Category: Email Marketing

Email marketing remained one of the most reliable channels for businesses in 2025, but it also became a more disciplined and less forgiving channel. While the core principles of email marketing stayed the same, the expectations of inbox providers and subscribers continued to rise. Brands that relied on outdated habits struggled to maintain engagement, while those that focused on relevance, consistency, and respect for their audience were rewarded with stronger performance.

As inboxes became more crowded, simply sending an email no longer guaranteed it would be seen. Inbox providers, such as Gmail, paid closer attention to how people interacted with messages. Engagement signals played a larger role in deciding which emails reached the inbox and which did not, pushing marketers to think beyond volume and focus on long-term value.

7 Email Marketing Insights from 2025 to Carry Into 2026

Below are seven key lessons email marketers learned in 2025 and why they matter heading into 2026.

1. Deliverability Became the Foundation

In 2025, deliverability was no longer something marketers could treat as an afterthought. Inbox placement depended heavily on sender reputation, list quality, and consistent engagement. Issues like poor authentication, spam complaints, and inactive subscribers quickly hurt visibility and influenced whether future emails landed in customers’ inboxes or were sent to spam. Brands that monitored these factors closely were able to maintain steady inbox access, while repeated mistakes made recovery harder.

2. Engagement Mattered More Than Opens

Open rates became less reliable as a primary measure of success in 2025. Privacy changes and filtering made it harder to know when an email was truly read. As a result, email marketers shifted their focus to actions that mattered more, such as clicks, conversions, and revenue. This change encouraged teams to connect email performance to real business outcomes, leading to clearer insights and better decision-making.

3. Sending Less Often Produced Better Results

Many brands discovered that sending fewer emails improved performance. Over-sending led to fatigue, unsubscribes, and lower engagement. Slowing down allowed email marketers to be more intentional with their messaging, leading to emails being delivered with a clearer purpose and more value. By prioritizing relevance over frequency, brands were able to build stronger relationships with subscribers.

4. Automation Continued to Drive Consistent Value

Automated emails remained one of the most dependable parts of an email marketing program in 2025. Messages like welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups reached customers at the right time thanks to thoughtful segmentation and customer analytics. Although they were automated, these types of emails often felt more relevant to recipients because they were triggered by behavior. Over time, many brands came to see that they generated engagement and revenue with minimal effort.

5. Segmentation Outperformed Basic Personalization

Using a customer’s name alone was no longer enough to make an email feel personal. In 2025, segmentation that was based on behavior, lifecycle stage, or interests delivered better results. Timing and context mattered more than surface-level personalization. When emails met customers where they were in their journey, campaigns felt useful instead of intrusive. This helped brands send content that matched real needs.

6. AI Became a Practical Support Tool

AI became more useful and accessible in 2025. Many teams used ChatGPT or Google Gemini to speed up tasks like copywriting, image creation, or generating ideas. As a result, email marketers could move faster and stay productive. However, strong results still depended on human judgment and interpretation, showing that AI worked best as a support tool, not a replacement for experience.

7. More Text, Less Imagery

The most effective emails in 2025 sounded natural and approachable. Simple language and clear offers resonated more with subscribers than over-designed emails. Email templates with heavy use of images proved to be less effective because they loaded slowly, struggled in dark mode, and created accessibility issues for screen readers. Text-forward designs were easier to read, more searchable, and more reliable across devices.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As email marketing moves into 2026, success will depend on relevance, consistency, and respect for the inbox. Brands that focus their email marketing strategy on engagement, thoughtful automation, and clear messaging will be better positioned to succeed.

Email is not becoming less effective; it’s becoming more disciplined. For businesses willing to adapt, that shift creates massive opportunities in the year ahead. Read my previous blog, Top 10 Reasons to Hire an Agency for Your Business’s Email Marketing. 

Email marketing is one of the best ways for small and mid-sized businesses to reach customers, build loyalty, and increase sales; however, many companies struggle to make the most of their email programs. Too often, messages are sent using a “batch and blast” approach, where everyone receives the same email without testing or personalization. This one-size-fits-all method limits engagement and misses valuable opportunities to connect. Partnering with an experienced email marketing agency can change that. Below are ten reasons why hiring an agency can help your business save time, increase revenue, and create emails that truly connect with your audience.

