Top 10 Email Marketing Best Practices In 2025

Imagine having the ability to personally connect with promising sales leads while simultaneously cross-selling products to existing customers while ALSO promoting new offers to your audience (all without having to lift a finger!) This type of productivity sounds like a dream but we promise it’s possible! This is the power of implementing 2025 email marketing best practices.

Despite the rise of other popular marketing platforms (social media especially), email marketing remains more relevant than ever in 2025. According to Hubspot, the average email ROI is $36 for every $1 spent, making it affordable, easy and effective.

In fact, when your marketing efforts are driven by data and strategically planned, we’d argue that it’s one of the best marketing investments you can make.

In this article we’re going to give you the best email marketing practices for 2025. We’ll first showcase how email marketing benefits your business then talk about exactly what you need to implement in emails in order for them to be successful.

Why Email Marketing Is Beneficial

According to Salesforce, 93% of customers prefer to use email when communicating with companies. With texting, social media DM’s, print and other forms of communication readily available, why do you think email marketing is so highly preferred?

Let us ask a quick follow up: how many times have you checked your email today? Chances are it’s been at least twice, maybe even before your morning coffee. You’re not alone in this practice, in fact 99% of consumers check their email every day.

Unlike social media algorithms or fleeting text notifications, email is a direct, reliable way to reach your audience where they’re already paying attention. Unlike social media platforms where different demographics are attracted to one specific platform, everybody is using email. Which means you can reach multiple target audiences in one place.

Other Benefits Of Using Email

Tailor Content To Your Target Audience
Improve Brand Recognition
Drive Traffic To Your Website
Conduct Surveys and Collect Feedback
Reach Your Audience On Many Devices
Improve Sales

10 Best Practices for Email Marketing in 2025

1. Grow Your List Organically

Buying email lists might seem like a shortcut, but it often leads to low engagement, spam complaints, and a whole lot of wasted effort.

Instead, focus on building a high-quality list through a branded opt-in form on your website, lead magnet, or social media CTAs to build your list full of people who actually want to hear from you.

2. Send A Welcome Email

What would you do if you walked into a networking event or conference and there was no welcome desk or orientation packet? You’d probably feel awkward, lost, and a lot less likely to stick around for the whole thing.

When new subscribers join your list, they want to feel welcomed and assured they’re in the right place. Set up an automated welcome email that greets them warmly, explains what they can expect from your emails, and makes a strong first impression. This simple step builds trust and sets the tone for a positive relationship moving forward.

3. Subject Lines – Make Them Stand Out!

As people are scrolling through their inboxes, you have less than 1 second to catch their attention through a strong subject line.

When you’re writing your subject lines, every word counts. Imagine if you saw your subject line amidst the mass of promotional and work emails in your own inbox. What would make you click? Now, think about specifically what would make your target customers click.

Three general rules that help improve click rates are create a sense of urgency, keep it under 50 characters or less, and use capitalized words. These small but powerful tweaks can make a difference in whether your email gets opened or ignored.

Hot Tip: Use subjectline.com to test your subject lines (see how engaging and attractive they’ll be in your recipients inbox) and get ideas for improving them!

4. Segment Your List

Segmenting your list means you divide your audience into specific categories. You then create content based specifically on these categories because you know it’s what your audience member is interested in.

Instead of sending out mass amounts of generic information, you can tailor your content to specific interests. This significantly increases chances that your email will resonate with the recipient and will get them to engage.

“What exactly can you segment your list on?”

New vs Old Users
Demographics
Level of Engagement
Purchase History
Geography and Time Zone
Product Interest

“How do you decide what categories you should segment your list?”

Easy, simply ask your audience! Use an integration like OptinMonster to send your customers a survey in one of their welcome emails to ask them what they’re interested in or looking for from your company. You can also analyze their past behaviors (which emails they open, links they click, products they engage with) to tailor future emails to their preferences.

5. Use Templates To Guarantee Design Consistency

In 2025, consistent branding is more important than ever. Not using the same branding in your emails would be considered ‘catfishing’ your audience. They show up to your newsletter expecting one thing and get something completely different.

Not great for building trust.

To keep everything on brand, have templates designed and easily accessible to ensure your emails always feel consistent and recognizable. Your logo, color scheme, tone of voice, and formatting should all align, so your audience instantly knows they’re hearing from you.

Hot Tip: Always optimize your email design for mobile! With about 3 out of 5 consumers checking emails on their phones, a mobile-friendly design is essential. Use a responsive layout that adjusts to different screen sizes, make buttons and fonts touch-friendly for easy interaction, compress images to speed up load times, and keep your copy concise to ensure readability.

6. Personalize Emails

Personalized emails have about a 75% higher click through rate (CTR) and around a 6% higher transaction rate.

