What if you could double your revenue while sending fewer campaigns? Learn how brands are doing this by improving deliverability and understanding current email trends. 

The landscape of email deliverability and technology is constantly shifting, and staying ahead of the latest trends is crucial for ensuring your messages reach the inbox. When we asked our email deliverability experts about the most significant trends in email marketing for the next year, they told us: AI summaries, BIMI, and a focus on list hygiene because of increased cold sender penalties.

They also noted that with the economic uncertainty right now, leaning into owned channels like email remains one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. And leaning into email starts by focusing on your deliverability. 

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Why deliverability? Because deliverability is directly tied to ROI

Email deliverability isn’t often the first thing marketers think about when evaluating the performance of their emails. But it should be. It’s one of the most important metrics and can have a significant impact on revenue and ROI.

Deliverability is the measure of your emails’ ability to land in your recipients’ inboxes. Without considering deliverability, all other email metrics are just numbers on a page. At its core, deliverability measures recipient engagement. When subscribers actively open, click, and interact with your emails, it tells mailbox providers that your content is valuable, relevant, and needs to be delivered.

When talking with customers about deliverability, we often end up telling them to send fewer campaigns to drive more revenue. Because those campaigns are going to subscribers who are engaged and more likely to take action. 

A recent deliverability analysis for a customer found that they were sending about 600,000 emails and making about $10,000 on those sends. When they started segmenting by recency of engagement and excluding unengaged subscribers, they saw a 50% increase in revenue—while sending 70% fewer campaigns. Their sends dropped to about 200,000 and revenue went up to about $18,000. 

The boost in revenue wasn’t the only win. By targeting engaged subscribers, this proves to the mailbox providers these emails were wanted and helps ensure future sends are also delivered. 

Deliverability matters. Many of the email marketing trends we’re seeing are tied to deliverability. These trends not only impact how your emails are received but also how they are perceived by both recipients and email providers. Let’s get into the trends you need to be watching. 

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AI in email: Creation, personalization, segmentation, and summation 

AI has already had a big impact in the email marketing world in terms of campaign content creation, personalization, and segmentation on the marketing side. For ‌recipients, AI is advancing its capabilities in summarizing emails.

We’ll continue to see refinements in how AI creates and personalizes email content at the subscriber level. Currently, Attentive offers AI product recommendations to make sure that each individual is receiving products that they're most likely to purchase—meaning they’re more likely to engage with an email about that product. 

One of our experts noted that AI could have the most impact on segmentation and reporting in the immediate future. At Attentive, we’re focused on building AI tools that maximize performance and revenue. 

I'm excited about the possibilities that lie ahead with Attentive across email and SMS. Instead of having a manual, time-consuming campaign process, we can now focus on targeted campaigns that align with customers' actions on our site. With the support of Attentive AI, we can create better experiences for our customers, save time for other priorities, and drive more revenue.”

- Jenna Kusek, Senior Marketing Manager, Jack Rogers

In the future, we may be in a world where AI can own the entire email campaign creation process, from AI-optimized audiences to content personalized to individual subscriber preferences. AI won’t just own the content creation process, it’ll also take over summarizing that content when it lands in the subscriber’s inbox. 

Recently, mailbox providers have started using AI to give someone the highlights of messages in a person's inbox. How can you help the AI accurately summarize your emails and engage your subscribers when scanning your email in their inbox? Use annotations. 

Email annotations allow Gmail recipients to view and interact with your emails in their inbox without opening the email. Annotations appear as cards in recipients’ Promotions tab in their Gmail inbox and can call out things like promo codes, discount descriptions, and promo offer start and end dates.

Having annotations gives the AI more confidence in what your message is about. It'll be more likely that your content will make it into the AI-written summary as it knows how to read the annotation. If you’re an Attentive Email customer, you can add annotations to your sends in the Email Subject & Preview Text panel. 

Lastly, another area AI can assist email marketers in is timing. When you have enough data, you can optimize message send times by sending when each individual user is most likely to engage and purchase. 

Send Time AI consistently outperforms general send times, making it a game-changer for our engagement and conversion rates. 

- Morgan, Senior Marketer, Marleylilly

Attentive makes this super easy with tools like Send Time AI that ensures emails and SMS messages land when customers are most likely to convert. AI can also be used for A/B testing messages to drive engagement. Both things will help preserve your sender reputation, which is crucial for maintaining good email deliverability.

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Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)

Authentication is a key part of email deliverability, and the new trend in authentication is BIMI. BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. 

By default, a company's logo won't show up as the sender in mailboxes—usually it's just a circle with the first letter of the sender name inside. By implementing BIMI, you can have your logo appear before a subscriber clicks into the message, giving brand impressions without any extra work on the subscriber side.

BIMI was made as an incentive for people to have the highest security verifications on their email sending, which can be configured within your DNS records. Without getting too technical, in order to use BIMI, you must have a DMARC policy that doesn't send any messages if the DMARC fails its security verification. 