1. Email Marketing Strategy

The success of an email program begins with strategy. Many small businesses take a reactive approach to email marketing, sending campaigns only when there’s a sale or announcement. A good email marketing agency, on the other hand, will help you develop structured plans that align with your business goals. They will help you identify who you’re trying to reach, what messages will resonate, and when to deliver them. This ensures that every email serves a specific purpose, whether it’s building awareness, driving conversions, or nurturing customer relationships.

2. Email Marketing Best Practices

Email marketing platforms, such as Klaviyo, Constant Contact, and Mailchimp, offer advanced tools perfect for small and mid-sized businesses, but they can be complex to manage, especially without experience. An email marketing agency uses these platforms daily and knows how to set them up correctly from the start. They understand how to improve deliverability, manage segments, and avoid common technical mistakes that lead to lower engagement. They also stay abreast of current industry trends and rapidly changing privacy laws. With professional oversight, you can be confident that your emails are following best practices and reaching customer inboxes.

3. Professional Design and Copywriting

Great emails combine thoughtful design with creative and engaging messaging. Email marketing agencies have copywriters and designers with many years of experience to create polished emails that reflect your brand, resonate with your customers, and clearly communicate your value. Well-written subject lines, engaging visuals, and consistent tone all work together to make your emails stand out. For small businesses that want to appear more professional and trustworthy, an agency’s creative expertise can make a noticeable difference in how customers perceive your brand. Read Rachel Kallison’s blog post, Bridging the Content Marketing Gap: How SEO & Email Marketing Can Work Together to learn more.

4. Marketing Automation

Automation is one of the biggest advantages of email marketing. It allows you to communicate with customers automatically based on their behavior and preferences. An experienced email marketing agency can design and implement automation flows, such as welcome series, abandoned cart flows, and post-purchase follow-ups. These systems nurture relationships and generate sales without requiring daily management. Once built, automations continue running in the background, ensuring customers receive timely and relevant communication. Over time, this approach creates a steady stream of engagement and revenue that grows as your audience expands.

5. Advanced Segmentation and Personalization

Consumers expect personalized communication. Sending the same message to everyone rarely gets good results. An experienced email marketing agency can use your customers’ historical data to divide your audience into meaningful segments based on behavior, purchases, or demographics. Then they can craft tailored messages for each group, so every subscriber receives content that feels relevant. Personalization can include anything from product recommendations to location-based offers to including the customer’s first name in the salutation. The more your emails reflect your customers’ interests, the more likely they are to engage, which ultimately leads to stronger results.

6. Continuous Testing and Optimization

Successful email marketing is built on constant testing and improvement. A good email marketing agency regularly A/B tests subject lines, visuals, copy, and send times to see what performs best. These tests provide valuable insights that can be applied to future campaigns. Instead of relying on assumptions, experienced agencies make data-driven adjustments to improve open rates, click rates, and conversions. This ongoing refinement ensures that your email program isn’t stagnant, but continues to evolve. Over time, testing and optimization become key drivers of higher customer engagement and stronger ROI. Ensure your emails are engaging, as Google recently rolled out its Manage Subscriptions feature, making it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe with one click. 

7. Data-Driven Reporting and Analysis

Understanding what’s working and what’s not is essential for improving results. A good email marketing agency will provide clear, data-driven reports that go beyond basic open and click metrics to help you see the true impact of your email program. These insights allow you to make informed business decisions, such as which products to feature or which audience segments to prioritize. Transparent reporting also means you always know the return on your investment, making data a tool to measure success and business growth.

8. Time Savings

Running a business already requires attention to countless tasks. Adding email marketing to that list can easily become overwhelming. By partnering with an experienced email marketing agency, you get a service dedicated to handling every detail – from campaign planning and scheduling, to email design, execution, and reporting. This ensures your emails go out consistently and on time, maintaining regular contact with your audience. 

9. Fresh Perspectives

An outside perspective often leads to new ideas. Experienced email marketing agencies have worked across many different brands and industries. They can identify opportunities that you may overlook, such as new content themes, design approaches, or campaign concepts. Their familiarity with different industries also helps them recognize emerging trends and best practices. This infusion of creativity and perspective helps keep your email content fresh and engaging, which can help your customers stay interested and connected to your brand.

