Email Marketing Trends for 2025: Insights to Elevate Every Send

Trend 1: Privacy-proofing for the long term

Over the past decade, regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have reshaped data privacy standards. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, we can anticipate a wave of similar legislation emerging across the globe (like the European AI Act, which came into force on August 2024).

It’s no longer just about compliance with existing regulations or adapting to privacy-focused features like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). Instead, as privacy concerns continue to evolve, we anticipate to see marketers shift their focus towards the long-term health of their email programs.

This is where privacy-proofing comes in: ensuring that your email program is resilient in the face of future privacy challenges.

What does privacy-proofing look like in practice?

• Proactive collection of zero-party data. This is explicit consent from customers, which can be collected from preference centers or live polls. In contrast to open rates (more on this later), it’s reliable data to glean insights from.
  
• Running confirmation campaigns—like re-permission campaigns and double opt-in (DOI).
  
• Steering away from Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Consider removing PII when possible to protect your subscribers’ sensitive information in case of a security breach. (Instead, use subscriber ID!)
  
• Adopt Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). Make it easy for subscribers to visually verify that the email in their inbox is indeed coming from your brand.

If you’re using AI tools with your email program, consider the following to align your email program use with evolving legal standards:

• Know your AI risk level. Identify your AI tools’ risk classification under the EU AI Act and avoid high-risk applications that could harm user behavior.
• Be transparent. Clearly disclose AI use in your Privacy Policy or email footers, e.g., “We use AI to personalize your email experience for more relevant content.”
• Offer opt-out options. Allow subscribers to manage their preferences, including opting out of AI-driven features if they wish.
• Stay informed. Keep up with evolving AI regulations globally and proactively update your strategies to stay compliant.

Trend 2: Generative AI (GenAI) for content creation and time-savings

Generative AI has made waves in email marketing, especially in content creation. In fact, 34% of email marketers already use AI for copywriting at least occasionally, making it the most common AI-assisted task.

Time-savings is the standout benefit of GenAI. A majority of marketing teams spend two weeks or more to create a single email, from strategy to delivery. This includes everything from copywriting and email design to email segmentation and testing.

GenAI can reduce product cycles and improve email workflows by:

• Brainstorming ideas
• Generating subject line and preview text ideas
• Copywriting and proofreading
• Generating images
• Creating video clips
• Creating an email sequence

Trend 3: Lifecycle email automation

Automation is the backbone of effective lifecycle marketing strategies, enabling marketers to boost engagement while maintaining focus on other key initiatives. 

Creating more email marketing automations has consistently been a top email marketing priority—a trend reinforced year after year by The State of Email survey.

It’s easy to see why: 51% of marketers need two weeks or more to create a single email, and lack of appropriate email team resources is the second largest bottleneck in production. That’s likely why 35% of marketers listed the creation of more automated emails as their top priority—it provides a compelling solution for resource-strapped teams.

Automation isn’t just a time-saver—it’s a way to close gaps in your lifecycle email marketing strategy. By investing upfront to building strategic marketing automations, you free up resources to focus on creativity, strategy, and other high-impact activities down the road.

However, it’s just as important to ensure your automations run smoothly. After all, errors like broken links or missing images can undermine their effectiveness, with 86% of customers abandoning a trusted brand after just two poor experiences.

An email monitoring software like Litmus Email Guardian helps by monitoring your emails 24/7, alerting you to any issues so you can address them before they reach your audience.

Harness the power of email personalization

Discover how to better connect with your audience, deliver tailored content, and drive engagement with email personalization.

Personalize better

Trend 4: Rethinking analytics and data management

The way email marketers measure performance changed forever with the introduction of Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) in September 2021. Long-standing metrics—specifically the open rate—became less reliable, as Apple MPP prevents senders from knowing whether a subscriber opened an email. This led to inflated email opens, unknown open times, and missing geolocation data for Apple users—who make up over half of email client market share.

Faced with these challenges, marketers have had to rethink their approach to email analytics and data management.

Shifting focus from traditional metrics like open rates is no small task. Yet, according to The State of Email Innovations survey, 40% of email marketers still rely on open rates as a primary measure of success.

Why does this reliance persist? Open rates have a long history associated as an email key performance indicator (KPI) for success. Our hunch is that even when marketers understand the limitations of this metric, the perception often remains—across teams, managers, and decision-makers.

But for a more targeted approach, you need to go beyond the basics to thrive in an ever-evolving landscape. Unique click-through rate (CTR) is the second most popular way marketers measure email success, and we expect a shift in the coming months, especially as engagement becomes a key factor in email deliverability. Strong sender credibility, built on engagement, boosts inbox placement for future email campaigns—leading to higher traffic, engagement, and conversions.

This shift requires not only rethinking analytics but also adopting better data management practices. Metrics like CTR, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, revenue per email (RPE), and email marketing ROI, provide a more holistic view of performance, over open rate. To harness these insights effectively, marketers must organize, analyze, and act on their data strategically.

Some key areas of focus:

• Defining reliable KPIs. Shift away from open rates to metrics that are more reliable and align with business goals.
• Centralizing data. Use tools that consolidate performance metrics for easier analysis—like Litmus Email Analytics.
• Acting on insights. Use data to refine segmentation, optimize engagement, and drive conversions.

Trend 5: Email newsletters as a powerful retention tool

Newsletters are one of the most popular tools for keeping subscribers engaged, ranking as the second most-used email type. In fact, 46% of marketers include them as part of their email strategy.

