Email Marketing: 10 fundamental pillars for successful campaigns

Year after year, emailing remains one of the most powerful levers in affiliate marketing. Often underestimated in the face of the emergence of new social networks, it remains the king of channels when it comes to return on investment (ROI) and customer engagement.

The strategic role of email in the conversion tunnel

Emailing should not be analyzed in isolation. It plays a catalytic role in the buying journey, often initiating, guiding or triggering the final conversion. It is present in over a third of customer journeys, across all channels.

Its strength lies in its ability to feed and reinforce other acquisition levers:

• Display
• Retargeting
• Native advertising

To fully exploit this potential and move beyond the simple “last click” model, it’s imperative to structure your campaigns around solid technical and marketing fundamentals. Here are the 10 golden rules applied by the experts to guarantee the success of your emailing strategies.

10 best practices for optimizing your emailings

1. Define precise objectives

Before any graphic design, strategy comes first. What is the purpose of your mailing?

• Generate traffic to the site?
• Trigger an immediate purchase?
• Inform or retain? A campaign without a clear objective won’t allow for reliable performance measurement.

You can also consult our article 10 key points for an acquisition emailing.

2. Comply with the RGPD and focus on the quality of the database

Legislation, and in particular the RGPD, is not a constraint but a guarantee of quality. Only send your messages to Internet users who have given their explicit consent(Opt-in). A healthy database is the first vector of success: consent and commitment are the real pillars of your reputation.

3. Secure your deliverability

An e-mail that doesn’t reach the inbox is a wasted investment. Given that a significant proportion of legitimate emails can be filtered as spam or “graymail” (non-priority mail), technical optimization is crucial:

• Authenticate your sending domains.
• Manage bounces (wrong addresses) rigorously.
• Monitor your reputation with ISPs.

4. Use Data to target

Mass mailing is obsolete. Use your data to segment your audience. Behavioral or predictive targeting makes it possible to address the right message to the right segment, mechanically increasing open and conversion rates.

5. Integrate dynamic content

Personalization doesn’t stop at the recipient’s first name. To engage the user, content must adapt to their immediate context at the moment of opening. Use dynamic fields based on :

• Geolocation.
• Local weather.
• Purchase history or real-time inventory.

6. Think “Mobile First” and Responsive Design

Your email will be consulted on a multitude of media: smartphone on the move, tablet in the evening, computer in the office. It’s imperative to create emails in Responsive Design, which automatically adapts to the size of the screen. A degraded reading experience on mobile often leads to immediate unsubscribing.

7. Anticipate image blocking

Many messaging services block the display of images by default. To counter this :

• Always fill ALT tags with attractive descriptions.
• Maintain a balanced ratio (around 60% text to 40% images) so that the main message remains legible even without visuals.

8. Take care with your calls to action (CTA)

The action button is the tipping point towards conversion. Avoid generic terms like “Click here”. Favour engaging action verbs (“I discover”, “I take advantage”). The color, size and positioning of the CTA should be tested to maximize the click-through rate.

9. Adopt a culture of Test & Learn (A/B Testing)

Don’t just rely on your intuition. A/B testing is essential for the ongoing optimization of your campaigns. Test one variable at a time:

• The subject of the email.
• The design or layout of the elements.
• Time and day of sending. It’s the only scientific way to understand what resonates with your audience.

10. Analyze and iterate

Digital marketing is constantly evolving. Systematically analyze your campaign statistics (opening rates, clicks, reactivity, unsubscribes). This data must guide your future strategy to maintain the relevance of your mailings and optimize your ROI over the long term.

Get expert support

Email marketing requires both technical and creative expertise. If you’d like to audit your practices or delegate the management of your campaigns, Effinity can put its know-how at your service: from the design of responsive templates to the fine analysis of results, via deliverability optimization.

Contact our dedicated team to turn your emails into a real growth driver.

Mis à jour le 22 December 2025