The Hottest Email and SMS Marketing Trends for Summer 2025
When it comes to staying competitive in the email and SMS marketing space, you need to stay ahead of the latest trends. From new technology and marketing platforms to the changing needs of what people want out of the channels, it’s all important to stay on top of the most recent trends.
In this article, we’ll take a look at a few of the hottest trends you can expect to see in email and SMS marketing this summer.
Here’s a quick look at the trends we’ll cover:
- Provide subscribers with a more relevant email experience through micro-segmentation
- Improving the mobile experience of email marketing
- Use triggered emails to create re-engagement campaigns to win back inactive customers
- Continued adoption of SMS by consumers
- Cross-selling opportunities through SMS messages
- Increase traffic to your website with SMS messages
Email Marketing Trends
For most companies, email marketing is a critical communication channel through which they connect with their audiences. It provides an avenue to quickly and easily share company updates, new product launches, special sales and discounts, and so much more.
It’s also a channel that we become so comfortable with that we often forget we need to continue iterating and improving the strategy. Since it’s something we do every day, it’s easy to get stuck in our ways and neglect to improve as new trends emerge.
However, staying ahead of the ever-changing trends in the email marketing industry will help give you a competitive advantage and keep your customers interested in your content. Whether it’s new technology or ways to serve your audiences better – you’ll want to keep an eye on these email trends.
Provide Subscribers With More Relevant Email Experiences Through Micro-Segmentation
Audience segmentation is a vital part of your email marketing strategy – so why not take it a step further?
With segmentation, you can increase the relevancy of the content you’re sending to your audiences. It helps businesses provide more personalized experiences at scale and ensures that your audiences receive content and offers that apply to their needs.
Having a solid segmentation strategy in place will help you create more compelling content and, in return, see higher engagement and conversion rates.
But what if you could fine-tune these segments a step further? Micro-segmentation gives you the tools you need to do just that.
Micro-segmentation follows the same general idea as regular segmentation. You’re still grouping audiences based on their similarities, but micro-segmentation makes it even more granular.
By digging deeper into the data you have on your customers, you can begin to identify new opportunities through micro-segmentation. It goes beyond the standard demographic information and gets into the details of who people are shopping for, why they are shopping, and how they are shopping, and uses all of that to develop highly engaging campaigns. Image courtesy of WebEngage.
Having this level of insight into your customer’s needs and how they’re interacting with your company will give you the tools you need to create highly effective emails.
For example, you may already have segments that identify the types of products your customers are interested in – let’s say, video games. You may also have data that tells you their age and geographical location, and all of these things are likely built into your existing segments.
But when you dig deeper, you can start to find even more helpful data, such as the last time someone purchased a game, how many people are leaving items behind in their shopping cart, and the types of games they’ve purchased in the past.
These data, in addition to your standard segmentation data, can help you to create highly engaging content. The more relevant and engaging the content is, the more likely it is that someone will click the email and convert.
Improving the Mobile Experience of Email Marketing
According to 99 Firms, mobile phones are used as emailing devices by 1.7 billion people.
This means that you can’t ignore how your emails display and work on mobile devices. When people receive an email that has a poor mobile experience or doesn’t work on their device, they’re much less likely to engage with the company.
There are a variety of things you can do to help better optimize your emails for the mobile experience. Things like decreasing the amount of text you’re using, creating a single-column format, and making CTA buttons easier to see and click can set your email campaigns up for success when viewed on a mobile device. Image courtesy of SparkPost.
Mobile email use has been growing in recent years, so this is likely something that is already on your radar, but now’s the perfect time to improve your mobile experience.
Here are a few tips that can help you improve your mobile email experience:
- Know what devices and email clients your customers are using and make sure your emails appear correctly on them
- Use short subject lines, so the content doesn’t get cut off when viewed on a mobile device
- Break content up into smaller, more scannable chunks to help the reader digest the content
- Make sure that all images are fully optimized to improve loading times
- When creating CTAs, make sure to remember that people will be clicking them with a finger and not a mouse, larger CTAs are easier to click with a finger
The use of mobile devices to read and send emails isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, so it’s essential to keep the mobile experience in mind. Spending a little extra time creating your campaigns to ensure everything looks and functions properly will result in more effective campaigns.
Use Triggered Emails to Create Re-Engagement Campaigns to Win Back Inactive Customers
No matter how often you connect with your audiences or share coupon codes to lure them back to your website, there will always be a number of customers who become inactive.
