If you want your emails to stand out in 2025’s crowded inboxes, keep reading.

I’m Kay Peacey, your guide to the exciting and profitable world of email marketing, and today we’re diving into the top Email Trends for 2025.

You should care about these email marketing predictions for 2025 because:

• You want your emails to be noticed, read and acted on
• You’re tired of your emails being ignored or dumped in spam
• You’re ready to make more money from your email marketing effort

Email in 2025 will be all about beating the AI bots that flood our inboxes – and that means adding your human touch, a little fun, and a lot of enthusiastic engagement to your emails.

Here’s the breakdown, featuring my Email Word of the Year for 2025: Playful

And remember to think PIG on those email trends for 2025 – Personal > Interactive > Gamified!

Follow these 6 steps to get ahead on Email Marketing Trends for 2025

Watch Kay Peacey on the biggest Email Marketing Trends coming in 2025 – 10 mins

Try ActiveCampaign now with a two week free trial

P is for Personal – Learn why you should be the antithesis of AI in your emails

The volume of emails is staggering – 3 billion emails are sent every second, with every inbox receiving about 120 emails daily. To cut through this noise and make sure your email gets opened, you need to stand out as a human, not a robot AI.

Luckily, that’s pretty easy for actual humans – we’re unique, quirky and special – and the smaller your team, the easier it is to let that shine through into your emails.

Why Being Personal Matters in Email Marketing

In a digital age dominated by marteting automation tech and AI bots, personalization isn’t enough. Using someone’s name in the subject line and greeting is just scratching the surface – all the AI Bots doing it have devalued the impact drastically.

You need to go way deeper to show that there’s a human behind your messages, to build trust, authenticity, and real human to human connection.

Four Easy Ways to Get Personal in your Marketing Emails in 2025

• Human Stories: Share anecdotes and experiences that show your human self
• Human Senders: Use real names instead of generic sender name and sender email address
• Human Faces: The most simple personal email win there is – show a headshot in your email
• Humans who Reply to Replies: Enjoy conversations with your subscribers whenever they reply

Visit our FREE Facebook Group now
The safe place to freak out and geek out about Email & Automation + ActiveCampaign

I is for Interactive – Discover why More Fun means More Email Clicks

Every inbox is inundated with mass-produced, boring emails. To stand out, invite people to interact with your email marketing content in a way that tickles the fun-loving human part of their brain.

Why Email Clicks Matter

Interactive emails are brilliant at capturing attention and to improve email deliverability rates. The more your audience clicks and interacts with each email, the better you will look to the tech behind the inboxes, and the more likely it is your emails will get delivered.

Four Ways to Make Your Emails Interactive in 2025

• Hover Effects: Add elements that change when hovered over
• Webpage-like Design: Use internal menus and add movement with gifs
• Interactive Campaigns: Create choose-your-own-adventure email series
• Embedded Games or Puzzles: Make your emails a fun experience rather than just another skim-read

Why ActiveCampaign is the Best Choice for Email in 2025

The Email Designer in ActiveCampaign has hands down the best interactive features on the market. And they’re included with every plan level from Starter to Enterprise.

Making email fun, and having fun making emails, has never been easier!

Try ActiveCampaign now with a two week free trial

Grab your FREE Email Deliverability Action Plan

G is for Gamified – How to Make Email Feel Like Play

Gamification is everywhere, but email marketing has been left out of the game.

In 2025, that’s going to change. Email is getting picked for team Gamify!

Why Gamification for Emails Matters

Gamification taps into our instinct to take part, compete and win. It makes engaging with email just the right sort of addictive, and drives higher engagement rates.

How to Gamify Your Emails in 2025

• Streak Badges: Award badges for consecutive weeks of email opens
• Reply Badges: Celebrate subscribers who get a conversation started
• Rankings: Show subscribers where they rank on email engagement, motivating them to climb higher
• Challenges and Mini-Games: Include mini challenges in your emails to keep readers awake and clicking regularly

Learn How to Gamify Emails Using ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign gives you a huge playground of automation features to play with, so you can count, measure, reward and rank easily.

For Plus, Pro and Enterprise in ActiveCampaign, you can do pretty much any gamification you please using the features you already have – no need to pay for extra third party tools.

There are a few tricks that make gamification easy using the ActiveCampaign Email Designer and the automation features. I’d love to show you how in our ActiveCampaign Academy – details here for immediate access to course, resources, live consult calls and a vibrant community.

Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere

Kay Peacey’s Email MarketingWord Of The Year 2025 is… Playful!

It’s long overdue, but here it comes – Email is about to embrace its Playful spirit – Hooray!!

The overarching trend for 2025 in email marketing is to be more playful – and I’m so here for it.

Why Playfulness Matters in Your Email Marketing in 2025

As the volume of AI generated content continues to dominate inboxes, human touches like humour, fun, and creativity will really set your emails apart. It’s about making the inbox relationship with you a place where your subscribers want to spend their time.

Playful Email is all about delivering the dopamine hit all humans crave – the one they will keep coming back for, over and over, with a smile on their face.

Three Ways to Get Playful in your Email Marketing for 2025

• Add Humor and Creativity: Scatter your emails with light-hearted human-centred content
• Celebrate Your Audience: Acknowledge and reward your subscribers’ email engagement
• Enjoy the Process: When you have fun creating your emails, it shows – your subscribers will feel that energy too

Bringing these trends into your email marketing for 2025 will elevate your email marketing strategy, driving more engagement and, ultimately, more revenue from email.

Ready to put these email strategies into action?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments over at our YouTube Channel, and subscribe for more tips and insights to supercharge your email marketing in 2025!

Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere

FAQ: what will the big email marketing trends be in 2025

What does it mean to make email “personal” rather than just “personalized”?

• Personal
  Genuine human connection and stories
• Personalized
  Automated, superficial customization like inserting the recipient’s first name

How do I make my emails more interactive so they’re on trend in 2025?

• Hover effects
  Elements change when moused-over
• Webpage-like designs
  Internal menus, gifs, and hidden elements
• Series adventures
  Emails that guide users through engaging journeys

What are some easy gamification tactics I can use in my email marketing for 2025?

• Streak badges
  For consistent email opens
• Reply badges
  For frequent respondents
• Click rankings
  Show recipient’s rank based on interactions

Why should small businesses pay attention to these email marketing trends?

• Easier personalization
  Small teams can personalize more easily
• Trust advantage
  Smaller businesses can build closer, more genuine relationships

Sign up for Email Marketing Strategy tips from Slick Business

Get more Help with your Strategic Email Marketing

In the ActiveCampaign Academy we support every step of successful email marketing, from strategy, to getting it done, to making sure it’s converting into revenue.

If you’re an ActiveCampaign user come on in to the ActiveCampaign Academy today and you’ll have Kay Peacey and the Slick Business team by your side to guide you every step of the way to Email Marketing success with ActiveCampaign.

Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere