What are the main email marketing trends for 2025?

Many of the trends for email marketing in 2025 may seem familiar to you – a sign that these tend­en­cies are becoming more important than ever. Other methods, such as A/B testing or re­spons­ive design, have become so standard that they no longer need to be explained here.

These are the 9 email marketing trends of 2025

Generally, this year’s email marketing trends are also aimed at inspiring readers and chal­len­ging them with new ideas. The biggest challenge with news­let­ters is providing users with useful content and original ad­vert­ising messages. Data pro­tec­tion is a growing challenge here. That’s why it’s important to find ways to measure success in a way that does not disrupt user privacy.

1. Ac­cess­ib­il­ity
2. Hyper-per­son­al­isa­tion
3. Om­ni­chan­nel marketing
4. Auto­ma­tion
5. User-generated content
6. In­ter­act­ive content (gami­fic­a­tion)
7. Plain text emails
8. Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI)
9. Data pro­tec­tion and privacy

Ac­cess­ib­il­ity

Your clientele is diverse, and your news­let­ter should reflect that. In 2025, it will be even more important to design your emails in a way that makes all re­cip­i­ents feel addressed and able to access the content. This includes people with visual impair­ments. Therefore, don’t get too creative with the colour selection, and ensure you include strong contrasts. This helps both people with visual impair­ments and those who are colour blind. Enough white space, i.e., blank spaces, visually struc­tures the text and makes it even easier to read.

Also, assume that people who can’t see at all will be receiving your news­let­ters. Blind people often use a screen reader. This software captures the content on the screen and then reads it aloud. So, for your news­let­ter content to be expressed, it must also be perceived as text. That’s why you shouldn’t ex­clus­ively place content in graphics. For HTML news­let­ters, use ad­di­tion­al alt texts that put the image content into words.

For news­let­ters, you can follow the same tips that apply to ac­cess­ible websites:

• Clear text design with plenty of whitespace
• High contrast and re­strained colour design
• Correct HTML format­ting
• Mean­ing­ful al­tern­at­ive texts for images
• Clearly re­cog­nis­able buttons and links

However, ac­cess­ib­il­ity can also refer to the language used. Not every mail recipient can decode nested sentences and un­der­stand foreign words. If you offer a version in simple language in addition to the detailed text, you will actively be promoting inclusion.

Hyper-per­son­al­isa­tion

Hyper-per­son­al­isa­tion is an advanced approach to cus­tom­ising emails that goes beyond tra­di­tion­al per­son­al­isa­tion methods, such as ad­dress­ing re­cip­i­ents by name. Instead, this news­let­ter trend leverages modern tech­no­lo­gies like ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, machine learning, and big data to create per­son­al­ised content based on re­cip­i­ents’ behaviour, pref­er­ences, and history.

With AI-driven data col­lec­tion and analysis, news­let­ters can be generated in real-time according to current interests and needs. The larger the data pool, the more promising the results. However, it is crucial to keep data privacy in focus and ensure that the col­lec­tion and pro­cessing of sensitive data always comply with state laws.

Typical ap­plic­a­tions of hyper-per­son­al­isa­tion include:

• Product re­com­mend­a­tions based on previous purchases,
• Time-sensitive offers tailored to the current season or local events
• In­di­vidu­ally optimised subject lines and call-to-actions.

Om­ni­chan­nel marketing

A growing trend for companies is the om­ni­chan­nel marketing approach. This means your news­let­ters should become a puzzle piece within an om­ni­chan­nel marketing strategy that covers all the relevant channels (digital, analog and physical), rather than a stand-alone means of customer com­mu­nic­a­tion.

Email marketing is arguably the most important constant in an om­ni­chan­nel marketing strategy. News­let­ters are an effective tool for customer retention and are known to have a high ROI (return on in­vest­ment). You gain valuable insights about your target group(s) that can directly be applied to actions on other channels. In addition, there is a high level of flex­ib­il­ity when designing your email campaign: you can test different strategies and adjust the goals you are pursuing easily.

