New Year, New Resolutions: Email Marketing Goals for 2026

“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” – Meister Eckhart

As we roll into the new year, it’s time to reflect and set some fresh email marketing goals. What will make your email marketing campaigns shine this year? And how will you connect with your target audience genuinely to boost your metrics?

So, grab a hot beverage, get comfortable, and let’s explore 8 email marketing strategies based on the latest trends and expert resources. You don’t need to follow them step-by-step, just choose the ones that make sense to you according to your needs.

1. Revamp your email list cleaning practices

Just like a new year inspires us to declutter our homes and minds, it’s the perfect time to tidy up your subscriber lists, too. This will give your email deliverability and sender reputation a great boost, which will ultimately lead to elevated campaign performance.

Here are some suggestions to improve your email list hygiene:

• Remove inactive subscribers and hard bounces: Set a regular schedule, every 3-4 months, to clean up invalid or inactive email addresses reducing significant metrics, such as open rates.
• Use a double opt-in process: Ask new subscribers to verify their email addresses before adding them to your email lists.
• Plan re-engagement campaigns: Nudge inactive customers with win-back content, such as freebies or incentives, and remove them from your list if they don’t reply.
• Use a preference center: Let subscribers update their preferences easily to serve them with relevant content.
• Make unsubscribe easy: Place unsubscribe buttons in the email footer to help disengaged subscribers opt out fast.

If you already follow these tactics successfully, give yourself a nice pat on the back and keep up the great effort.

Further reading:

• Email List Cleaning Best Practices & Services
• Best Email Deliverability Tools
• The Invisible Deliverability Killers Marketers Ignore

2. Get informed about upcoming privacy updates

Privacy regulations are ever evolving. To keep your email marketing efforts compliant and your customers safe in 2026, you need to stay ahead of the curve. Wondering how?

First off, GDPR compliance is going to become even stricter. Customers email opt-in must be verifiable and freely given, making simple, one-step signups a thing of the past. Cross-border data transfer from EU/UK are also going to face more scrutiny. Plus, marketers will need to disclose when their content or profiling is AI-generated or heavily automated versus human-made. Transparency is key.

New CCPA/CPRA regulations are becoming effective as of January 1, 2026, giving customers more control over the usage of their personal information. Consumers should be able to easily confirm the status of their opt-out of selling or sharing their personal information.

Also, Sensitive Personal Information will now include personal data from consumers under the age of 16. Businesses will need to conduct thorough risk assessment for high-risk activities such as targeted advertising.

As for the CAN-SPAM Action, popular compliance actions continue to be significant. This includes avoiding misleading headers or subject lines, providing clear opt-out methods, and sharing a physical address. Technical safeguards like encryption and secure servers are also essential.

Remember: the more nuanced and protective your privacy business goals are, the higher the customer loyalty and engagement will ultimately be. It’s a win-win.

3. Optimize your AI engine

Over the past year, AI platforms have become our second hand. But in 2026, you can gradually transform AI into a strategic decision-maker by guiding and governing it. It’s not just about content generation and ideation anymore; it can dig into high-level marketing operations and tactics and truly unlock new opportunities, when used appropriately.

Here are some key AI email marketing use cases to explore:

• Hyper-segment your email lists to deliver highly-targeted content to subscribers.
• Boost your copywriting by analyzing which writing styles have worked best in previous campaigns.
• Brainstorm fresh ideas and content angles to deliver compelling, never-before-seen emails.
• Improve deliverability by actively detecting spam triggers, bounce patterns, and other critical issues.
• Generate design assets, such as responsive email templates and layouts, for both desktop and mobile.
• Secure compliance with significant privacy regulations, such as GDPR and the CAN-SPAM Act.

However, be cautious. Global AI regulations have been established to protect consumers, especially from the relentless use of their personal information for selling. Be transparent of the practices you use to protect both your business and your customers.

Moreover, ensure that AI doesn’t subtly alter your brand’s voice over time. To avoid this, you need to outline and document your brand guidelines. Then, train AI with your existing content to help it grasp your core voice, even including nuances and specific phrases. This is how you maintain consistency across all your channels.

Finally, remember that many email marketing services let you streamline some of these processes with built-in AI features. No need to transfer your data elsewhere, you can complete your strategic tasks right on the spot.

Try Moosend’s AI

Further reading:

• How to Use ChatGPT to Write Emails
• AI Burnout in Marketing: The High Cost of Chasing Productivity

4. Adopt zero-party data strategies

In 2026, marketing personalization will continue to be a priority for businesses. Consumers will continue to be drawn to targeted emails, so upgrading your customer data collection would be a wise email marketing goal for the new year.

