Biggest lessons and “aha” moments from 2025 in ethical email marketing, business, and life

2025 moved far too quickly, and also sometimes felt like 12 years encapsulated in one. 

It’s been a challenging year that has stretched me in new and multiple ways, professionally and personally, and also brought a lot of growth my way. 

I’ve tried my best to include as much detail about “the year that was” and a bit about the year ahead, including my top 3 email marketing predictions for 2026 - and I’m sure I've still left out a ton.

With that in mind, let’s get going.

The state of ethical email marketing 

2025 was yet another year when we saw big changes in inbox providers’ requirements, subscribers’ engagement, and technological advancements.

The bottom line is this: Email marketing is hard. And it’s not getting easier either. Having said that, I think there are so many more opportunities to stand out and make a great impact with this channel.

Would AI make email marketers obsolete in 2026? Some of them, maybe. 

But the ones who’d adapt and evolve will remain in demand for years to come, because this channel isn’t going anywhere - no matter how many times folks online keep on chiming “email is dead”.

That’s why I’ve doubled down on deepening my knowledge in human psychology and relationship building, as well as on the technical side of the field (more on the latter in my predictions section).

This past year showed me, yet again, that as much as there’s AI slop and unbelievable noise everywhere - good, intentional businesses are still standing out in the inbox. I believe, fortunately and unfortunately, that we’ll see a lot more of these two “extremes” next year, too.

Before we get into any of my specific predictions of what’s going to happen in the ethical email marketing world in 2026, I’d like to share 3 points that I’ve been talking loads about behind the scenes this year. They’re not new in any way, but I haven’t been as vocal about them as I could be:

1. Even the best email marketing program or strategy can’t save a failing business with bad products/services

For years, bad marketers led business owners to believe that if they just start sending emails, or more of them, their business will magically get the cash injection they so desperately need, and their business will be saved.

But 9 out of 10 times, even the best strategy and immaculate execution won’t be able to do much, especially not in the long term.

Because if a business or offer is not delivering on its promise - sending (any, or more) emails won’t be the solution here. It might be a temporary relief, but just a band-aid for a much deeper wound.

As much as I am biased about email marketing, it is, after all, a part of a business’s operation and marketing. Significant one, yes, but not the answer to it all. Which leads me to the next point -

2. Email must be a part of an omnichannel marketing strategy

In 2025, I started being even more intentional and selective about who I can support with my skills and work, who I want to reach out to, and who is not ready to work with me just yet.

I’m in the “getting shit done and moving serious needles” business, which means that the companies who benefit most from my work are ones with a marketing plan and a team of both generalists and specialists in place - they just haven’t figured out the email component yet. 

Audiences are absolutely still in the inbox, and email is still one of the most impactful channels in a marketing strategy, but a brand must be where its audience is. Which, yes, includes the inbox. But if one really wants to make waves, they must be visible in multiple places, and those channels must support each other, strategically, to empower audiences to make informed buying decisions.

3. Email attribution is broken

Towards the end of 2025, I deliberately stopped using the whole “ROI of $42 for every $1 spent” spiel in my new marketing materials. It’ll take me a while, but I’m working on cleaning that phrase up from my website pages (at least), too.

Here’s the thing: this is an average of multiple kinds of businesses, mostly in eCommerce, where (in an ideal email attribution world) people get an email, click on a product image, and buy it on the website. 

But even in eCommerce, not to mention B2B, the decision-making process is not linear. It has never been. 

Which means that email is an important “supporting act” to brand recall and revenue generation, a place where a company stays consistently top-of-mind and valuable, so that once a customer or client knows it’s time to reach out or buy - they will.

Let me put it this way with an example: if you’re a B2B company, you send out a newsletter, and you get 25 inquiries from that email - can you attribute them all to this one newsletter? I’d argue against it. 

Before you sent that one email, you were visible, valuable, and nurturing relationships for a while, whether it was in the inbox or in other channels. That one email may have “sealed the deal” for those 25 inquirers, but it’s not the only factor that contributed to the success.

Let’s look at it from the opposite perspective: if you’ve sent great emails consistently for years, and then your prospect met someone from your company at a conference - which marketing activity would you attribute the revenue to? Most companies would automatically assume it was the conversation at the conference. But when good companies make the effort to dig deeper, they always hear about emails (or other channels, for that matter) that made positive impressions months and years before the “conversion” happened.