While it’s frustrating to see the metrics around how many customers have been inactive with your email marketing efforts, it also presents you with an opportunity. You can set triggered email campaigns based on how long the customer has been inactive to encourage them to engage with your content.
Re-engagement campaigns are a great way to connect with customers who haven’t been actively engaging with your content in recent months. It allows you to provide them with a bit of extra incentive and let them know what they’re missing out on by skimming over your other emails.
Generally, re-engagement campaigns are sent to someone when they have not interacted with emails in a specified timeframe. Once that timeframe has been met, the re-engagement campaign is triggered and encourages the customer to become active with special offers or content.
Why is this type of campaign so important? Because it’s much cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one, and even just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits from 25-95%.
Using trigger emails to create re-engagement campaigns is a great way to win back inactive customers and increase your profits without having to spend time or money trying to find new customers.
4 Email Marketing Platforms Platforms
To make the most out of your email marketing efforts, you’ll want to have the right tools in place. From making it easier to build mobile-optimized emails to having a place to store all of your data and create micro-segmented experiences – the platform you use can make all the difference.
This section will provide you with a few platforms that can help you achieve your email marketing goals and simplify the process. Each platform has its own unique features and capabilities, but all will give you the tools you need to improve your email efforts.
1. Listrak
Listrak is a cross-channel marketing platform that has all of the tools you’ll need to take your email marketing to the next level. This platform has everything you need, from the simplified email builder tool to the highly personalized segmentation capabilities.
Get to know your customers and use that data to create emails that pique their interest and bring them back to your website. By understanding the types of content or products they’re most interested in, you can send highly relevant content that is much more likely to convert.
Email Marketing Capabilities:
- Easily create emails with the mobile experience in mind with the drag-and-drop responsive email designer tool
- Integrate dynamically personalized AI-driven predictive content and products to your customers based on their micro-segmentation data
- Use triggered emails to automate emails based on real-time customer data such as re-engagement and cart abandonment campaigns
- Better understand the future needs of your customers and provide them with relevant content and product offerings through predictive analytics
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Listrak has helped us to efficiently and effectively increase our subscriber list through email and onsite methods. GXP has been incredible in turning up our acquisition efforts.” – Listrak Customer Testimonial
2. EmailOctopus
With the EmailOctopus platform, you’ll have access to powerful tools that can help you grow your business through email marketing campaigns. Whether you’re looking for a platform that makes growing your subscriber list simple or one that enables you to send the right message to the right people – EmailOctopus can help you achieve your goals.
The more you know about your customers, the better campaigns you can create. Having the correct data will allow you to create highly personalized content that resonates with each customer and makes them more likely to make a purchase.
Email Marketing Capabilities:
- Simplify the email creation process by using predesigned templates or creating emails in the drag-and-drop editing environment
- Use customer data and insights to create highly targeted segments to ensure you’re getting the right message to the right person
- Continue to grow your subscriber list and learn more about your audiences through customized forms and landing pages
- Create automated trigger campaigns that engage with your customers based on their real-time behaviors and interactions
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Automated workflows help us set up great onboarding emails for new joiners.” – EmailOctopus Customer Testimonial
3. Drip
Drip is an email marketing platform that is designed for growing eCommerce brands. It has everything you need to get to know your customers and use those insights to build stronger relationships and drive revenue growth.
The Drip platform will make it simple to create triggered email campaigns designed to re-engagement your customers who have been inactive in recent months. With the automated workflow, you can set up these campaigns and let them run on their own until you’re ready to make an update.
Email Marketing Capabilities:
- Simplify the email creation process by using pre-built templates and the point-and-click visual editor
- Easily automate your trigger campaigns with pre-built playbooks that include things like welcome series, abandoned cart emails, re-engagement campaigns, and more
- Use real customer data to create more personalized experiences that change as the needs of your customers do
- Improve your email marketing efforts with testing tools that allow you to learn what works best with your audiences and integrate that into future emails
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Drip is a comprehensive email marketing platform that is very easy to use. I found it easy to import a customer list and to set up workflows, including abandoned cart emails and welcome emails for new subscribers.” – Drip Customer Testimonial
4. Moosend
The Moosend, email marketing platform will provide you with the tools you need to create successful campaigns. You can take your email campaigns to the next level and see higher engagement metrics with the right customer insights and capabilities.
Personalization is an important element in email marketing. It will help your content stand out and speak to the customer. With a tool like Moosend, creating these personalized experiences can be simplified and automatically integrated into your campaigns.
