State of Email: Essential Marketing Trends and Insights

2024 was a hectic year for email marketing, with ISPs overhauling their services to better serve users. But these changes, combined with rising competition, have left brands battling to secure their spot in the inbox.

So, how can you adapt and ensure your emails reach your audience? It starts with understanding the shifts and fine-tuning your campaigns to match.

This article distills expert insights to guide you through the seemingly endless updates, highlighting how email marketing has changed and what you need to do to stay ahead in this fiercely competitive space.

The Changing State of Email Marketing in 2024

2024 was a record-breaking year, marked by pivotal shifts in email deliverability, AI optimization, and authentication.

Here’s how these updates shaped the industry:

1. Black Friday 2024 Breaks Records

In 2024, Cyber Monday saw record sales of $13.3 billion. This growth was partly rooted in how brands approached retail, such as expanded buy now, pay later schemes.

But how did brands approach Black Friday email marketing?

The following trends made an impact:

• The Early Brand Gets the Worm: Brands started earlier, with some even launching Black Friday campaigns in October. While this marathon approach may seem excessive, it follows Internet Service Provider (ISP) guidelines and helps brands escape the last-minute rush. It encourages a healthier approach to the holiday season, spreading traffic and promoting sustained engagement.

• Rising Competition: The volume of emails surged, causing deliverability headaches. Due to infrastructure constraints, some ISPs rejected messages outright. This means that brands must adopt smarter email marketing strategies to reach shoppers.

Black Friday weekend is more competitive than ever, making inbox placement challenging.

2. Apple Email Updates Transform the User Experience

Apple has finally caught up with more popular ISPs, launching many new features. But are brands hopeful about the developments?

The reality is that these Apple email updates are likely to provoke both excitement and nervous jitters in marketing departments.

Here are the updates that will impact campaigns:

• Tabbed Inboxes: This feature helps Apple Mail catch up with competitors like Gmail. While brands may worry that promotional tabs hide emails, most consumers are already comfortable switching between tabs. The updates may even prove positive, as they allow users to access brand emails only when they want, giving them more autonomy and cutting spam complaints.
• AI Email Optimization: AI is here, and it’s now making a true impact. Apple keeps on brand with its AI features, focusing on improving the user experience by transforming long-form emails into summaries and tables. This will likely benefit users, and the domino effect for senders could be better email engagement and deliverability. But there’s a risk that brands’ messages may lose impact.

Experimenting with new templates and strategies to make the most of AI optimization will be necessary for success on Apple Mail.

Learn more about Apple Business Connect Branded Mail: How It Works and Why Your Business Needs It in our blog.

3. The Challenge of Email Deliverability in 2024

In the first half of 2024, Gmail and Yahoo started cracking down on spam, introducing a blitz of new checks for bulk sender requests.

These rapid updates make it harder to reach inboxes, and senders need deep knowledge of underlying systems to compete.

Here’s what brands need to know about email deliverability:

• Enhanced Spam Monitoring: ISPs are getting smarter, leaving bands to navigate increasingly complex spam detection software to reach consumers. New rules include one-click unsubscribing, following the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol, and maintaining complaints below 0.3%.
• Engagement Takes Priority: Email engagement metrics like open and click-through rates are increasingly critical for deliverability.
• Advanced Postmaster Tools: Google and Yahoo have enhanced their Postmaster tools, offering brands new ways to monitor and report on deliverability.
• It’s Not One Department: Deliverability challenges now require a company-wide effort to overcome. Brands must be able to transform raw data into actionable insights and stay agile to manage the constant updates.

Unfortunately, following basic ISP guidelines and best practices is no longer enough. These fast and continued rollouts force brands to act like Formula 1 teams, where success hinges on quick adjustments to outpace competitors.

More brands are now shifting toward a proactive approach, which is likely the outcome ISPs wanted. It’s a reminder that while ISPs are like partners for brands launching email campaigns, they also have their own intentions.

4. Email Authentication Grows with BIMI Adoption

The rise of Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is reshaping email authentication, providing a more democratic alternative to Verified Mark Certificates (VMC).