With retention being a top priority for marketers, newsletters are a powerful way to deliver valuable email content and keep your target audience coming back. Here’s why they work so well:

1. They help build relationships. Email newsletters are a great way to show off your brand’s personality, share helpful content, and consistently stay in touch.
2. They keep customers coming back. It’s easy for competitors to copy a product feature, but it’s difficult to replicate how a brand makes a person feel. Content that resonates or provides value help create connection and trust with subscribers.
3. They build trust over time. Most people on your email list aren’t ready to buy right away—based on The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s, only about 5% are at any given time. Newsletters allow you to connect with the other 95%, providing value and staying top of mind until they’re ready to take the next step.

As brands focus more on keeping customers engaged for the long haul, newsletters stand out as an easy and effective way to stay connected. With a little creativity, they can become the heart of your email marketing strategy.

Go beyond opens and clicks

Brands that use Litmus Email Analytics see a 43% higher ROI than those that don’t. See what you’re missing.

Try email analytics

Trend 6: Interactivity in email marketing

Year after year, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for Email seems to make the list of email trends. That’s because at the time it was introduced by Google in 2018, it promised a new era of engaging, interactive email experiences.

While the potential was exciting, the reality has been more complex, leading to slower adoption due to several hurdles:

• Technical complexity. Implementing AMP for Email requires marketers to code a separate MIME part using a different code base than standard HTML. While not overly difficult to learn, this requires additional training and resources.
• Limited ESP support. Only 22% of ESPs have updated their platforms to support sending AMP MIME parts, according to a 2022 survey by the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC).

If AMP for Email isn’t for you, adding interactive content or email elements could be your next best option. Nearly 37% of marketers surveyed for The 2023 State of ESPs Report said interactivity powered by HTML and CSS are a regular part of their email campaigns.

For B2C brands, the case for interactivity is even stronger. Survey results from our latest State of Email Trends found that B2C brands are more than twice as likely as B2B brands to incorporate CSS-based interactivity into their emails, making it an effective tool for engaging your target audience and driving results.

Interactive elements can transform emails into engaging two-way conversations, allowing subscribers to actively participate in their experience.

Tools like Litmus Personalize make it easy to add these engaging features. Compatible with most major ESPs, it offers a range of low-effort, high-impact personalization tools, including:

• Live Polls. Encourage engagement and boost click rates, while allowing subscribers to share their voice. Results update with every open, providing real-time feedback.
• Sentiment Trackers. Make it easy to gather feedback on what your subscribers like (or don’t), with real-time results with each open.
• Scratch-Offs. Build anticipation and spark curiosity with a touch of gamification, turning deal reveals and exciting announcements into engaging user experiences that make every email subscriber feel like a winner.
• Image Carousels. In Litmus Personalize, these are animated GIFs that cycle through static images. Showcase new products or features, build a step-by-step guide for your audience, and more.

Drive engagement with dynamic content

Personalize emails with live polls, personalized images, scratch-offs, and more. No coding experience required. Learn more.

Start a free trial

Trend 7: Enhanced segmentation and cross-functional collaboration

Segmentation is one of the simplest and most effective ways to personalize your email marketing campaigns—and its impact is undeniable. In fact, more than 90% of marketers who responded to our State of Email survey reported that segmentation boosts email performance.

Plus, segmentation is within reach for teams of all sizes; even if you don’t have access to a personalization tool, you can always lean on segmentation as an out-of-the-box way to personalize and drive results. After all, the most effective personalization is based on your audience and the unique segments within it.

“Email segmentation is the simplest way to ensure you’re sending the right message to the right person at the right time. You don’t need any technical skills to create segments of your audience, either. Most—if not all— ESPs will give you that feature out-of-the-box. The only thing you need to decide is what segments you want to create.”

It’s no surprise that email segmentation is the top ranked tactic for boosting performance.

With almost all email service providers (ESPs), segmenting by engagement level—such as targeting users who have opened an email in the past 90 days or clicked a link in the past 7 days—is an easy, foundational tactic that’s widely accessible.

However, as basic segmentation becomes more common, brands are taking a more refined approach by moving toward enhanced segmentation. This goes beyond the basics by tying more granular strategies to specific lifecycle stages, helping marketers deliver even more relevant messages at every point in the customer lifecycle or subscriber journey.

Segmentation can be based on:

• Behavioral data: target segments based on actions like website visits, past purchases, or email interactions (like opens, clicks, and email read rates)
• Engagement level: tailor messaging for highly engaged email subscribers while creating re-engagement strategies for those who have become less active.
• Demographics: optimize email campaigns based on location, age, interests, or preferences.

You can take it up a notch by adding another layer with personalization. For example, Kate Spade combines behavioral data with real-time personalization to create more targeted eCommerce email campaigns.

Source: Guide to Live Polls and Social Proof

Each click in the live poll counted as vote, providing real-time data. 24 hours later, a follow-up email was sent, segmented by vote category. Email subscribers who voted received personalized emails with product recommendations based on their vote, while non-voters received emails featuring best-sellers—an example of thoughtful, enhanced segmentation that covers all bases.

Segmentation shines when there’s alignment across cross-functional teams. That’s because customer retention doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This might look like:

• Getting aligned on KPIs
• Setting up time to talk to other departments—like customer success, sales, or social media—about their goals and challenges
• Plotting out the entire customer experience and multi-channel touch points with other departments to identify gaps
• Regularly sharing email insights and listen to other teams about what they learn

Make this the year you elevate your email program to new heights

Is 2025 the year you give your email marketing the tools it needs to shine? Subscribe to Litmus Weekly for strategies, resources, and the latest know-how from the world of email.