10. Growth and Scalability

The best email marketing programs are built to grow over time. A good email marketing agency will help you develop scalable systems that evolve with your business. As your audience grows, they can adjust automations, refine segmentation, and introduce new strategies that match your changing goals. They monitor long-term performance and identify ways to strengthen your customer relationships year after year. The result is an email program that becomes more efficient and profitable over time.

The Bottom Line: Why an Email Agency Is Worth It

Hiring an experienced email marketing agency gives small and mid-sized businesses a major advantage. An agency can provide structure, expertise, and consistency while freeing you to focus on running your business. Most importantly, it helps you communicate more effectively with your customers.

With a solid strategy, ongoing testing, and continuous optimization, your emails will not only perform better but also provide real value to your audience. For any small or medium-sized business looking to turn email into a dependable driver of growth, partnering with a digital marketing agency with an exceptional email marketing service is one of the best investments that can be made. 

In July 2025, Google quietly rolled out a new feature in Gmail. Located at the bottom of the folders and labels in the sidebar menu on desktop (or hamburger menu on mobile) is a tab called “Manage Subscriptions.” Despite its innocuous looks, this tab has the ability to be a game-changer when it comes to how Gmail’s customers interact with email marketing.

How the Gmail Manage Subscriptions Tab Works

The “Manage Subscriptions” tab instantly gives customers the ability to see all the brands sending them messages, and the frequency at which they receive messages. Most importantly, it gives subscribers the ability to unsubscribe from a brand’s email program with a few simple clicks without the need to find it in the inbox or open an email and hunt around for an unsubscribe link.

For consumers, this makes inbox management easier than ever. For email marketers, however, it’s a wake-up call.

Why People Unsubscribe from Emails

People don’t usually opt out of emails on a whim. They usually make that decision when they perceive the content they are receiving is irrelevant, when they feel overwhelmed by receiving too many emails, or when messages consistently fail to provide value. In the past, unsubscribing often required scrolling through an email to find a link hidden at the bottom of the message. Now with Gmail’s new “Manage Subscriptions” tab, unsubscribing becomes even easier. This means recipients are more likely to regularly opt out from brands whose email programs don’t resonate with them. Simply put, if your messages fail to provide a clear benefit, subscribers can now remove you from their inbox with minimal effort.

How the Manage Subscriptions Tab Raises the Bar for Email Marketing

With Gmail helping customers maintain clean inboxes by giving them clear visibility into the frequency with which they are receiving emails, email marketers will be forced to elevate their standards to stay relevant. The message for marketers here is actually quite simple: email campaigns need to consistently demonstrate value. But how? Below are five ways email marketers can provide value to their subscribers:

1. Prioritize personalization and segmentation. Gone are the days of the “batch-and-blast” and “set-it-and-forget-it” email campaign. Generic, one-size-fits-all messages no longer have a place in the inbox. Instead, customer data needs to be used to create personalized messages that speak directly to an individual’s interests and behavior.
2. Evaluate the cadence of your emails. Sending too many emails risks overwhelming subscribers, while sending infrequently may cause them to lose interest and disengage. Finding the right balance requires careful testing and data analysis. 
3. Ensure every email you send has a purpose. Whether the goal is to educate, entertain, inspire, or solve a problem, each email needs to deliver something meaningful to the recipient. If you can’t quickly identify the value of an email campaign you’re sending, you should probably reconsider sending it.
4. Maintain proper list hygiene. Regularly removing inactive or unengaged contacts ensures email campaigns reach people who actually want to receive them. Higher engagement not only improves performance but also signals to Gmail that your messages aren’t spam. If members of your customer lists aren’t opening emails at least once in the last six months, it might be time to move on.
5. Offer flexibility. Receiving emails doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing situation. Creating a preference center is a great way for recipients to adjust the frequency of emails or select topics of interest. This can allow them to stay connected on their own terms, instead of completely opting out.

A New Era of Email Marketing

The launch of the Gmail “Manage Subscriptions” tab will help to usher in a new era of email marketing, one that sees fewer irrelevant emails and cleaner inboxes. Its presence reinforces an important truth: email marketers who send irrelevant or low-value content will quickly find themselves unsubscribed from.

For email marketers, this update should be seen as an opportunity rather than a setback. By focusing on relevance, personalization, and value, email marketers can not only retain their place in customers’ inboxes but also strengthen the overall consumer experience. This will ultimately lead to what every company wants – brand loyalty, retention, and stronger relationships with their customers.