Having the highest standard of verification improves deliverability tremendously, since mailbox providers see you as a trusted sender. BIMI can have some deliverability benefits in that people are less likely to mark a message as spam if they can see the logo. So while BIMI only has a slight impact on deliverability, it's a sign that the brand already did the legwork to build their reputation significantly.

While BIMI requires the strictest DMARC records, Apple has released Apple Business Connect, which will allow you to bring in your logo for iMail only without DMARC updates. 

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Email can be a part of your brand’s search results

You know Google is crawling your website to understand your brand and show your website in relevant search results. But did you also know that information from your marketing emails can also show up across Google, such as in Search, Shopping, and Maps?

‍Google can sign up for your marketing emails to “receive information about new arrivals, sales or ongoing promotions, social media profiles and other content.” Or, you can choose to add Google to your distribution list to make sure Google gets this information directly from your brand. 

Add [email protected] to your marketing list if you want your information sent directly to Google. You can also opt out of allowing Google to subscribe to your marketing emails through their Merchant Center. 

When consumers can easily find and recognize your brand online, they're more likely to trust your brand and engage with your marketing. This increased visibility can lead to higher sign-up rates for your email lists, as potential customers are more inclined to subscribe when they're familiar with and have positive associations with your brand. And hopefully they’ll be more inclined to engage with those sends, which further improves your deliverability. 

By optimizing your brand's search results with your current email sends, you not only attract more subscribers but also foster a more engaged and loyal audience.

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Penalties for cold sending

Mailbox providers are most concerned about getting wanted messages in front of the subscriber and hiding away messages the subscriber doesn't want. 

This is done by evaluating the sender's IP reputation and domain reputation, which you can think of as a credit score. Sending messages people engage with will increase your reputation score, and sending messages that people mark as spam will decrease your score. 

Gmail found that lots of companies that practice cold sending are often sending messages that people don't care about. For example, a company might send to people who haven't signed up for their messaging, which is usually a sign of spam. 

As marketing evolves, adding value in every message will become increasingly crucial. We’re ready to adapt to these changes and maintain the effectiveness of our email and SMS outreach.

-  Ricky Hagen, Retention Marketing Manager, JAXXON

‍In order to crack down on spam, Gmail has started decreasing a sender’s reputation significantly more if an email gets sent to a subscriber who hasn't engaged with your messaging in six months. 

To get out of what is lovingly referred to as "Gmail jail,” you have to build up your sender reputation. Like a credit score, if you have a bad sending history, it's going to take a long time of consistently good behavior to make it better. 

The first thing you have to do is stop sending to unengaged subscribers. Only send emails to engaged users. Make sure the content is personalized and valuable to your subscribers. And think about authentication factors, like ensuring you have a proper DNS set-up and DMARC requirements.

Warning signs you’re in Gmail jail can include an increase in spam complaints, consistently undelivered emails, or decreasing deliverability rates. If you're in Gmail jail, it's highly recommended that you speak with a deliverability expert. If you're using Attentive Email, we have an in-house team of deliverability experts available for consultation at no additional cost.

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Future-proof your email marketing strategy with timeless best practices

While technology and trends may change, certain timeless best practices centered around deliverability remain constant. By focusing on these basics—such as maintaining a clean email list, using your subscriber data, and iterating on your top-performing emails—you can build a robust email strategy that stands the test of time and keeps generating revenue for your business. 

Our recommendations for improving your email deliverability include:

• Put your data into action: Our Consumer Trends Report: The State of Personalized Marketing in 2025 found that 96% of shoppers say they’re likely to purchase when receiving at least one type of personalized message—like back-in-stock notifications, loyalty point reminders, or product recommendations based on their past purchases. Even better? The report found that 99% of consumers will share some form of zero-party data in exchange for a product recommendation. 
• Practice list hygiene: Sometimes subscribers who were once active can go cold, and the last thing you want is to keep sending emails to people who aren't opening them. That lack of engagement could affect your sender reputation. Going through your email list regularly to remove inactive or unresponsive subscribers can help ensure that you’re only sending messages to people who want them
• Segment your sends: Mailbox providers prioritize email placement based on recipient engagement, which means low engagement rates can lead to your emails being filtered into spam folders. Focus on sending relevant content based on your subscribers’ previous engagement, category preferences, and browsing and purchase history. The more relevant and interesting ‌your content is, the more likely someone is to click, and the better your email deliverability will be over time.
• Test and optimize: To ensure your emails are engaging enough to land in the primary inbox, it's important to continuously test and refine them. Remember, an email with a great subject line and engaging content—sent at the right time—is more likely to be interacted with, which signals to email providers that your messages are relevant and, in turn, enhances your deliverability.

Working with the right email service provider (ESP) is a critical first step in making sure your messages get where you want them to go. We intentionally built deliverability best practices into Attentive Email so you can feel confident that your emails will make it into your customers’ inboxes with every send.

Learn more about Attentive Email.