Email Marketing Capabilities:
- Use their drag and drop email editor to easily create professional emails that encourage customers to click through to learn more
- Improve the customer experience by creating highly personalized content with the help of segmentation and audience behavior tracking
- Automate your campaigns to make it even easier to connect and engage with customers based on their changing needs
- Test emails to ensure that you’re sending the most relevant content and see how different elements of the message perform
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Moosend is a user-friendly professional platform with a great support team. And the most incredible thing is that it’s cost efficient. Thank you Moosend for making my life easier” – Moosend Customer Testimonial
SMS Marketing Trends
SMS marketing is a great way to reach your customers on their already most active devices. It will allow you to get your message in front of your audiences and help you drive them back to your website to increase traffic and sales.
Using text marketing is a great way for you to improve your customer’s communication and give yourself a competitive advantage over other companies that may not have used the channel yet.
The trends in SMS marketing are always changing, and it’s important to stay ahead of them. In this section, we’ll take a look at a number of trends that you’ll want to keep an eye on this summer and integrate into your own strategy.
Continued Adoption of SMS by Consumers
Your customers are already using their mobile devices to connect with their friends and family, so why wouldn’t they want to use them to communicate with the brands they love?
The truth is that they do want the brands they love to contact them via text messages. In fact, 93% of consumers want to communicate via text message with the businesses they are interested in.
SMS usage is only expected to continue to grow in the coming years. As more people start to interact with the companies, they follow via text messages. You’ll want to make sure you’re a player in the game and provide your audiences with a positive experience. Image courtesy of SMS Comparison.
That’s why the continued adoption of SMS by consumers is on our trend list. It’s something that your customers are going to continue to want, and as other brands start to provide good SMS experiences, they’ll want to interact this way even more.
There are many different ways to use SMS to connect with your audiences and provide them with a meaningful experience. It can be to share company updates, sales and promotions, order status updates, or even be used as a customer service tool.
As consumers start to see the value in having access to the information they want and need right on their smartphones, the need for more SMS communication will continue to grow. That’s why now is the perfect time to start finding ways to improve your strategy and make the most out of every interaction.
Cross-Selling Opportunities Through SMS Messages
Another trend to tap into in the SMS marketing space is identifying cross-selling opportunities.
When you consider that text messages have a 99% open rate and that 95% are read within three minutes – you have a higher chance of converting and driving sales with SMS messages.
While email is an extremely valuable marketing tool, your messages can get lost in the sea of emails your customers receive every day. This isn’t the case for SMS messages, meaning you may be able to produce more revenue from cross-selling via text.
Cross-selling is something you can integrate into several different SMS campaigns. You can add popular products to welcome emails, relevant products to abandoned cart messages, or recommended products on transactional messages.
Including cross-selling into your SMS marketing strategy will allow you to drive customers to other products on your site that they may be interested in. It’s a great way to keep customers moving through the sales funnel and give them product recommendations based on their interests. Image courtesy of Yotpo.
Using customer data and predictive technology will help you identify and serve the most relevant products to your audiences. This will ensure the products are of interest to the customer, and you’re not just serving up random items that they would have no interest in.
By strategically integrating cross-selling into your mobile marketing strategy, you can drive more people back to your website and increase sales.
Increase Traffic to Your Website With SMS Messages
SMS messages are a great way to send customers back to your website and can be a valuable tool for increasing website traffic. That is because over 50% of global website traffic is generated through mobile devices.
People use their mobile devices to visit the websites they frequent and purchase the products they need. More than half of the global website traffic is coming from mobile devices, and that number will likely continue to grow as more people start to adopt SMS messaging. Image courtesy of Oberlo.
When you send a text message to your customers, you should always include a link to your website. This gives the customer a direct link to your site easily accessible on their phone.
Since people are so accustomed to browsing and shopping on mobile devices, this will make it easy for them to click through and visit your website right from that message. SMS messages also make it simple to track how many people click the links and go to your website to gain insights into how well the campaigns perform.
It’s important to remember that you’ll want to use customer data to determine what content makes sense for each audience and don’t just spam people in hopes of driving them back to your website.
When done right, creating SMS marketing campaigns that are relevant to your customer needs will result in more clicks to your website – resulting in increased traffic metrics. If one of your main goals this summer is to find ways to drive more people to your site and increase traffic, then you’ll want to integrate SMS into your strategy.
4 SMS Marketing Platforms
There are many platforms available that can help you make the most out of each message you send when it comes to SMS marketing. From making it easier to create and send messages to ensuring you’re integrating personalization and product recommendations – having the right platform is important to the success of your campaigns.