Auto­ma­tion

While auto­ma­tion is not a new email marketing trend, it is a con­tinu­ing one and it is becoming in­creas­ingly important. In the past, it might have been suf­fi­cient to send a message once a week and schedule a dispatch date in advance. Good auto­ma­tion reacts to users’ behaviour. This way, you can accompany different users in their purchase decisions.

Good news­let­ter auto­ma­tion works via triggers. Depending on how your customers act (or don’t act), you send an automated, prepared email. Simple triggers can be re­gis­tra­tion or purchase, for example, after which you send a con­firm­a­tion. But it can be more complex if you build chains and let them branch out. For example, with well-set auto­ma­tion, you send different messages depending on whether the reader opened your last news­let­ter or it ended up unopened in the trash. A/B tests can also be perfectly con­trolled by way of email auto­ma­tion.

Thanks to auto­ma­tion, you can get two things done at once: on the one hand, you can react much faster and more in­di­vidu­ally to each user. Depending on how your customers act online, you can prepare the right email for them and can send it in real-time. On the other hand, you save resources because auto­ma­tion processes mean you need less time and fewer staff members to run effective email marketing.

User-generated content

Trying to convince readers of products or services is always a challenge, re­gard­less of how well you have designed your news­let­ter. The reality is that you cannot beat the per­suas­ive­ness and trust­wor­thi­ness of reviews and opinions from other users. User-generated content can be a real marketing asset and including it is an important email marketing trend in 2025.

Another option to make your news­let­ters more personal is to include content from users or customers. The most popular method involves adding customer reviews into emails. A positive comment about your products or services in the in­tro­duc­tion of your news­let­ter will im­me­di­ately reflect pos­it­ively on your readers and spark interest. More detailed reviews are well received because they take the reader’s per­spect­ive and are thus more credible than tra­di­tion­al ad­vert­ising messages. Also, unboxing videos (if relevant to your business) are a valuable stylistic device.

You can also in­cor­por­ate user-generated content into your email marketing campaign by engaging your readers through a survey and col­lect­ing in­form­at­ive data on their shopping pref­er­ences etc. Add a call to vote into the first email and follow it up with the survey in your sub­sequent news­let­ter. You can per­son­al­ise it even more by or­gan­ising chal­lenges, for example, on social networks and then present the winners in your news­let­ter.

In­ter­act­ive content (gami­fic­a­tion)

Another email trend is aimed at in­ter­act­ive content. This means that users can influence the content when reading the email. This is based on the idea of gami­fic­a­tion: typical game elements that challenge the reader are inserted into the email. The principle works because the user ex­per­i­ences a sense of success from playing and doing well, even though they don’t tech­nic­ally get anything for winning. However, you can create in­cent­ives if you want to, by dis­trib­ut­ing small prizes, such as vouchers, as a reward.

But it doesn’t always have to be a game. Anything a reader can click on will increase their interest. For example, several tabs can be in­teg­rated within an email so that the reader can click through the offer. In the spirit of user-generated content, surveys can be filled out directly in an email for great results. This gives you a double advantage: on the one hand, you can collect in­ter­est­ing data from the survey and on the other hand, your email will get more attention.

Plain text emails

Although in­ter­act­ive and elab­or­at­ive content is part of our list of suc­cess­ful email marketing trends in 2025, you might notice that a coun­ter­move­ment is happening at the same time: some marketers are going back to plain text emails. This ensures that all users see the email as intended. For example, re­cip­i­ents do not have to consent to down­load­ing or dis­play­ing images (external content).

However, the option deprives you of plenty of design options to attract attention which means you’ll need to convince readers through the content of your texts. Write texts that intrigue readers and win them over; texts that are ideally followed with a call-to-action. Keep it short for news­let­ters: large blocks of text tend to dis­cour­age readers. You can include lists to break up the typeface a bit.