I cannot tell you how many times, both in my own business and my clients’, we meet subscribers who tell us about a story we shared months ago that stuck with them. Even if the email didn’t immediately “convert” them back then, it doesn’t mean the email failed. Instead, there’s a compounding effect, and those emails are an important milestone toward either conversion or advocacy. 

My hope is that business leaders will stop looking at email marketing through the wrong, outdated, bro-y lens, but I suspect the damage is done, and the repair work will take years.

Au contraire, here are some things that I believe are rapidly coming our way or will be accelerating in the next 12 months or less.

Email marketing predictions for 2026

My email marketing predictions for 2025 were mostly spot on. You can read those in my annual conclusions post from this time last year, 

This time around, I decided to stick to my beloved “rule of 3” and mention the following:

1. “Zero click” will become a greater challenge for senders because of how AI changes audiences’ behavior everywhere else

I started noticing that with several clients already this year. 

AI trains us to get the gist of what we were looking for at the top of the page, so I suspect that (unique) engagement with emails will dip in 2026.

That being said, because of how AI rewrites the “rules of engagement”, when subscribers do click on links, the intent is very high. 

So my prediction is that we will see a decrease in overall email engagement, but companies that will know how to work with AI instead of despite it, will still continue to see great results from this channel regardless.

2. NHI (Non-Human Interaction) will become an even bigger issue

Inbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) continue to improve their users' experience, which, in turn, drives some email marketers crazy.

Let me explain:

When inbox providers do that, they usually add all sorts of firewalls and bots that open emails and click on multiple links before the emails get delivered to subscribers, which shows very skewed or incomplete data in Email Service Providers. 

My colleagues and I have known that ESPs’ dashboards and stats haven’t been reliable in years, so we’ve been cross-referencing data points anyway and steered away from vanity metrics that don’t matter much (hello, open rates!).

But I think that this will become a much larger issue in 2026. I don’t necessarily know how it will look, though.

I will say this: I’m all for inbox providers making their users’ experience safer and better, even at the “cost” of making my and my colleagues’ lives harder. Our audience is the reason why we send emails in the first place. They deserve to have a great experience in their inboxes, and we, as marketers, must support that.

3. AI and deliverability changes were the hot topics of the year - and they’ll continue to be as important and as difficult in 2026 (sorry, not sorry!)

If you can’t reach the inbox in the first place, and if your email doesn’t land where it’s supposed to, does it even matter if you have the most incredible, personalized, and effective email strategy?

And look, regardless of our opinions on certain AI tools, or the values of the companies developing those tools, AI is here to stay - and if it hasn’t come to your inbox and/or ESP already, ohhhh boy, it sure is coming soon.

This year, I doubled down on both AI and deliverability so that I can support my clients even better. I took masterclasses, tried and used different tools, and made connections with professionals whom I can learn from and get help from (or refer prospects and clients to).

Staying stale isn’t optional. I believe these two, but especially deliverability, will become a major headache for a ton of companies in 2026. Making sure that it’s a part of your (email) marketing strategy and your ongoing list hygiene will become an absolute must.

Business model and values 

In 2025, I got much clearer on who I support, how, and maybe more importantly, the companies I’m not willing to support (and I wrote a piece about the latter, which was then happily “reprinted” in Russ Stoddard’s wonderful newsletter, Godspeed).

My “official” service suite remained the same: 3 tiers that are built on top of one another, and offer different levels of support to my clients: a consultation call, a VIP Email Strategy Day, and an ongoing retainer as a Chief Email Officer. This year, I also shifted my focus from 50%-50% (B2Bs and eCommerce) to 80%-20%, respectively, based on the clients I worked with and where my passion lies. 

This year was further proof that just like my clients, my business is all about quality, not quantity. I’m not chasing internet fame or looking to work with 10,000 clients a year - I don’t want to work with more than 10-15 a year, at most! The concepts of what “enough” and what “success” look like to me are ones that I’m constantly dancing with, unlearning, and relearning. I’m proud to say that I’m building a business with longevity, impact, and sustainability in mind - and it feels like the business that I want to build. 

In early 2025, I published my values and impact page to keep Ethical Emails accountable and transparent. One of its most exciting sections (IMO) is the donation pledge, which became a part of Ethical Emails’ DNA and is baked into every service and offer of the business. As I happily shared on social media earlier this month, this year, EE donated 3.25% of its gross revenue to charities and good causes in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the U.S.

