social media
• Your latest e-commerce news
• News about your partners (to encourage them to mention you in return)
• Opportunity to test products with samples
• Competitions
• Your most glowing customer reviews
• Introducing your team or workplace
• Announcing or recapping an event or trade show appearance
• Surveys

For this goal, your customers must feel a genuine connection with your brand. Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to achieve this.

Build a Credible Expert Image

• Blog post, e-book, or white paper
• Webinar announcement
• Offer to help
• Responding to a customer question
• Tutorials on how to use your products
• Tips, advice, or anecdotes from your field 
• Educational section with unusual but true facts
• Customer or influencer testimonials

The Little Extra: If you send a regular newsletter, keep a consistent goal—and thus the same structure—from one email to the next to keep your audience engaged.

The Format: Anatomy of an Email

An email consists of four distinct sections:

Email subject: The subject line displayed in your recipient’s inbox

Example: “Discover our new catalogue”

Sender name: The sender’s display name

Example: “My business”

Sender’s email address: The sender’s email address

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

HTML content: The content displayed when the email is opened 

Each of these components plays a key role in your marketing strategy and in optimizing deliverability. 

There are two steps between your email being received and your contact taking action.

The first step is to motivate the open. This relies on both the subject and sender name. If your recipients never open your emails, all your hard work is wasted.

The second step is to drive customer action. This is driven by your content, and sometimes by recipients double-checking the sender’s email for reassurance.

The First Impression: From Receipt to Opening

Your Email’s Subject Line

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

And before it even reaches their mailbox, the subject line is checked by various filters used by webmail providers and ISPs. This is crucial for your deliverability. 

The subject line is seen as decisive when choosing whether to open an email by most users. Choose it with care to bring your audience into your conversion funnel. 

But remember: grabbing attention and sparking curiosity doesn’t mean breaking all the rules—there are some basic guidelines to follow:

• Use capital letters, emojis, and punctuation very sparingly;
• Clearly state the topic of your content;
• Try personalising the subject line with the recipient’s name or the last product they viewed;
• Where possible, avoid Spam Words like “Free”, “Take advantage”, “Discount”, etc.;
• Stick to a maximum of 100 characters–ideally between 30 and 50;
• Put the most important keyword or the main message at the start. Most emails are read on mobiles or tablets, which only display the opening words. You have just a few characters to grab their attention.

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

Example to avoid: “🤩🎁 BACK TO WORK!!! INCREDIBLE OFFER!!! Take advantage of -20% on ALL your email campaigns 🎁🤩“

The Little Extra: See things from your subscribers’ point of view. Look in your own inbox at the emails that land in spam, those in your main inbox, and those you actually open. You’ll find a source of inspiration for your own subject lines.

Your Sender Name

This setting also affects your marketing strategy and deliverability. There are just four small rules to follow:

• Use a label clearly identifying you (Brand / Business / Association, etc.);
• Don’t exceed 25 characters maximum;

• Don’t use an email address here – that goes in the sender email field;
• Avoid emojis and punctuation unless they’re a core part of your brand name.

Your Sender’s Email Address

The sender’s email address is a key element for strong deliverability.

We strongly recommend you create the address and link it to an inbox so you can check for any replies. 

The username before the @ is important (communication@email.my-business.com), as it reassures users of the sender’s identity and nature of the emails. 

Never use the @ patterns abuse@[…] or postmaster@[…] to send your campaigns.

The domain name should also be clear and instantly identify your brand. For consistency, the email domain (communication@email.my-business.com) should match that of your website.

We strongly recommend creating a subdomain (communication@email.my-business.com) dedicated to sending marketing emails.

Your email reputation depends in part on your domain or subdomain, so this gives you more control.

The Little Extra: If you want to better manage your online reputation for different email marketing programmes, it’s possible to create one subdomain per email type.

E.g.: newsletter.my-business.com for newsletters and info.my-business.com for automated campaigns.

The Content: From Opening to Action

Now, let’s look at what goes inside your email. ShopiMind summarises best practices for crafting top-performing email content that’s optimised for deliverability and engaging your audience. 

When structuring information, present your content by order of importance: start with your main topic, then products, then the secondary topic.For this, use separate sections. Space things out to make navigation easy.

The Text

As with the subject line, avoid overusing Spam Words, emojis, and CAPITALS. 

Personalise your content using smart product lists and popular tags like “Hello {Customer_FirstName}”.

Focus on short, impactful headlines. Your subscribers won’t go hunting for information—it should come directly to them.

Don’t lose sight of the goal of your email, so you don’t get sidetracked. Even if you share blog articles, don’t turn your emails into blog posts. 

A few engaging lines are much more effective than long, detailed paragraphs. Shorter text puts more focus on your visuals and CTAs.

Keep long-form content for your website, and summarise it in your newsletters. These act as a teaser that makes readers want to visit your site.

Links

For every campaign goal, highlight your call to action buttons or visuals (CTAs): sell a product, drive traffic to your site, enter a competition, get feedback on your shop, and more.

Since you’ll usually have one or two goals, there should only be one or two CTAs—no more. If not, reconsider your priorities to keep users focused and avoid diluting clicks.

Additional links can be added to each visual depending on what they illustrate: products, a promotional page, or your main site if it’s just a decorative image or your logo. 

Include your social media links in the footer, and provide a clear unsubscribe link that’s easy to find at both the top and bottom of every email.

This way, you reduce the risk of complaints or negative publicity and meet all UK and EU regulations.

Visuals

The ideal balance for an email campaign is 60% text and 40% visuals. 

Of course, if you’re promoting products, include a photo of each one or the complete pack inside your email. 

Mix up your visuals by adding photos, infographics, and icons to give your design energy.

If your budget or resources allow, include a video. The interactivity of video can boost click-through rates.

However, make sure you keep the same visual identity as your website to provide a consistent customer experience.

The Little Extra: Don’t forget to adapt your email code for deliverability.

ShopiMind’s code automatically meets all best practice deliverability standards. You don’t need to tweak it further.

However, it’s there if you want to insert custom elements or create unusual designs.

Ready? 3… 2… 1… Test!

Always remember to optimise the appearance for maximum impact. We strongly recommend sending test emails to your work or personal address before your campaign goes out.

Feel free to set up multiple test addresses with different email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.).

If your emails end up in spam, test different elements: subject lines, various text sections, images, or links to pinpoint what might be causing issues.

You can also test your emails and get a Deliverability Score using free online tools like Mail Tester. 

Now, it’s over to you!