The ad­vant­ages of a plain text email include correct present­a­tion. These types of news­let­ters are usually in­ex­pens­ive and quick to produce. While graph­ic­ally complex emails may require the as­sist­ance of designers and pho­to­graph­ers, plain text emails are easy to produce. Plain text emails may stand out from the crowd and attract more attention from readers, because they look very different from more graphic ones.

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI)

AI is in­creas­ingly expanding beyond the field of computer science. After global players like Google, smaller companies are now also relying on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and machine learning. As a result, another emerging email marketing trend is lever­aging ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence for creating and dis­trib­ut­ing news­let­ters—beyond just hyper-per­son­al­isa­tion. While this de­vel­op­ment is still in its early stages, it is advisable to get involved now and stay ahead of the curve. The focus is primarily on op­tim­isa­tion and pre­dict­ive analytics.

For example, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence can determine the best dispatch time. It is not only possible to determine the optimal time for large groups, but you can also do this for in­di­vidu­al re­cip­i­ents as well. The same applies to the very important subject line: if it isn’t appealing enough, the email won’t be opened. AI can also help here, although it goes one step further. Thanks to the enormous amount of data that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence can process, it also makes it possible to make pre­dic­tions. This way the computer can determine be­fore­hand how well a certain image in a news­let­ter will be received, for example.

Data pro­tec­tion and privacy

Another email trend is competing with the pos­sib­il­it­ies of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and shouldn’t be ignored: data pro­tec­tion. This, of course, isn’t a new topic. Data pro­tec­tion is, was, and will continue to be an important task for marketing spe­cial­ists. The large amount of personal in­form­a­tion makes it easier to advertise on the internet (es­pe­cially in com­bin­a­tion with AI). You need to comply with the laws, however. If you fail to do this, your (future) customers will lose faith in you.

In the UK, data pro­tec­tion is governed by the UK General Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (UK GDPR) and the Data Pro­tec­tion Act 2018 (DPA 2018). These laws set strict re­quire­ments for handling personal data, ensuring that busi­nesses process in­form­a­tion lawfully, fairly, and trans­par­ently. If you send marketing emails to in­di­vidu­als in the UK, you must adhere to these reg­u­la­tions. Under UK GDPR, busi­nesses must obtain explicit consent from customers before col­lect­ing and using their personal data for marketing purposes. Data collected for one purpose (such as com­plet­ing a purchase) cannot be used for ad­vert­ising without separate consent. However, UK GDPR does allow data pro­cessing under other legal bases, such as con­trac­tu­al necessity, legal ob­lig­a­tion, or le­git­im­ate interest.

Busi­nesses also have extensive doc­u­ment­a­tion and trans­par­ency ob­lig­a­tions. This means they must inform users about what personal data is collected, why it is collected, and how it will be used. Ad­di­tion­ally, in­di­vidu­als have the right to request deletion of their personal data (the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’), although busi­nesses may refuse if they are required to retain the data for legal, con­trac­tu­al, or security reasons. Moreover, or­gan­isa­tions must ensure that personal data is securely stored and protected from breaches, leaks, or un­au­thor­ised access. Failing to comply with UK GDPR can result in severe fines and damage to a company’s repu­ta­tion. By following these data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions, busi­nesses can build trust with their customers while ensuring they meet legal re­quire­ments for handling personal data in the UK.

Another key principle is ‘privacy by default’, meaning that the most re­strict­ive data col­lec­tion settings must be enabled by default, and personal data may only be trans­mit­ted after explicit user consent. For email marketing, this means busi­nesses must ensure clear and trans­par­ent opt-in pro­ced­ures (such as double opt-in in GDPR-compliant countries) and allow users to easily opt out of marketing com­mu­nic­a­tions.

Ideas for suc­cess­ful news­let­ter campaigns in 2025

Through­out the year, you have many op­por­tun­it­ies to adapt your email marketing sea­son­ally and increase customer en­gage­ment. To help you stay ahead and plan your suc­cess­ful campaigns in advance, we have compiled some key dates for you: