Email Marketing in 2025: Why Nobody’s Reading Your Newsletters

If you’re responsible for marcomms in your organisation, you’re likely seeing a significant drop in email campaign stats and you’re not sure how to improve ROI.

The drop you’re seeing represents a shift in how business audiences (that’s us) engage with digital communications. We’re all too busy, and our inboxes are full of emails that we just don’t get time to read.

So, if this sounds like you, you could well be stuck in the email marketing world of 2010, so let’s bring you up to speed.

The inbox battlefield of 2025 is absolutely brutal. We’ve gone from “You’ve Got Mail!” excitement to the soul-destroying ritual of mass-deleting promotional junk with our morning coffee. Your carefully crafted newsletter is fighting for attention against 120+ other emails landing in your prospect’s inbox daily.

Think About How Your Audience Feels

Time for some tough love:

1. Nobody gives a flying-fig about your company updates - That quarterly recap featuring Dave from accounting? In the bin.
2. Subject lines like “April Newsletter” scream “MARKETING ROBOT”. Bore off.
3. Your email is a carbon copy of your competitor’s - Same template, different logo, same delete button.
4. Your content strategy is corporate vanity - “But our CEO really wanted to share his thoughts on industry trends!” Unfortunately nobody cares.

Let’s Start By Fixing The Technical Stuff Before You Try Anything Else

All the snazzy copywriting in the world means nothing if your emails are getting trapped in a users spam folder. Here’s what you need to do to fix it.

Set Up Your Email Domain DNS Configuration Correctly

• SPF Records: Your shield against impersonation.
• DKIM: Your digital signature that proves authenticity.
• DMARC: Your enforcement policy that tells inbox providers what to do with suspicious emails.

If setting up DKIM makes you want to throw your laptop out the window, you’re not alone. But skipping it is like sending emails with a “Please Send to Spam” header. Most email service providers (including HubSpot) make this relatively painless now.

Check Your Config Using An Online Checker

If you want to verify your technical setup is correct try these online apps:

• Mail-Tester.com: Send an email to their generated address and get an instant score out of 10. It’s like having your email graded by the world’s pickiest teacher.
• GlockApps.com: See exactly where your emails land (inbox, promotions, spam) across multiple providers. Perfect for proving to your boss that emails aren’t all in spam... mostly.
• MXToolbox.com: The Swiss Army knife of email configuration testing. Spectacularly unsexy but will save you from technical disasters.
• SenderScore.org: Like a credit score for your sending reputation. Anything below 80 and you might want to consider a career change.

Are Your Images Killing Your Results?

Your pixel-perfect, designer-approved email graphics might be the very reason your campaigns are bombing. Here’s why:

1. Email clients are still living in 2010 - Some block images by default, turning your visual masterpiece into a sad collection of empty boxes with red Xs
2. Images tank your load times - While you’re thinking “brand experience,” your prospect is thinking “why is this taking so long to open?”
3. Spam filters HATE your image-heavy emails - High image-to-text ratios are practically begging to be filtered faster than a dodgy LinkedIn request

When To Include Images In Emails

Don’t sack your designer just yet. Images can work when:

• You’re showcasing a physical product (obviously)
• Illustrating a concept that’s genuinely clearer with visuals
• Adding subtle personality with a small team photo or signature
• Creating custom graphics that deliver actual information (not just decorative fluff)

The 2025 Email Marketing Playbook

With your technical foundation on solid footing, let’s focus on what people actually want in 2025:

1. Micro-Value Emails

Stop bundling 17 different topics into one newsletter monstrosity. Instead, deliver one clear, actionable insight per email. Short, valuable, and impossible to ignore.

2. Conversational Over Corporate

Be human. Write like you’re messaging a colleague, not preparing a quarterly earnings report.

3. Pattern Interruption

When everyone zigs, you zag. Try text-only emails. Send at unexpected times. Use subject lines that trigger curiosity rather than screaming promotion.

4. List Segmentation

Blasting your entire list with the same content is bad form in 2025. But here’s the twist, don’t just segment by demographics or company size. Segment by problem being solved so that the information has more relevancy to your reader.

Try Plain Text Emails

Some of the highest-performing emails right now are... plain text. No images. No fancy formatting. Just valuable words that look like they came from an actual human being.

Why? Because they don’t look like marketing. They look like communication.

The ‘Email Marketers 4-Step Sanity Check’

If you’re not sure about your email strategy, try my quick sanity check:

1. Would YOU actually look forward to receiving your own email?
2. If your email didn’t have your logo, would recipients still know it’s from you?
3. Could your recipient extract value in 30 seconds or less?
4. Have you properly configured your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC?

Four “no” answers? Time for an email intervention.

The Bottom Line

The most successful email marketers of 2025 aren’t creating “email marketing”, they’re creating valuable experiences that happen to be delivered through properly configured email channels.

The key takeaway is to stop blending in. Your audience’s inbox is already full of forgettable content from your competitors. Be the email they actually want to open, and the one that actually makes it to their inbox in the first place.

What’s your biggest email marketing challenge right now? Let me know, I’m actually reading these responses. (And yes, my DNS is properly configured.)