The Email & CRM Vault

What Great Email Marketing Looks Like in 2025

Written by Beth O'Malley | 07/2025

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Great email marketing in 2025: what it actually looks like

Let’s be REALLY honest right now: great email marketing in 2025 is harder than ever, and knowing what great email marketing looks like in 2025 is even harder.

Inboxes are more crowded. Both B2B and B2C audiences are more discerning — they might as well have built spam filters in their brains, opting to delete rather than unsubscribe when emails are lacking.

People expect to get sold to… but they don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to, which leaves us marketers in a weird, purgatory-esque in-between.

✅ We know email marketing works.
❌ We know that email marketing isn’t working how it used to, though.

If you’ve landed on this blog post hoping to find hacks, a quick list of subject line tips, or the “perfect” send time, this isn’t the blog post for you.

This is the real state of email in 2025 — the truth about what great email marketing looks like today.

 

Email is no longer a channel. It’s a function.

The biggest mindset shift you need to make for great email marketing in 2025 is this:

Email marketing is not a channel anymore. It’s a function of your business. 

We’ve talked before about how email marketing is an ecosystem, not “just sending an email”.

And when it comes to what great email marketing looks like in 2025, it’s essential to throw out the old ways of treating email like a campaign conveyor belt, where you push out sales emails and hope something sticks.

Email has evolved, which means you need a modern email marketing strategy to match.

That means supporting multiple goals (not just conversions), and not measuring campaigns purely on direct sales.

 

Email marketing performance: The volume trap

Before we dive into the fundamentals of the modern email marketing strategy, there’s something we need to talk about first: volume.

This mindset is probably familiar to a lot of marketers, from heads of marketing to email marketing managers and everyone in between: sending out more and more emails to more and more people “just in case” it’s relevant to someone.

Mathematically speaking, it might earn you a few clicks.

But the long-term damage that you’re not seeing? It’s hard to reverse. If you play the volume game, you will eventually lose. The saying is quality over quantity for a reason!

💀 You’ll burn your list
💀 You’ll hit spam traps
💀 You’ll rely on constant new subscriber acquisition to backfill the losses

That’s not a sustainable email strategy - that’s panic sending.

 

What does great email marketing look like in 2025?

It’s not flashy (we wish it was, but it’s not). It’s not complex. It’s structured.

Email is an ecosystem.

Great email marketing in 2025 starts with email as an ecosystem. It’s not just campaigns or flows, it’s a connected infrastructure across:

  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Service
  • Transactional touchpoints
  • Onboarding, education, retention

Email isn’t in a silo. It works with your CRM, website, and third-party tools because everything should be integrated, purposeful, and strategic.

 

The 3 pillars of a word-class email ecosystem

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, the core pillars of great email marketing remain the same:

 

The hierarchy of email needs

Once you have your pillars in place, and only then, can we begin discussing execution.

  • Have you mapped audience personas?
  • Do you have a segmentation strategy?
  • Is deliverability being tracked and optimised?
  • Are you aligned across departments?

If you can answer yes to all of the above, then you’re probably doing great email, because here’s the truth:

Your subject line doesn’t matter if your segmentation sucks.

Execution comes last. And yet, it’s what most people focus on first.

 

Execution isn’t everything, but it still matters for great email marketing in 2025

Before you get your pitchforks out, I’m not saying that subject lines and design don’t matter! They absolutely do. But they only matter in context.

Though execution might be the best part of an email marketing strategy for many marketers, and it hurts to say it, but great emails don’t need to be flashy.

In fact, I’ve seen ugly emails outperform beautiful ones because the messaging was spot-on and the timing was right.

Think less about whether the button should be green or red, or if 9am is better than 2pm, or if an emoji in your subject line will be the deciding factor.

Think more about:

🤔 “What role does this email play in the journey?”
🤔 “Is this relevant, timely, and helpful?”
🤔 “What’s the one goal of this send?”



Accessibility, authenticity, and human-first marketing

There’s always a mindset shift that comes with a modern email strategy shift.

After all, in 2025, everyone is sending emails, which means consumers are jaded and professionals are overwhelmed.

If you want to stand out amongst the noise, the way you show up in the inbox has never mattered more.

The brands winning at email are:

  • Sending accessible emails (not image-only or bloated HTML)
  • Writing like humans, not robots
  • Ditching the 20%-off-all-caps sales language
  • Making readers feel seen and heard
  • Using data to drive personalisation (not just segmentation)

It’s not about B2B or B2C. Ultimately, this is human to human marketing.

 

Invisible impact: email’s real power

Here’s what the hack-pushing, subject-line-supremacy bunch won’t tell you: Emails biggest impact often can’t be tracked.

Sometimes, email drives an immediate conversion (amazing!). But more often than not, it creates:

  • Brand recognition
  • Increased search traffic
  • Higher engagement on other channels
  • Sales, months down the line

It’s important to remember that email does have an invisible impact because even if people aren’t opening all of your emails, they’re seeing your name and your presence.

When your audience is ready, they’ll search for you — that’s the hidden power of email.

 

What great email marketing looks like in 2025: final thoughts

So, what does great email marketing look like in 2025?

Well, it starts with a structure and strategy to glue the entire email marketing approach together, and then, it’s all backed by data.

Vibes and Canva templates have no place here!

If you want to create genuine connections every time you send an email, even if it doesn’t result in immediate conversion, you need to stop praying for quick wins and start laying the groundwork for great email marketing sooner rather than later.

That’s how you build email marketing that works.

 

Need email marketing support? I’ve got you covered!

If you’re ready to stop winging it and start winning with email, I’m here to help, whether it’s strategic advice, a complete overhaul, or a simple check-up.

Get in touch to find out more - I can’t wait to hear from you!

 

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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.