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Roughly 10 billion emails are sent daily in the US. While some are personal, many of them are promotional. Just take a quick look at your own inbox. There’s probably a handful of messages from friends mixed in with a flood of automated emails from websites you’ve interacted with.

Looking ahead to 2025, the inbox will be more competitive than ever, and standing out will require more than a catchy subject line. You will have to use the latest strategies to deliver value, build trust, and create meaningful connections.

In this article, we’ll dive into the email marketing trends emerging this year. And we’ve backed them with actionable strategies you can use to drive growth and keep your audience coming back for more. Let’s explore what 2025 has in store.

Contents

  1. AI-powered predictive personalization
  2. Voice-activated email integration
  3. Next-gen interactivity
  4. Sustainability-centric campaigns
  5. Privacy-first email marketing
  6. More accessible email designs
  7. Real-time personalization with automation
  8. Integration with emerging channels
  9. Minimalist design for faster load times
  10. Revenue-focused KPIs

10 important email marketing trends for 2025

Let’s take a close look at the trends shaping email marketing for the upcoming year.

1. AI-powered predictive personalization

Personalization isn’t new. In fact, 81% of consumers choose brands that offer personalized experiences. We also discussed hyper-personalization when talking about email trends of 2024, but in 2025, hyper-personalization will level up to predictive personalization.

Email marketing trends - predictive personalization.

Predictive personalization lets you make every aspect of an email campaign hyper-relevant to each customer.

Thanks to advancements in AI, email marketing is moving from reactive to proactive. Instead of simply tailoring content based on past behavior, AI is now predicting what your audience wants before they even know it themselves. Predictive personalization will help you deliver content that feels tailor-made for each customer.

Imagine sending a product recommendation email just as your customer is running low on something they purchased weeks ago. Or offering a vacation deal the moment their calendar suggests they’re due for a break. Predictive personalization uses real-time data, machine learning, and behavioral insights to craft emails that feel intuitive and incredibly timely.

To adopt this 2025 email marketing trend:

  • Use AI tools to analyze purchase patterns, browsing history, and engagement data. Use this insight to predict future behavior and craft highly relevant campaigns. Dynamic Yield and H2O are both good options for this.
  • Automate trigger-based emails that respond to key moments, like product replenishment reminders or milestone celebrations.

Even AI isn’t perfect on the first try. Continuously analyze performance metrics like engagement rate, conversion rate, and churn rate to improve predictions over time (see more AI marketing trends here).

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2. Voice-activated email integration

The number of voice assistant users in the US has been growing steadily since 2022. It’s expected to go from 149.8 million in 2024 to over 157 million in 2026.

People use voice assistants to ask questions about the weather, get the latest news, play music, etc. Admittedly, email is not at the top of that list, but the growing adoption of voice technology suggests the potential for voice-activated email.

In 2021, Amazon discontinued email access for Alexa users, removing the ability to link email accounts. At the time, it was not a heavily used feature, and it raised some privacy concerns. But as technology evolves, this feature will make a comeback as more people will want to interact with their inboxes hands-free.

For marketers, this opens a whole new world of opportunities to craft content that’s not just read but heard. Think emails with clear, actionable language that’s designed to be spoken back by a smart assistant or prompts that direct users to your website through a simple voice command. When creating email campaigns that can be read by smart assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, make sure you:

  • Keep the language concise and conversational. Long, complex sentences don’t translate well when read aloud.
  • Use actionable calls to action (CTAs) like “Learn more,” “Shop now,” or “Subscribe today.”
  • Use text-to-speech tools to preview how your email content sounds when read by different smart assistants. NaturalReader and Google’s text-to-speech AI are good options for this.

3. Next-gen interactivity

Ever since Google released AMP for Gmail in 2019, the adoption rates for interactive emails have been increasing. Next-gen interactivity transforms emails into dynamic experiences that your audience can engage with directly without ever leaving their inbox. Think interactive product demos, live polls, or even completing a checkout process, all within the email itself.

Email marketing trends - Interactive email.

Source

These interactive elements grab attention and invite action. By removing the friction of additional clicks and pages, next-gen interactivity turns emails into an extension of your website or app. It makes it easier for customers to engage with you.

In 2025, experiment with next-gen interactivity by:

  • Embedding live polls and surveys in your emails to gather instant feedback and make your audience feel heard. For example, educational institutions can survey students about their preferred topics for a webinar or workshop.
  • Adding interactive product carousels that let users browse items without leaving the email. This is a good option for retailers that want to promote a collection of featured products or seasonal items.
  • Enabling in-email transactions for quick purchases, event RSVPs, or subscription upgrades. This is not just for financial transactions; businesses in the automotive sector can let users schedule a test drive, and healthcare providers can also use this to enable appointment bookings.