Similar to email, in this section, we’ll provide you with a few platforms that can help you achieve your SMS marketing goals and simplify the process. Each platform has its own unique features and capabilities, but all will give you the tools you need to improve your SMS efforts.
1. Listrak
The Listrak platform is not only a great email marketing option tool, but it also has all of the capabilities you’ll need to create successful SMS campaigns as well. Whether you’re looking for a platform that makes it easy to create and send texts or allows you to create highly complex campaigns – Listrak has what you need.
Adding personalized touches to your text marketing strategy can be simple when you have the right tools. Let your customers know you’re thinking about them and send SMS messages that pull in the personal touches that make all the difference.
SMS Marketing Capabilities:
- Easily connect with your customers through broadcast and triggered SMS messages that are personalized based on each customer’s data
- Integrate cross-selling opportunities into all of your SMS marketing campaigns with product recommendations and predictive technology
- Drive customers back to your website to increase traffic and encourage people to complete a purchase
- Create automated, triggered campaigns such as welcome series, abandoned cart, low inventory, back in stock, and more
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Listrak’s ability to trigger customer messages based on preferred devices, all within one platform, has outperformed previous vendors.” – Listrak Customer Testimonial
2. ManyChat
ManyChat is a messaging platform that will allow you to manage your messaging needs, including SMS, from one centralized platform. With this tool, you can do everything from integrating personalization into each message to creating automated drip campaigns that nurture audiences and encourage them to purchase.
Give your customers the personalized experience they want. You can easily create messages that dynamically pull in customer data to provide a highly relevant message. From order updates to special offers, it can all be done with this tool.
SMS Marketing Capabilities:
- Create SMS messages that let your customers know about upcoming sales, take advantage of discounts and coupons, and more
- Send personalized messages with the help of segmentation that provides customers with relevant content, reminds them about upcoming appointments, and more
- Improve the customer experience by using 2-way text conversations that let your customers talk to someone via Live Chat
- Create drip campaigns that nurture customers over time and move them towards completing a purchase
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“When it comes to looking at lead generation and growing business, you can use automation to save yourself time, pre-qualify people, and talk to the right person at the right time, with the right message.” – ManyChat Customer Testimonial
3. SlickText
SlickText is a text marketing platform with everything you’ll need to manage your SMS campaigns from one central location. From growing your list and managing your contacts to increasing engagement and automating processes – SlickText can do it all.
Make every interaction with your customers count. SMS messaging is a great channel to connect with your customers through loyalty campaigns and share special offers and discounts to help them save.
SMS Marketing Capabilities:
- Grow your subscriber list and reach more customers through text to join campaigns, website opt-in forms, QR code opt-ins, and more
- Connect with your customers through mass texts and create more personalized messages that talk to people on an individual level
- Use 2-way texting to communicate with your customers in real-time and improve customer service and experience
- Create automated workflows that move people through their purchasing journey and simplify the campaign management process
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Implementing SlickText had an immediate and dramatic impact on revenue. We saw a 45% increase in monthly sales from text marketing alone.” – SlickText Customer Testimonial
4. Attentive
The Attentive platform is a comprehensive text message marketing solution that can help your business build stronger customer relationships and drive revenue increases. It has everything eCommerce businesses need to grow their brand and communicate with their customers.
Creating SMS marketing campaigns is made simple with this platform. You can easily integrate personal touches into the messaging and drive customers back to your website with product recommendations and easily accessible links.
SMS Marketing Capabilities:
- Create a personalized text marketing experience that allows you to target your customers with specific content based on their needs
- Send messages that resonate with your customers at all stages of the customer journey, from discovery through conversion
- Grow your subscriber list and continue reaching new audiences and nurturing them into loyal fans
- Track and analyze the success of your SMS marketing campaigns to identify areas of opportunity and improvement for future efforts
What Their Customers Are Saying:
“Attentive has become an incredibly important part of our brand’s digital strategy and overall revenue growth. The platform’s capabilities and the team’s expertise in the text messaging space are both incredible and have been integral to our success.” – Attentive Customer Testimonial
Take Your Email and SMS Marketing to the Next Level This Summer
Staying ahead of the trends in email and SMS marketing will help set your business up for success. It will allow you to remain agile and shift your strategy as things change and new ideas or regulations are introduced.
Keeping tabs on any new technology or changing needs of your customers will allow you to create a highly effective marketing strategy that produces high engagement and revenue metrics.
So, if you’re looking for ways to improve your email and SMS marketing, you’ll want to consider tapping into these summer trends.