Email marketing trends in 2025
It is estimated that three billion emails are sent out every second with every single inbox in the world receiving an average of 120 emails per day.
A large proportion of this deluge comes from marketers using email marketing platforms and content creation tools to spam their customer lists with automated emails.
This may have increased reach and engagement rates over the last few years, but in 2025 we expect email marketing trends to shift away from traditional passive communication to more personal, interactive, optimised and gamified engagement.
Here are seven trends and developments in email marketing to watch out for in 2025.
1. Personal not personalisation for better metrics
An early trend that powered the effectiveness of email marketing was personalisation. This refers to standardised communications that included the insertion of a recipients’ personal details into the email along with a few other learned preferences and behaviours.
Email marketing platforms made it possible for content marketing companies to configure responses (bots) that appeared smart and personal. However, analytics are showing that open rates, engagement and click-through rates are decreasing as consumers suffer bot fatigue.
In 2025, it is expected that AI will become sophisticated enough to take email content from personalised to personal by generating hyper-targeted content based on user behaviour, preferences and predictive analytics. Considerations for 2025 include:
- Email interactions should be conversations, not just one-way communication.
- People respond better to perceived ‘human’ interactions.
- Small businesses are best placed to create trusted email interactions with targeted digital marketing copy given their smaller customer base.
- Optimising the email “From” name is important. Truelist research shows that 68% of Americans decide whether to open an email based on the recognisability of the “From” name, as highlighted by data on both desktop and mobile email usage.
2. Interactive content increases engagement
Another trend expected in 2025 is the use of interactive content in emails. Emails will increasingly incorporate interactive elements such as polls, quizzes and dynamic content that change based on real-time user interactions. This trend aims to boost engagement and capture more data about subscribers’ preferences. Examples of interactive content in emails include:- Hover effects where subscribers are able move their mouse over content to see completely different content in real-time.
- Emails designed to emulate web pages. These will include engaging content, interactive menus and navigation inside the email.
- Podcast episodes or video content embedded in emails to engage recipients.
- Buttons that link to related material or incorporate interactive images and infographics to display curated content within the email.
3. Gamification for community development
Gamifying emails is another 2025 trend that is expected to change the nature of email marketing. Experts understand that gamification creates stickiness and deep engagement between the company and the subscriber, as well as between subscribers.
Types of gamification include community challenges, point and reward systems and even contests between subscribers to increase interaction and incentivise user participation. Gamified activities could include:
- Opening streaks where subscribers are rewarded with a badge for opening their emails consistently.
- Rankings for subscribers who have clicked the most links in the last week.
- Creative writing contests for best responses to emails judged by content specialists like Hunter & Scribe.
4. Mobile optimisation for higher impact
Most email activity now occurs on mobile devices and 70% of customers delete emails that don’t display properly on their phones, according to Hurrdat Marketing. More importantly, mobile emails have a 65% higher likelihood of bringing customers to your website, according to Truelist, making mobile optimisation essential for retaining audiences in 2025. Things to consider when optimising email campaigns in 2025 for mobile:- 15% of email users will unsubscribe if emails are not properly optimised.
- Desktops display around 60 characters of a subject line, while mobile devices show between 25 and 30 characters. Good copywriting will ensure optimised subject lines.
- To maximise impact, place essential information at the start of the subject line.
- When planning an email campaign, alongside choosing a tool, you should consider subject line length to ensure the message is clear for both mobile and desktop audiences.
5. Tighter privacy laws may increase trust in marketing emails
With the increase in personal data being uploaded online, data privacy has become a grave concern for property and finance businesses throughout Australia. Changes like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection update reflect this shift by allowing users to mask their IP and email addresses, as well as block companies from tracking email open rates.
This trend toward greater customer control is influencing how marketing channels operate, with email now gaining more trust and acceptance from consumers, outpacing social media and banner ads by as much as 108%, according to Forbes.
Although the new privacy measures affect the ability to track open rates, you can still evaluate the success of email campaigns and writing techniques using other metrics, such as website traffic, conversions, click-through rates and the ratio of unsubscribe to subscribe rates. These indicators provide insight into campaign effectiveness without relying solely on open rates.
6. Inbound marketing likely to overtake outbound advertising
Advertising fatigue has become a serious impediment to the effectiveness of outbound marketing. Add to that the recent changes in Google’s search algorithms, privacy lawsuits and a host of other fundamental changes to the digital marketing landscape.
In 2025, it is expected that there will be a major shift towards inbound marketing. This represents an opportunity to focus email marketing efforts on middle-of-funnel activities with a heavier emphasis on conversions and sales. A content writing company like Hunter & Scribe specialises in newsletter content and article writing services to extract value from your inbound marketing strategy.
7. Other email marketing trends to look out for in 2025
- Purposeful newsletters: Newsletters are evolving to provide more value-driven content like educational information or industry insights, rather than solely promoting products. This strategy is designed to build long-term customer relationships.
- Metrics beyond open rates: Due to changes in privacy policies, traditional metrics like open rates are becoming less reliable. Businesses will likely focus towards more meaningful metrics like click-through rates and conversions in 2025.
- 51 seconds per newsletter: Studies show that we process images 60,000 times faster than text. This may be why the average person spends less than a minute reading a newsletter. In 2025, we may see a trend towards more visual emails and highly targeted and concise content writing.