You can also use elements like scratch cards or mini-games to make your emails more fun and engaging. Most email automation tools come with built-in features to support next-gen interactivity. However, make sure you test your emails on different inboxes and have a fallback version prepared for email clients that don’t support dynamic features.

✍️ Free guide: Email Subject Lines for Every Month of the Year

4. Sustainability-centric campaigns

Consumers are becoming more eco-conscious and expect the brands they support to reflect their values, so much so that they are willing to pay a premium of 27% on average for products that align with their sustainability values.

Ignoring this trend means alienating an audience that values authenticity and accountability. In 2025, do some sustainability-centric campaigns that showcase your commitment to the environment.

You can do this by reducing digital clutter and highlighting your business’s green initiatives. Send email campaigns around eco-friendly products, paperless solutions, and your company’s sustainability goals. These campaigns will resonate with a growing demographic of green-minded consumers.

Here are a few sustainability-centric email ideas:

  • Share stories about your brand’s commitment to sustainability, like reducing waste, switching to renewable energy, or supporting environmental causes.
  • Promote tips for managing inbox clutter as part of a broader eco-friendly lifestyle.
  • Offer eco-friendly incentives like rewarding subscribers who opt for paperless billing or supporting charitable causes tied to environmental efforts.

As part of your sustainability efforts, focus on minimalist design. Reduce file sizes and use simple, elegant visuals to lower energy consumption when emails are loaded.

5. Privacy-first email marketing

Consumers expect clarity about how their data is collected, stored, and used. 2025 will be the year of privacy-first email marketing, where businesses will have to be upfront with their audience and offer them control over their information.

67% of consumers report having little to no understanding of corporate data practices, and 64% of consumers indicate that clear information about privacy policies enhances their trust in companies. This means that businesses that prioritize transparency and ethical data usage will stay compliant and build trust.

To adopt privacy-first email marketing in 2025, make sure you:

  • Clearly communicate how subscriber data is used and provide easy-to-understand privacy policies.
  • Implement double opt-ins and give users control over their preferences.
  • Highlight the steps you take to protect subscriber data, such as encryption and secure servers.
  • Regularly review and update your practices to align with GDPR, CCPA, and other relevant regulations.
  • Collect data directly from your audience through surveys, polls, and preference centers, ensuring you only use what they willingly share.

6. More accessible email designs

Roughly 15% of the world’s population lives with a disability, and inaccessible emails risk alienating these potential customers. Beyond social responsibility, accessible emails have higher engagement rates because they are easier for all users to interact with, regardless of their environment or device.

Email marketing trends - accessible design email.

Color contrast is an important factor in accessible email design.

More accessible email designs ensure that every subscriber, regardless of ability, can engage with your content. Whether making text legible for users with visual impairments or creating emails that work seamlessly with screen readers, accessible design opens your brand to a broader audience.

Users in noisy environments and those with slow internet connections also benefit from such designs and templates. To make email designs more accessible, make sure you:

  • Use alt text for images so screen readers can describe your visuals to users who rely on audio.
  • Prioritize readable fonts and maintain a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and background. Cleaner fonts help users process content faster, and high contrast is more visible for people with low vision or those in bright or dim lighting conditions.
  • Organize your content using proper HTML headings to make navigation easier for screen readers.
  • Make sure interactive elements like buttons and links are accessible via the keyboard.
  • Use software like Wave or Axe to identify and fix accessibility issues before launching campaigns.

7. Real-time personalization with automation

Many organizations have automated email campaigns that get sent to prospects and customers based on their actions. These automated campaigns range from product recommendation and onboarding emails to cart abandonment campaigns and re-engagement emails designed to win back inactive subscribers or customers.

These automated campaigns have some personalization elements, such as using the recipient’s name, referencing their recent activity (like a product they browsed or purchased), or sending recommendations based on past behaviors and interests.

Customers are now used to this kind of personalization in automated campaigns, so 2025 would be a good year to surprise them with real-time personalization.

Thanks to advances in automation and data processing, you can now tailor emails based on a subscriber’s immediate context, like their current location, browsing activity, or even the weather in their area. Real-time personalization makes emails feel timely and relevant, turning them from generic messages into meaningful interactions.

Imagine sending event reminders with live countdowns or product availability updates that adjust as inventory changes. Real-time personalization ensures your emails hit the right note at the right moment.

