We’re halfway through 2026, which means the year’s email design trends have stopped being predictions and started showing up in real inboxes. Some stuck. Some quietly faded. Here’s what’s actually earning its place this year, from accessibility becoming law to dark mode as the default canvas, plus the one rule that keeps any trend from
Email is still the highest-ROI channel in digital marketing, returning an average of $36 for every $1 spent according to Litmus. That number hasn’t budged in years. What has changed is everything around it: Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection now inflates open rates for roughly 64% of Apple Mail users, AI is rewriting subject lines while
A few years ago I sat in on a sales call where a prospect read our cold email back to us, out loud, and laughed. Not because it was bad, exactly. Because it was so obviously a template that he could see the seams: the generic “I noticed your company is growing” line, the mismatched
Personalized subject lines and merge tags used to be enough. They’re not anymore. Here’s what separates the email campaigns worth studying from the ones your subscribers ignore.
Your subject line gets half a second of attention before the delete key wins. Most marketers know this and still underinvest in it. These 7 creative subject line ideas go beyond first-name personalization and generic urgency tactics. They’re grounded in why people actually decide to open an email.
Weather shapes what people buy, how they feel, and what they’re likely to click on. Yet most email programs treat every subscriber the same, regardless of whether it’s 95°F and sunny outside their window or a gray, rainy Tuesday. Here’s how to change that and why it’s worth the effort.
For nearly twenty years, your Gmail address was forever. You signed up, you kept it, and any brand that earned your subscription knew exactly where to find you. That’s no longer the case. Google has quietly rolled out a Gmail address change feature that lets users switch to a new @gmail.com address while keeping their
Email personalization is one of the highest-leverage tools in a marketer’s arsenal. But done carelessly, it backfires in ways that are embarrassing at best and brand-damaging at worst. Here are the email personalization mistakes I see most often and what to do instead.
A few years ago, I watched a European fashion retailer send the same summer sale email to their entire global list. Bikinis and sundresses landing in inboxes across Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, and South America, all at the same time, with the same imagery, the same copy, the same currency. The unsubscribe spike in regions where
Spam filters have gotten smarter, but trigger words still matter, for content scanners, ESP spam checks, and your subscribers’ own judgment. Here’s a categorized list of phrases worth avoiding, and what to write instead.