Email’s Renaissance: Higher Volumes, Higher Engagement

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Marketers sent 23.9% more emails last year—and consumers responded. Engagement soared, proving that smarter strategies are outpacing fatigue.

Against the backdrop of digital overload, a surprising trend has emerged: email marketing is not just surviving—it’s thriving. Dotdigital’s Global Benchmark Report 2025 reveals that email volumes rose by 23.9% over the past year, yet instead of driving disengagement, the opposite occurred. Click-through rates doubled, while click-to-open rates surged by 50%. Even unsubscribe rates remained remarkably low at 0.13%.

The findings, drawn from billions of interactions across email, SMS, and automation platforms globally, challenge the longstanding fear of saturation. Rather than fatiguing users, strategic improvements in segmentation, personalisation, and timing are making email feel less like spam and more like service.

“This isn’t just a volume game,” notes Gavin Laugenie, Head of Strategy & Insight at Dotdigital. “The brands seeing the strongest engagement are those using behavioural insights to guide what, when, and how they communicate.”

It helps that email is being woven into wider cross-channel ecosystems. SMS nudges, personalised landing pages, and automated re-engagement flows are aligning into cohesive customer journeys—each touchpoint reinforcing the next. This orchestration appears to be pushing performance metrics higher across the board.

The lesson for marketers is clear: scale is no longer the enemy of quality—so long as intelligence drives the execution. With privacy rules tightening and third-party cookies fading, owned channels like email will only grow more central. The next phase, then, is not simply more—but better.