  • Use tools like Zapier to connect your email platform with real-time data sources. For example, link Shopify for inventory updates, OpenWeatherMap for weather data, or Google Sheets for flight statuses. These integrations will help you make sure your emails reflect up-to-date information.
  • Set up automated workflows with your email automation platform. Most email platforms let you build behavior-triggered sequences, such as sending a personalized product recommendation email when a user browses specific items but doesn’t add them to their cart or an instant ‘how-to’ guide email when a customer signs up for a complex service or product.
  • Use CountdownMail or NiftyImages to embed customizable, real-time countdown timers directly into your emails. These tools are perfect for creating urgency for sales events, limited-time discounts, or product launches.
  • Insert dynamic content that adapts to individual user preferences. For instance, highlight trending products in a recipient’s preferred category or display real-time availability for services in their area. Your email marketing platform should enable you to pull this data dynamically.

8. Integration with emerging channels

In 2025, the most successful email campaigns will work with emerging digital channels like augmented reality (AR), social commerce, and even SMS.

Global revenue in the AR and VR market is projected to grow steadily between 2024 and 2029, increasing by a total of $21.7 billion, a 53.74% rise. Social commerce accounted for 18.5% of total online sales in 2023 and was estimated to grow at a rate of 23% in 2024. And the SMS advertising market is growing at a steady rate of 1.95% yearly.

All of these trends put together a call for a unified experience across platforms, making your emails a launchpad for deeper engagement on other channels.

Imagine sending an email where subscribers can preview an AR-powered product demo, instantly share a deal on social media, or follow up with a real-time SMS reminder to complete their purchase. These integrations blur the lines between email and other digital touchpoints and take your subscribers on a cohesive and immersive journey with your business.

To align email with other marketing channels:

  • Add “share now” or “follow us” buttons directly in your emails to drive engagement on social platforms.
  • Use email as a gateway to immersive experiences, like trying on virtual products or exploring virtual showrooms.
  • Send follow-up texts to reinforce key messages or nudge subscribers toward urgent actions.
  • Link directly to shoppable posts or live-streamed sales events through your email content.
  • Integrate with tools and platforms that streamline cross-channel communication and tracking. Tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud will help you do that.

9. Minimalist design for faster load times

In 2025, less will be more, especially when it comes to email design.

63% of people view their emails on their mobile devices. As mobile devices continue to dominate how emails are read, minimalist designs that load quickly and clearly communicate your message will win the inbox. With attention spans getting shorter and data speeds varying globally, an email that’s slow to load or cluttered with excessive visuals will likely lose the recipient’s interest.

Email marketing trends - Simple design email.

Minimalist email designs load quickly and are easy to understand.

Emails with heavy graphics or oversized files can be frustrating for mobile users, especially in areas with slower internet speeds. A minimalist design improves accessibility and usability and increases engagement and conversions.

To use minimalist design in your campaigns, make sure you:

  • Focus on one main message per email to avoid overwhelming readers.
  • Use compressed, high-quality visuals to ensure fast load times without sacrificing quality.
  • Use white space and give visual elements some room to breathe.
  • Stick to simple fonts and layouts, and don’t use multiple font styles or excessive formatting.
  • Use tools like Litmus or Email on Acid to measure how quickly your emails load, especially on mobile devices, and adjust as needed.

10. Revenue-focused KPIs

47% of marketers believe that data-driven strategies are most useful in email marketing. As business intelligence tools evolve and marketers find new ways to analyze data and implement their findings in the form of new campaigns, traditional KPIs will not cut it anymore.

While traditional metrics like open rates and click-through rates (CTRs) are still important, marketers will shift their focus to key performance indicators (KPIs) that tie directly to business outcomes.

Metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), revenue per email (RPE), and conversion efficiency will take center stage. These KPIs provide deeper insights into how email campaigns contribute to your bottom line so you can allocate resources more effectively and justify your marketing efforts to stakeholders.

For example, a retail business might use CTRs to measure interest in a seasonal style guide but rely on RPE to evaluate the success of a personalized discount campaign for frequent buyers.

To test out new metrics:

  • Track revenue per email and measure the direct income generated from each campaign to understand its financial impact.
  • Calculate the cost per conversion to ensure your campaigns are both effective and cost-efficient.
  • Link email performance data with sales platforms to get a complete view of your campaign’s impact.

Take action on these email marketing trends

From AI-driven personalization to minimalist design and revenue-focused KPIs, the trends shaping the future of email marketing in 2025 have one common theme: they are all focused on creating deeper, more meaningful connections with your audience.

To stay ahead, it’s not enough to adopt these strategies. You’ll need to make them your own. Test, tweak, and experiment with the trends that align most closely with your business goals and your audience’s expectations. Use the tools and techniques mentioned throughout this article to deliver campaigns that stand out in an increasingly competitive inbox. And don’t forget to check your email sender reputation while you’re at it.

If you’d like some support improving your email marketing, contact us. We’ll show you we can help.

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Talk to an expert and learn how LocaliQ can move your business forward.

Accelerate your business growth

Talk to an expert and learn how LocaliQ can move your business forward.