5 Email Marketing Trends Shaping Tomorrow’s Inbox
This National Email week, we’ve asked five of our in-house experts about the trends that inspire them the most for this channel.
1: Hyper-Personalization at Scale
As we move deeper into 2025, one of the most exciting developments in email marketing is the growth of AI-powered hyper-personalization. It is transforming how brands engage with their audiences—shifting from broad, generalized campaigns to truly individualized experiences. With consumers now expecting communications that reflect their preferences and behaviors in real-time context, AI makes this not only possible, but scalable.
Email marketers have increasingly relied on AI and predictive analytics in recent years to analyze historical data and uncover actionable insights. Machine learning tools allow for optimizing send times, predicting customer behavior and delivering highly relevant product recommendations. This helps drive efficiency and ensure that each touchpoint adds value within the customer journey.
The introduction of generative AI has taken personalization opportunities further. Beyond analyzing data, it actively uses subscriber data patterns to create content. This means marketers can generate personalized subject lines, copy and even imagery tailored to each recipient at a 1:1 level without compromising creativity or brand authenticity.
AI-driven hyper-personalization is a fundamental shift in how marketers can connect with consumers. The combination of predictive insights with generative capabilities creates an unprecedented opportunity for brands to deliver value and relevancy with every interaction. By delivering more relevant experiences, consumer engagement and conversions increase. More importantly, personalized communication fosters stronger emotional connections with brands, enhancing long-term customer loyalty at a time when retention is more critical than ever.
2: Apple Builds on BIMI
While BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) has been adopted by most email clients over the last few years, Apple has introduced their own version, Branded Mail with the iOS 18 updates. Like BIMI, Apple Mail allows registered brands to display their logo within the Apple Mail interface. And unlike BIMI, Branded Mail is much easier to implement and does not require a trademarked logo.
According to Litmus’s April 2025 report, Apple Mail accounts for over 49% of all email opens. So here are the key benefits to implementing Branded Mail:
- An additional way to stand out in the inbox. Historically, sender name, sender address, subject line, and preheader have been the only things a brand can leverage to stand out in a crowded inbox. Branded Mail provides an additional opportunity to catch subscribers’ eyes and entice an open.
- Subscribers benefits . Though the level of authentication isn’t nearly the level of BIMI, Branded Mail is still an additional layer of validation for subscribers. In a world full of scams and phishing attempts, providing any form of assurance will only benefit a brand in the long run and could be a win for email engagement.
- Positive impact on email deliverability (for Apple Mail, anyway). Branded Mail can help improve sender reputation within Apple Mail. This will contribute to deliverability over time, ensuring email messages are getting to subscriber inboxes.
3: Minimalist Formats = Intentional Communication
In an era where inboxes are saturated with elaborately designed emails, carefully orchestrated to balance across imagery and live text, there’s one trend taking it the opposite direction: minimalism. Marketers are starting to reintegrate plain text and lo-fi aesthetic emails into the mix. This back-to-basics approach — which has long been embraced in B2B marketing — is making waves across industries for its authenticity, simplicity and effectiveness, while still enabling the personalization and resulting relevance that email marketing has long been known for.
These plain text emails aren’t just the multipart subset you already send. They’re intentionally lo-fi, personal correspondence that creates a sense of trust with the recipient and cuts through the noise of overly polished promotions. They load faster, are easier to read on mobile and often bypass spam filters more successfully leading to gains in deliverability and engagement.
They’re not a standalone tool either. Their power is in leveraging contrast, and using where the content is the best fit, like in a letter from the founder or product update from a team lead. This intentional use of the format is human, direct and can boost brand credibility — especially when bidirectional communication is enabled. When brands send these types of email touchpoints alongside more traditional, branded designs and integrate them into existing marketing plans they offer a change of pace for the recipient in both directions and sustain interest. In a world that’s chasing clicks with complexity, plain text emails are a nice reminder that, sometimes a straightforward format wins hearts… and inboxes.
4. Stand Out With Interactivity
Interactive elements — like image carousels, embedded forms, quizzes, and in-email shopping — are redefining how users engage with content. As inboxes become more crowded, marketers are turning to interactivity to stand out, drive higher engagement and reduce the number of clicks needed to convert. This trend is fueled by better support across email clients (especially Apple Mail and Gmail), making once-novel features more widely accessible.
Looking ahead, interactive emails are poised to evolve into mini digital experiences—mirroring the functionality of landing pages or apps. With the rise of accelerated mobile pages (AMP) for email and advances in personalization, expect emails that not only inform but act: booking appointments, completing purchases or customizing products — all without leaving the inbox.
5. Innovate with AMP
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for email is a Google framework that allows marketers to embed interactive and dynamic content — like image carousels, accordions, forms and real-time updates — directly within the body of an email. Instead of directing users to a separate landing page, AMP lets them engage with content right inside their inbox, creating a seamless and more compelling experience. With support from major platforms like Gmail and Outlook, AMP is gaining traction as an innovative way to drive higher engagement and interactivity.
AMP Is a Trend Worth Watching
As inboxes become more competitive, brands are looking for fresh ways to stand out. AMP for email is emerging as a powerful tool to do just that. By transforming static emails into app-like experiences, marketers can create frictionless interactions—think RSVPs, surveys, product browsing or even live content updates. While still relatively new and not yet universally supported, early adopters of AMP are seeing stronger performance metrics, including improved click-through rates and user engagement.
Should You AMP Up Your Email Strategy?
If your goal is to innovate and stay ahead of the curve, exploring AMP for email is well worth the investment. While it does require some additional development and testing, the payoff can be significant for brands seeking deeper interaction and higher ROI. As email continues to evolve, AMP represents one of the most exciting frontiers for creating richer, more responsive and more personalized email experiences.
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