What do Tom Hanks's Captain Sullenberger, Sarah Connor, Mad Max, and email marketing all have in common? They’re survivors that defy extinction against all odds.
Email marketing exudes main character vibes in the age of AI and owned audiences. But, is it merely becoming noisier with AI-powered automation, or is it truly evolving into a smarter, more impactful owned channel? After all, access doesn’t always mean attention.
I asked 14 email marketing experts and industry leaders how businesses are navigating this new era, what strategies and technologies they are yielding to optimize delivery amidst inbox fatigue, and how they use AI for hyper-personalization and deeper engagement.
Dive in for some stark observations, strategies, and exclusive G2 data analysis on the state of email marketing in 2025.
Email continues to defy every prediction of its demise; it is the Swiss Army knife of the marketing world. From surviving the "cookie apocalypse" nightmare marketers are still recovering from, to enduring the fresh tremors of AI-powered search and volatile social algorithms, email stands firm, offering direct engagement and invaluable data ownership advantages.
The humble inbox remains personal, persistent, and gives marketers what they crave most: control and consent.
Unlike social platforms or ad networks, email allows brands to build direct, permission-based relationships with audiences. And it’s not just about reach, it’s about resilience.
“Everyone has an email address. It’s not going anywhere,” says Devin Reed, Founder of The Reeder, who calls email “the most obvious investment marketers should make” due to its low cost and high return-on-investment (ROI).
Email’s staying power isn’t just about access; it’s about the consistent business value it delivers.
Few channels offer a better cost-to-impact ratio than email. According to OptinMonster, email delivers a 3600% ROI, and recent estimates place global email users at over 4.5 billion in 2025. That's unmatched scale and unmatched opportunity.
In a world of ad fatigue and rising cost per thousand (CPMs), email provides a direct, reliable line to customers and one they actually expect. Chief Executive Officer of ZeroBounce, Liviu Tanase, notes that 93% of consumers check their email daily, with many actively looking for offers or brand messages.
“Email is thriving again,” adds Doug Darroch, Managing Director at Renaissance Digital Marketing. Especially in B2B, it's often the only way to consistently reach decision-makers.
But reach alone isn’t enough. The way brands use email is evolving just as fast as the tech behind it.
Email is no longer just a broadcasting tool. It’s a two-way communication channel. Used wisely, it becomes the connective tissue between brands and customers that extends across the customer journey and syncs with other owned and paid channels.
Dave Charest of Constant Contact explained how email helps build trust and drive results when orchestrated alongside social and SMS.
Christina Pavlou of Moosend put it best: “Email is no longer just for informing, it’s where you actually communicate.”
This shift from push to dialogue is only part of the story. Today’s top performers are elevating email into a true strategic layer.
Email isn’t just holding on, it’s evolving. As automation floods other channels with noise, email’s permission-based nature is becoming a differentiator. Marketers who treat it as a strategic asset rather than a checkbox see the best results.
In 2025, the brands winning at email marketing are doing three things right:
We’ve seen how email has earned its main-character moment by being resilient, ROI-rich, and smarter than ever. But like every great survivor story, email marketing has its own plot twist: just because it’s alive doesn’t mean it’s always thriving.
Email marketing isn’t struggling because it’s ineffective — it’s struggling because it’s overused, poorly executed, and, too often, inauthentic. The very tools meant to increase efficiency are now contributing to fatigue, deliverability challenges, and a growing lack of trust among recipients.
Baruch Labunski, Chief Executive Officer of Rank Secure, points to automation as a key factor behind rising unsubscribe rates: “People are becoming so overwhelmed that they ignore all of them.”
Joanna Wyganowska, Vice President of Marketing at Octopus Deploy, adds that spam filters are increasingly “blocking mass emails,” compounding visibility issues and leading to performance drops.
One of the biggest traps marketers fall into is trusting the wrong metrics. And nowhere is that more misleading than open rates.
Open and click-through rates are still reported, but they no longer tell the full story. As email filters, privacy protections, and bot activity grow, these surface-level metrics become harder to trust.
Phil Newton, an internal expert at G2, highlights how bot-triggered opens can distort engagement data: “Opens and clicks are becoming less reliable.” Instead, teams need to shift focus to real behavioral signals — things like site visits, conversions, and replies.
This change in measurement isn’t just a reporting problem. It’s a strategic one. Without solid engagement insights, marketers risk scaling the wrong messages to the wrong people.
There’s also a silent killer of performance metrics at play: automation that warrants a closer investigation.
