Email marketing in Tunisia: newsletters and automated sequences

Why invest in email marketing when your customers live on WhatsApp and social media?

Many companies in Tunisia and the Gulf talk to their customers on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Those channels matter, but the audience is rented: an algorithm decides who sees a post, and a page can lose its reach overnight. A consented email list belongs to you. You know who joined, when, and what they care about.

Email is not meant to replace messaging apps. It carries what they handle poorly: a quote that takes weeks to mature, an order left unfinished, content people read twice before deciding. It suits B2B, e-commerce, training providers and exporters particularly well. For a local shop that lives on walk-in trade, WhatsApp Business or SMS is often the more natural channel, and we will tell you so.

Newsletter or automated emails: where should you start?

With automated sequences, in most cases. A newsletter needs a rhythm and a supply of topics; when either runs out, it fades by the third issue. A sequence fires when the contact acts: they have just subscribed, requested a quote or left a basket. That is when intent peaks, and the sequence keeps working every day without anyone having to remember it.

In a B2B cycle, these sequences extend the work of the landing page; our article on building a B2B conversion funnel in Tunisia shows where they fit. The newsletter comes next, once you have something useful to say every month.

How do you build a list that is allowed to receive your emails?

Do not buy one. A purchased list is full of dead addresses, spam traps and people who have never heard of you, and it damages your domain's reputation from the very first send. A list is built through clear forms on your website, sign-ups collected at trade fairs or in store with the person's agreement, and existing customers who have opted in.

The spreadsheets accumulated over the years are not lost. We deduplicate them, remove invalid addresses and often suggest a consent-renewal campaign: those who confirm stay, the rest leave. The list gets smaller and becomes useful. Meanwhile, our work on conversion funnels and CRO improves the forms that bring in new subscribers.

The rules depend on the market: the GDPR and electronic marketing rules in Europe, Tunisia's Organic Law No. 2004-63 on personal data, and Gulf texts such as Saudi Arabia's PDPL. We design forms, consent records and unsubscribe flows accordingly; legal sign-off remains with your own counsel.

Why do your emails end up in spam?

Usually because the sending domain is not authenticated, because the list holds too many invalid addresses, or because recipients no longer remember you. Gmail and Yahoo now require bulk senders to authenticate fully and to offer one-click unsubscribe. No tool can guarantee inbox placement, but the known causes of blocking can be removed.

1. Authenticate the domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and check their alignment with a test send.
2. Send from an address and a name the recipient recognises, with a reply-to address that someone actually reads.
3. Ramp up volume gradually on a new domain or platform.
4. Remove bounces and complaints automatically, then re-engage or remove inactive contacts.
5. Take care of the content: real text rather than a single image, links to your own domain, a visible unsubscribe link.

How do you write emails in Arabic, French and English that display properly?

An email is not a web page: every mail client renders it in its own way, and Arabic adds another layer. Right-to-left direction, alignment, fallback fonts and the placement of numbers must be declared in the template, then tested in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, on mobile first. An Arabic email built as a mirrored copy of the French one reads badly.

We recommend one email per language rather than a message that stacks three versions. Language is chosen at sign-up and stored with the contact, so the subject line, preview text and button arrive in the reader's language. In Tunisia, French dominates in B2B and Arabic returns for consumer audiences; in France, Belgium or Switzerland, French and English are often enough; in the Gulf, a credible brand writes in Arabic from the start, usually with an English version. This know-how comes from our work on multilingual and RTL websites.

Sends are scheduled for the recipient's time zone. Our team works from Sfax in French, English and Arabic; Tunisia sits at UTC+1 all year round, the same time as Paris in winter and three hours behind Dubai.

Which metrics matter now that open rates mean so little?

Open rates have become unreliable: Apple Mail Privacy Protection preloads images, which counts an email nobody read as opened. We keep opens as a deliverability signal, not as a measure of success.

An email is judged on what it triggers (clicks, replies, quote requests, sales) and on what it costs in unsubscribes and complaints. Links are tagged for Google Analytics 4 and, where possible, followed through to the CRM. Our analytics and performance measurement service lays those foundations, and our article on measuring the return on your marketing explains how to read the results without overstating email's share.

Which email platform should you choose, and who owns it?

It depends on your volume, your CRM, your shop and your languages. Brevo suits many French-speaking SMEs, Klaviyo suits online shops that segment by purchase behaviour, and HubSpot suits teams that already manage their contacts there; a self-hosted option is worth discussing when data must stay on your own infrastructure. We also check that the email editor handles Arabic properly.

When the platform needs to talk to an ERP, a CRM or a form it does not support, we connect them with documented n8n automation. Either way, the account is opened in your name: the list, the templates and the sending history stay with you if you change provider.

That is the point of handing email to digital 360 experts. When a sequence produces nothing, the cause sometimes lies in the sign-up page, the form or the tracking, and the same team can fix every link in the chain.

Where do you start?

Gather what you already have: your contact files, the tool you use if there is one, and two or three emails you have already sent. We review them during a free audit, which checks your domain authentication, the state of your list and the first sequence worth building. Pricing is quoted after the audit; engagement formats are set out on the offers page, and the whole practice on the Marketing & growth page.