While widely used first- and third-party data tactics have been helpful in the past, a big change is coming. This year, customer email opt-in must be verifiable, or you could face significant fines. So, requiring data directly from consumers will be a safer cut-through, leveraging the so-called zero-party data tactics.

Use multiple assets, such as quizzes, surveys, and polls to collect data straight from the main source, to deliver more targeted messages to customer and prospects.

Check out this example by Harry’s to get inspired:

Subject line: Quiz: What’s your ideal skin-care setup?

5. Provide valuable, data-informed email content

Even though many eCommerce and SaaS businesses have improved their customer data collection process, making good use of this data is a whole different story.

To make the most of email segmentation, a great email marketing objective for the new year is revisiting your buyer personas and mapping the average customer journey. Then, determine what type of content each email subscriber subgroup would love to receive to nurture them effectively.

You can also refine or set up behaviorally triggered email types, which usually receive high click-through rates and conversions. Here are some examples:

• Abandoned cart emails
• Cross-sell/Upsell emails
• Product recommendation campaigns
• Post-purchase follow-ups

What else can you achieve in this area, besides streamlining common tactics such as A/B testing and metrics analysis? Consider adding dynamic content and AI to the game, and upgrade your automation workflows to deliver even more time-bound emails.

6. Follow sustainable email marketing tactics

Another great email marketing goal to set for the new year is putting email sustainability high on your agenda. It’s not just good for the environment, but for your email marketing strategy, too.

Apart from sharing your environmental initiatives and certifications to attract like-minded consumers, sustainable email marketing includes practices such as segmentation and personalization.

For example, instead of sending bulk messages that will probably lead to low email open rates and spam complaints, create targeted campaigns based on demographics or customer preferences to pivot your metrics.

Keeping an eye on your email frequency is also vital. Collect relevant information through an updated preference center to cater to your subscribers’ needs. Ask them what content they’d like to receive from you to keep them hooked and reduce unsubscribe rates.

Finally, build more compact email campaigns to reduce loading times and improve user experience. To save time, source HTML email templates from well-known email marketing platforms or well-known builders such as Stripo.

7. Invest in loyalty and referral programs

Loyal customers are a business’s greatest resource. Capitalize on trusted and long-lasting relationships through customer retention initiatives, such as loyalty programs. Offer incentives, such as coupons or discounts based on certain milestones. If you already have a loyalty program, have a look at what other competitors do to outpace them.

Overall, the more excited your customers feel about your brand and incentives, the higher their engagement will be. Reap the benefits of that trust by setting up a referral program or strengthening your existing one to bring new customers on board. Create a dedicated email campaign with an appealing subject line and a powerful call-to-action to inform them. Sharing an incentive with both parties is a great practice to meet your business objectives in that area.

You can also share your referral program through other emails, such as post-purchase follow-ups to grab customers’ attention while they’re still warmed up after an interaction with your brand. Even when they don’t convert, it will be a good brand awareness boost.

Check out this referral email example from Maude to get inspired. Set the right expectations with a descriptive subject line like this one.

Subject line: Get $5 off for every friend you refer.

8. Expand your email marketing skills

Maintaining an effective email marketing strategy is not always a breeze. The capabilities of this channel change as technology grows. To keep up with this stream, you need to grow your skill set once in a while. If that sounds like a good idea, you just discovered our final email marketing resolution.

Check out these email marketing courses and find what suits you based on your needs:

• Google’s Think Outside the Inbox: For email marketing beginners.
• Hubspot Academy email marketing course: Beginner and intermediate level email marketing skills.
• Skillshare email marketing strategy course: All experience levels, with applications for multiple industries.

If you’re a fan of newsletters and interested in receiving regular email marketing updates, here are our top picks:

• Moosend’s newsletter: Email marketing tutorials, digital marketing tips, product announcements, special offers, etc.
• Litmus newsletter: Email marketing insights, research reports and e-books, webinar announcements, etc.
• Really Good Emails newsletter: Email design tips and campaign inspiration.

And if you fancy some good old reading, check out this list up-to-date list of email marketing books.

New Year, New Email Marketing Goals

Which of the goals above would you prioritize? Is there anything else you’d like to optimize missing from this list? Whatever the answer, we wish you a happy new year, full of email marketing success.

And remember, it won’t be always fun and games. New beginnings require a learning curve, but adopting a growth mindset will help you navigate challenges and build a powerful email marketing engine, against all odds.