AI and automation tools have made it easier than ever to scale messaging, but at what cost?
Ashley Binford, fractional B2B demand generation leader at Noted Marketing, warns that too many teams “rely heavily on templated sequences, which can feel robotic and disconnected.” The result? Messages that sound mass-produced and fail to resonate.
Anna Ledford, Marketing Director of Marketri, agrees, noting that “people can sense when something was mass-produced.” And that perception is enough to tank even a perfectly timed campaign.
Laura Sundberg, Chief Marketing Officer at Inspire11, takes it a step further, calling email’s crisis “existential.” In her words:
“We’ve trained customers to expect that email is either irrelevant, automated, or manipulative. So even when we do get it right, the trust just isn’t there.”
Laura Sundberg
Chief Marketing Officer at Inspire11
This erosion of trust can’t be solved by sending more emails. It requires a complete mindset shift.
If trust is the problem and personalization is the goal, then AI is the accelerant. It’s reshaping how teams build, send, and scale email — not just faster, but smarter.
AI has cemented its place in modern email marketing, but not as a magic wand. The consensus across experts is clear: AI-powered tools are only as effective as the humans guiding them. AI is about amplifying marketing teams’ ability to execute smarter, faster, and more precisely.
“AI isn’t here to help us write faster. It’s here to help us send smarter,” said Christina.
“The best email tools are not those with the most features, but those that give marketers the most control.”
Christina Pavlou
Senior Content Manager at Moosend
Anna agrees. “Tech should never replace thinking. We treat these tools as creative partners, not substitutes.” In her view, the goal of AI isn’t to offload creativity, it’s to elevate it.
Today’s most effective email platforms are leaning into AI to streamline four key areas:
Devin notes how segmenting and customization are now “easier than ever,” enabling teams to deliver relevant content faster. Doug points to tools like Klaviyo, HubSpot, and Mailchimp that are “evolving fast,” especially in their use of predictive analytics and personalization.
Dave shared how AI cuts through busywork. “It suggests copy, creates a template, and recommends the best time to send, all in about 90 seconds.”
This efficiency allows small teams to run sophisticated, multichannel campaigns without needing a massive tech stack.
Despite the efficiencies AI brings, several leaders caution against overreliance.
Ashley said it best: “The best results come when tech is used to amplify a smart strategy — not just increase send volume.” Naomi West echoed this, noting that AI is only as good as the prompt behind it.
“If used well, AI becomes a skilled partner in digesting metrics and pointing to next steps. It takes a skilled marketer to develop a clear prompt.”
Naomi West
Senior Product Marketing Manager at Customer.io
In other words, AI doesn’t fix broken strategies. It scales the good ones.
AI isn’t just catalyzing creation. It’s amplifying precision and building signals that are proving to be the game-changer for audience engagement.
The real promise of AI in email marketing isn’t just scale, it’s precision. Using AI to do what was once impossible: understand individual preferences, predict intent, and personalize at the micro level, all without compromising efficiency.
According to Devin, segmenting and customization make it easier than ever to know your audience (data) and create highly relevant and insightful content.
Robin Emiliani, Co-founder and CGMO at Catalyst Marketing, described how her team uses AI to map “not only characteristics and buying behavior, but also personality traits and what tone of voice is most effective.” That depth of insight allows for radically relevant messaging that feels tailored, not templated.
Doug’s team also uses AI to “generate hyper-personalized content based on past behavior, predict send times for each subscriber, and A/B test subject lines at scale.” These aren’t luxury tactics anymore. They’re becoming best practice.
Ashley adds that her team sharpens messaging with AI by “writing subject lines that match user intent, optimizing CTAs, and personalizing copy based on segment.” For her, AI isn't about novelty; it's about removing friction between message and outcome.
AI’s impact doesn’t stop at personalization or timing. Behind the scenes, it’s transforming how content gets planned, produced, and measured.
AI’s impact extends far beyond subject lines and send times. For many teams, it’s revolutionizing how content is created, repurposed, and measured.
Baruch shared how AI helps his team identify new audiences, organize campaigns, and build content “with a higher probability of success.” Laura, emphasized AI’s value before a message is even written — for segmenting audiences, modeling customer journeys, and aligning creative with buyer behavior.
Anna framed AI as a creative partner that helps her team analyze “which subject lines draw interest, when our audience is most likely to engage, and what types of content resonate with different segments.” Christina relies on AI to predict behavior and preferences using built-in tools like Audience Discovery.