People LOVE getting attention, who doesn’t? What people don’t love however, is getting a message where they immediately can tell it has no relevance to them. When people receive content that aligns with their interests, behaviors, or past interactions, they’re far more likely to engage and take action.

Ideas For Personalization:

Add your recipient’s name in the subject line and body of an email
Segment according to interests (mentioned above)
Acknowledge special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.)
Send reminders for abandoned carts, upcoming renewals, or expiring offers
Adjust messaging based on engagement level (reward loyal subscribers or re-engage inactive ones with special incentives)

7. Dynamic Content

What is going to hold your readers attention? What’s going to get them to scroll through and click? Dynamic, interesting, valuable content. Here are four key parts of making your content interesting:

Write Engaging Copy:

Let your brand personality shine! You want your emails to have a conversational tone. Almost as if you were sitting across from your recipient at lunch. What would you talk about? What tone would you use? Your emails should be clear, easy to read, and written like a person (not a robot).

Use Images:

Humans love images. Not just because they look pretty, but we process images faster than we can read text. Because images can spark emotion and imagination, use them to reflect what you’re talking about but not replace or deter from your copy.

Note on using memes and emojis: Only use these if they align with your brand’s personality and tone. Also be aware of your target personas age and preferences. Millennials tend to like emojis and memes much more than older generations.

Make Content ‘Snackable’:

Readers love to skim. Keep things quick. Use short paragraphs, sections, bullet points, clear headings, and bold key phrases.

8. Make Your CTA Stand Out

A great rule-of-thumb to follow with any email in any campaign is to have a designated purpose before writing it.

Where do you want your customers to go? Is it to make a purchase? Follow you on social media? Read a blog article?

Your purpose is your CTA and it should be easy to recognize (use contrasting colors) and easy to click (make sure it isn’t too small.)

9. Regularly ‘Clean’ Your List

‘Cleaning’ your list is when you remove unengaged, unsubscribed, invalid, or duplicate contacts.

Doing so improves the quality of your list and boosts your campaign performance. Having a high number of unengaged recipients lowers your open rates, increases the risk of your emails landing in spam, and skews your data, making it harder to track real engagement.

You can manually review subscriber activity and remove inactive contacts or use specialized email marketing tools to automate the process and keep your list healthy.

10. A/B Test Your Emails

One of the most beautiful things about email marketing is A/B testing (aka split testing.) This is where you send two versions of your email to see which one performs better. The best practice for A/B tests is to test one simple thing. Have the same version but use a different subject line, CTA placement, image or anything else in your email to pinpoint exactly what impacts performance.

BONUS: Continually Analyze Data To Find Room For Improvements

As you run split tests, pay attention and record what you find. Instead of guessing, use real data to optimize your content, timing, and targeting. Identify trends, test new approaches, and adjust based on performance. A data-driven approach ensures continuous improvement in your email marketing strategy.

Open rate: Indicates how effective your subject line is at grabbing attention in the inbox.
Click rate: Measures how compelling your email content and call-to-action (CTA) are in driving engagement.
Click to open rate (CTOR): Shows how well your email content resonates with those who opened it.
Bounce rate: Reflects email deliverability issues, such as invalid addresses, spam filters, or server problems.
Unsubscribe number and rates: Signals whether your content is relevant and well-targeted or if subscribers are losing interest.

Choose The Right Email Marketing Software

No matter what strategies or goals you have planned, you need to have the right tools in place to help you get there or else you’ll chart a course that leads to nowhere.

Here are three that we’ve used internally or set up for clients that we recommend:

ActiveCampaign: We love ActiveCampaign for its simplicity. It makes it so easy to set up automations, segment your list, and run split tests.
Klaviyo: Klaviyo is especially great for eCommerce businesses. It integrates with Shopify and other platforms offering advanced analytics.
Hubspot: Hubspot is a powerhouse CRM. It’s a great all-in-one option for businesses focused on inbound marketing, meaning you combine email marketing with CRM capabilities for streamlined customer management.

Note: These email marketing platforms are priced differently based on features and list size, so choose one that fits your business needs and budget.

Want to know our top ten recommendations for CRMs? Check it out here!

Evolve Your Strategy As You Find Out What Works!

Email marketing isn’t something you set up and leave to fend for itself. The truth about all marketing in general is that what’s working today might not work tomorrow.

We’ve listed some of the best practices for email marketing this year. The takeaway we really hope you run with is that you should implement these strategies, test them, and always be trying new things to see what works best for your business and what resonates most with your audience.

The more you’re willing to adapt, the better your email marketing will be.

If you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next level but need a little extra help getting started, chat with our team! Click the link below and book a free strategy session with our people. We’ll talk more about your list size, how you can grow it, and best strategies for segmentation.

Book Your Free Strategy Session