New Year, New Resolutions: Email Marketing Goals for 2025

“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 9 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 brand and customer 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 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 at 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. Lacking certain email list cleaning foundations? Check out this comprehensive guide to clear the air.

2. Get informed about upcoming privacy updates

Privacy regulations are ever evolving. You need to stay ahead of the curve to keep your email marketing efforts compliant and your customers safe in 2025. Wondering how?

First off, Google and Yahoo have announced stricter DMARC, SPF, and DKIM policies to decrease phishing attacks. At the same time, Gmail and Yahoo will update their algorithm to send non-compliant email messages straight to the spam folder. AI will also prevail in email compliance and security. It will identify risks faster and will help marketers save their deliverability and time simultaneously.

Overall, to keep your customer relationships trustworthy, enhance your data privacy measures and inform subscribers about it. Tell them how you’ll treat that information, especially if you’re hyper-personalizing your email campaigns. As we feel in real life with strangers, some consumers may feel intruded when receiving hyper-personalized campaigns without giving their permission.

Finally, conduct regular and adopt privacy-centric practices, including encryption and secure servers. And remember, the more nuanced your privacy business goals are, the higher the customer loyalty and engagement will be.

3. Leverage the power of AI assistants

Over the past year, AI assistants such as ChatGPT and its counterparts, gradually started taking ground. Marketers started using them to enhance their copywriting and ideation. From asking suggestions for email subject lines and CTAs to information about certain industries, AI contributed to more effective email campaigns.

Many email marketing services, including Moosend, offer AI writers to help marketers with copywriting tasks and save them time without compromising quality. But to use their capabilities to the max, you need to generate the right AI email marketing prompts.

Watch this step-by-step tutorial to sharpen your prompts and deliver even more creative and targeted email newsletters this year:

However, keep in mind that you’re in charge of AI, not vice versa. Use it to help you in certain tasks but continue investing in authentic copywriting and ideas. The human element will always win.

Are you looking forward to trying out new AI tools? Sign up for a Moosend account or request a month for free to test out the AI-powered features and power up your storytelling.

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4. Adopt zero-party data strategies

In 2025, 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 can be helpful, they’re prone to biases. So, requiring data directly from consumers will be a better 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?

To ensure that your products or services remain valuable and relevant this year, you can also request feedback through follow-up emails when a purchase is completed. Plus, many businesses offer incentives, such as freebies, in exchange for personal information.

Giveaways are also a great option to consider, especially when you’ve just launched a new product. Share those contests on social media as well to gain more traction.

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 to the game–if you don’t already do– and upgrade your automation workflows to deliver even more time-bound emails.

To make the most of these segmentation tactics, you’ll need an email marketing tool with top-notch marketing automation features to set them up easily. If your software is limiting you, read this guide to help you find an alternative and kick off the new year with smart tech stack.

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 customer engagement will be. Reap the benefits of that trust by setting up a referral program or strengthening your current one to bring new customers on board.

“OK, but how will they know?” Send dedicated email campaigns with an appealing subject line and a powerful call-to-action to tell 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 the attention of customers 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 by 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. Combine email with SMS for better outreach

While email marketing is highly profitable, resorting to other marketing channels as well can bring better results this year. Combine email with SMS marketing to expand your outreach and convert your audience where they usually hang out.

You don’t need to deliver every campaign via SMS. Instead, set specific goals for this complementary channel and track them down the line. For instance, use it for time-bound communications, such as flash sales, exclusive offers, and appointment scheduling. Or leverage segmentation tactics and nudge customers who usually open SMS messages compared to emails.

You can also set up automation workflows and triggered messages after certain customer actions. And create a consistent branding experience to help readers recognize your communications on every channel.

Remember, you need to get their opt-in first before texting them to be fully compliant. And don’t worry about budgeting too much. With the right tools, it’s a cost-effective digital marketing approach that can work miracles.

9. 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:

• Moosend’s eCommerce email marketing: For beginners in eCommerce and small business email marketing.
• 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 like to 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.