Efficiency isn’t just about creating more; it’s about creating more that matters. And that’s where AI is becoming every content team’s support system.
Many high-performing teams aren’t using AI to replace content creation. They’re using it to scale and reshape existing work.
At ZeroBounce, Liviu shared that while their emails are “100% human,” AI helps with “light tasks like spellchecking or idea prompts.” Joanna’s team uses AI to transform long-form assets, like webinar recordings, into newsletters or blog posts, extending the impact of every piece of content without burning out the team.
This way, AI becomes the ultimate content multiplier. Not the content creator.
The most effective marketers treat AI like a strategic teammate. They use it to predict, optimize, and extend their content while staying grounded in human storytelling and emotional intelligence.
In short, AI helps teams do what they already do well. Just faster and more effectively.
While expert perspectives painted a strong qualitative picture of AI’s evolving role in email, G2’s data offers something sharper: proof.
The review signals from hundreds of real-world users point to a category undergoing transformation — one where software is being evaluated not just by send volume but by intelligence, integration, and ROI.
Here’s what the numbers say.
According to Alanna Iwuh, Sr Research Analyst at G2, “It’s evident that email marketing isn’t dying down anytime soon. It continues to prove to be a growing and effective channel that consumers value and businesses love.”
The headline stat? From 2023 to 2025, the average ROI window for email marketing platforms has nearly halved, according to G2’s category tracking.
“The latest emphasis on intelligent automation, personalization, and integration is a major driver behind the faster time-to-ROI and larger returns we’ve seen.”
Alanna Iwuh
Sr Research Analyst at G2
The trendline below shows how ROI for email marketing has halved across quarters from 2023 to 2025.
Email tech that prioritizes cross-channel functionality and seamless MarTech integration is driving this acceleration and becoming the strategic core of owned marketing.
Across more than 500 reviews in G2’s Email Marketing category, 86% of users organically referenced AI, automation, or intelligent workflows.
What’s more compelling? It’s not just lip service. Users link these capabilities to tangible performance gains:
Platforms where AI is built into the workflow and not just bolted on are being rewarded with stronger satisfaction and recommendation scores.
Not all tech adoption is smooth. Reviewers commonly flagged:
Even when the tools are powerful, reviewers remind us: automation should feel natural and human, or risk being ignored.
Across all this innovation, one thing is clear: buyers in 2025 aren’t just evaluating features — they’re evaluating performance partners.
And what do they value most? Tools that just work. In G2’s Email Marketing category, the highest-rated features this year aren’t the flashiest. They’re the ones that reduce friction: ease of use, ease of setup, and seamless integration capabilities.
These outranked more advanced features like testing or segmentation, signaling that buyers want simplicity, speed to value, and tools that connect cleanly across their stack.
These scores outpaced more advanced capabilities like segmentation or testing. The message? Speed to value and seamless workflows are what B2B buyers expect.
G2 reviews reveal that mid‑sized companies and SMBs are the most active adopters of AI-powered email tech, while enterprises take a more measured approach:
This breakdown highlights that SMBs are pioneering AI‑first email strategies, while larger organizations are beginning to follow suit as they modernize legacy systems.
Expert perspectives painted a strong qualitative picture, but G2’s review data reveals the buyer's reality. Here’s what the signals tell us about where email marketing is headed:
The evolution of email in the age of AI presents a paradox: The more powerful the tools, the more human the strategy needs to be. Heightened tech capability now demands a more intentional, human-centered strategy. That’s the paradox shaping email in 2025.
Email is now a strategic tech layer, and reviewers are no longer just evaluating platforms.
While G2 data confirms that the email tools winning in today’s market are those that combine smarter automation, faster ROI, and frictionless integration, software vendors need to build trust and deeper connections.
The core challenge remains building authentic trust and fostering genuine connection with an audience increasingly wary of automated, generic communication.
The future of email marketing isn't just about what technology can do but how skillfully marketers use it to create truly valuable, empathetic, and relevant experiences.
As we continue to navigate an AI-first world, brands that master the balance between AI-powered efficiency and human-centric engagement will be the ones that truly earn their place in the inbox — and, more importantly, in the customer’s mind. Memorability is the new asset.
The recent Paris AI Summit made headlines as the US and UK declined to support a diplomatic...
by Kamaljeet Kalsi
Brand is having a glow-up, and AI is the glam team behind it.
by Kamaljeet Kalsi
Pop quiz: what do today’s marketing teams and the Oakland Athletics from “Moneyball” have in...
by Sidharth Yadav