And even though I’m not obligated by any organization I’m a part of to produce one, I’m already working on creating a 2025 impact report. My goal is to publish it in early 2026, and it will likely include some stats and parts from this blog post.

Some other fun numbers from the passing year

• Clients worked with: 8

• Podcast appearances: 3

• Continents worked with: 4

• Marketing emails sent: ~51.7k

• New case studies published: 3

• Blog posts published: 31 (including this one)

WotY

I was introduced to the concept of the Word of the Year back in 2021, listening to a podcast episode by Linda Perry. In my own words, when I’m thinking of a new WotY, I ask myself: “Who would you like to become, or what would you like to feel during this upcoming year?”

As someone who never did well with New Year’s resolutions, I loved this new approach and have practiced it ever since. And I find that you don’t just “ditch” last year’s WotY once the year is over - you carry it with you as a part of your growing toolbox.

2025’s Word of the Year was “Loved”. As expected, it didn’t materialize in the exact way I intended, but it came to life in many other, wonderful ways.

Next year’s WotY is “Bold”. It’s about asking for what I want and being even clearer in my communication, “going at it” with opportunities that may feel out of reach, daring more, and welcoming more Chutzpah into my life and business. Yet again, I don’t think it will present itself exactly how I think it would, and yet, I know it will bring me closer to beautiful people and accomplishments nonetheless.

People

I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with several client teams this year, and all of them are absolutely remarkable. I have tremendous respect for all the CEOs, writers, designers, tech people, marketing managers, and operations managers I’ve had the pleasure and privilege to work with this year. Working with them made me a better professional, communicator, and human being - and they give me hope that marketing can be different AND bring in results.

This year, I hired a VA for the first time, who practically kept my sanity intact and helped me keep Ethical Emails visible and alive on social media while I’ve been chest-deep in client work. I’m very fortunate to have met Hayley when we both worked with another brilliant client (Irit from Day by Day), and I knew she would be my VA as well, and it was just a matter of time. We will be working together in the new year, too, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I cannot recommend both of these amazing women enough if you need support with your growing business.

The biggest business experiment of this year for me was actually all about people. I hosted 9 virtual + 1 IRL roundtables, where I invited my subscribers to join a discussion about a topic related to email marketing as a force for good. During this year-long experiment, I met people I’ve only known by name and (maybe) a static picture. I got to know fabulous humans who are working toward shared goals and a better future, and they inspired me beyond belief. It’s safe to say that these monthly conversations are now an inseparable part of Ethical Emails - and if you’d like to get an invite and save one of the very limited spots available each month, you’ll need to join my newsletter.

Ending this section with a transparent and somewhat vulnerable part: 2025 was a very fulfilling year, but one where I was flying too close to the sun, too. In other words, I got close, several times, to getting burnt out. My past experiences with burnout and my amazingly supportive clients gave me the tools, understanding, and space to prevent that from happening. Still, with my ambitious growth plans for 2026, I know I’ll need to stay careful, strategic, and keep asking for help before I feel like I’m about to drown.

Our Planet

In 2025, I visited 7 countries (Spain, France, the UK, Portugal, Slovenia, Israel, and Italy) - and have been to 5 of them twice or more. One of them absolutely won me over, and I’m currently in the process of moving there.

I’m aware of the carbon footprint that all of these travels created, and I offset more than half of it by planting trees on Ethical Emails’ behalf. In the future, I’ll look into more ways to offset and reduce the carbon emissions of not only any upcoming travels, but also any other business-related activities.

I also inquired about becoming a 1% for the Planet member, which is supposed to happen in early 2026.

Admittedly, I didn’t have time or headspace this year to reduce Ethical Emails’ website carbon rating, which is currently rated as D by Website Carbon. Because “hope” is not a strategy, I don’t honestly know when I’ll be able to address it. My goal would be to hire someone who could assist me with that, but I know that finding someone I can really trust would take time.

I know that carbon emissions aren’t the only way to measure my business’s footprint, and I’m looking into other ways to measure and, at the very least, offset it. If you’re doing such measurements or using any cool tools to help you with that in your business, please leave a reply on this blog post. I’d love to know about what you’re doing.

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Alright, I believe that’s more than enough for now. If I have forgotten anything worth mentioning, I appreciate your understanding and would love to hear from you.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting this wild journey. Thank you for using your voices and businesses as forces for good, for showing that caring is the right way forward, and for inspiring others to do the same.

See you next year.