BIMI adoption is a game-changer, particularly for small businesses. Here’s why:

• Simplified Verification: VMC requires logos to be trademarked, but BIMI doesn’t, making it easier for smaller brands to implement.
• Improved Brand Recognition: BIMI adoption can improve email performance. By displaying logos in inboxes, brands build recognition and authenticity, increasing engagement.
• Apple Integration: Apple Business Connect has further fueled BIMI’s appeal to SMEs, offering accessible solutions tailored to different business needs and budgets.

As BIMI adoption accelerates, it could spark a broader shift toward improved email authentication practices. Although uptake has started slow, certificates are delivered quickly, and the benefits are clear: better engagement, stronger brand trust, and a more level playing field in the inbox.

5. Email Accessibility Takes Centre Stage

Accessibility has long been somewhere on marketers’ to-do lists, but it rarely becomes a top priority. In fact, research suggests that a startling 99.97% of emails still lack critical accessibility features.

But that needs to change, and there’s also a clear upside for brands.

Accessibility standards align with email deliverability best practices. Plus, implementing these changes isn’t rocket science. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a clear roadmap, including the following suggestions:

• Descriptive Alt Text: Written descriptions of images are essential for TTS tools and visually impaired users.
• Dark Mode Optimization: Darker screens improve readability across devices.
• Structured Semantic Code: This style of code structures the webpage for better navigation by assistive technologies, such as screen readers.
• Strategic Call to Action (CTA) Placement: Brands should write and place the CTA in a manner that works for TTS tools.
• Mobile-Responsive Design: Emails must adapt seamlessly to all screen sizes.
• Simplified Text: Content must be easy to understand.

The barrier to improving accessibility isn’t technological, it’s behavioral. Brands of any size can implement these changes to boost deliverability and promote inclusivity.

Expert Predictions for Email Marketing in 2025

Here are the three key updates to watch in 2025:

1. Balancing AI Optimization and Human Connection

As Mapp’s Senior Deliverability Specialist, I explained that AI will simplify emails, possibly encouraging more shoppers to engage. But there’s a catch (and it’s massive!) AI email optimization may weaken brands’ hard-won customer relationships.

Shoppers still value human touchpoints over end-to-end self-service. But there’s a risk that AI-driven optimization will strip emails of their humanity. It could reduce empathy-driven copy and templates to three-sentence summaries. CTAs, painstakingly designed to inspire shoppers, may also be compressed, losing their bite.

In short, while AI may temporarily skyrocket email engagement metrics, the long-term effect could be negative. For brands, it’s a case of adaptation, not avoidance, because AI email optimization is inevitable.

2. Mobile Commerce Trends for 2025

Tom Corbett, Senior Delivery Consultant at Iterable, predicted that mobile commerce will dominate in 2025. As of late 2024, smartphones drove 77% of global retail site traffic and 68% of online orders.

Corbett explained that innovations like AI-powered camera scanning, which lets consumers find products online by photographing them, will make mobile shopping easier and more appealing to customers. This shift reinforces the growing importance of mobile-first strategies for brands looking to capture today’s on-the-go shoppers.

3. AI Channel Selection

Ian Reeves, the Managing Director of Flourish, shared that AI will revolutionize channel selection. It will enable brands to choose the most effective communication methods, such as text or email, at scale, even offline. This will encourage more personalized, efficient outreach.

Stay Competitive with Data-Driven Email Marketing in 2025

Want to connect better through email in the coming year?

Mapp Marketing Cloud can help. With over 20 years of expertise, Mapp is a leader in email marketing and deliverability, trusted by over 3,000 brands globally.

These are the features that help brands reach more customers:

• Design responsive emails code-free with our drag-and-drop builder and customizable templates.
• Send tailored emails to customer segments based on real-time customer data.
• Automate workflows and customer journeys with A/B testing to find the best ways to connect with shoppers.
• Benefit from Mapp’s top-rated deliverability with a 98% delivery rate for better inbox placement and advanced SPAM tests.