March 22, 2026 - 8:17pm - by Luke Thiessen

Email marketing may be one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, but in a landscape where you’re increasingly having to pay for reach on supposedly “free” platforms, a direct line to your customers probably sounds pretty good.

While it’s far from new and sexy, email marketing is still pulling in industry-high ROI rates, with many studies showing an average return of $36 to $40 for every $1 spent. And for businesses embracing the latest tools for targeting, segmentation and personalization, that ROI can be even higher.

It’s true that privacy laws and spam detection filters have made some aspects of email marketing more difficult – even for those of us doing everything right – but given the low cost and high potential return, it’s well worth the effort.

Let’s look at some trends and new technology we’re following for email marketing in 2026, along with how to ensure your emails are getting delivered, getting opened, and avoiding unsubscribes.

Email marketing trends for 2026

One of the biggest shifts in email marketing in recent years has been toward hyper-personalization. 

This is where technology has really supercharged things, from AI-powered CRM software to analytics and segmentation tools within your email marketing platform. For any business with an online store, gone are the days of a mass email to all subscribers with nothing but the first name swapped out.

Now, if you can capture someone’s email (and permission – we’ll get to that shortly) when they start shopping, your CRM and email tools can send a series of automated emails tailored to that individual, and to what they viewed and did on your site. 

Another trend we’re seeing lately is interactive elements in marketing emails, especially less sales-focused ones. Often this is some kind of poll embedded into the lower part of a more informational email, asking the reader to rate how they liked the email or what they liked best (or disliked) about it. This provides valuable feedback for your email marketing program, but also makes your email more interactive for the reader, feeling more like a dialogue and less like advertising.

Privacy, spam filters and CASL

Government and email clients alike have done a lot in recent years to help protect consumers’ privacy, and protect them from spam and scam emails. In some ways, this makes our job as marketers harder, but in other ways, it has also helped keep email marketing viable by protecting people’s inboxes.

What this means for us is that in order to build a successful email program, we need to follow the rules – both legally and in terms of best practices.

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (or CASL) is the biggest piece of this for marketers in Canada. Most email marketing platforms have compliance built-in for Canadian users, but to summarize: CASL requires explicit opt-in, meaning the customer must proactively sign up. No pre-checked “subscribe” boxes or implied opt-in buried in fine print.

Beyond following the law, you also want to ensure your emails are making it through spam filters. This starts with ensuring your sending email address is verified and set up correctly with your marketing platform, which is more of a technical and infrastructure challenge than a marketing one.

Another aspect to avoiding spam filters is simply respecting your email recipients and not sending them something they are likely to mark as spam. Consider the volume and frequency of your emails, the balance of content (we’ll talk more about that shortly), and the overall tone.

Building your email list

Adding new subscribers to your email list is a harder and slower process than it used to be. Gone are the days of buying email lists or simply adding anyone whose email address you’ve collected to your list automatically.

But the same things that have made it harder to build the lists have also made the email addresses you do collect properly even more valuable.

The most common way to do build an email list in 2026 is to prompt sign-ups on your website, usually with a pop-up form, and to offer something in return. 

Whether it’s a discount code, a PDF of some original research or other useful content, entry into a prize giveaway, etc – a compelling offer is often the best way to get someone’s email address and explicit opt-in. Ensure whatever the offer is can be delivered by email.

The downside here is that many of these offers are one-time discounts or a single piece of downloadable content. If your ongoing email marketing is interesting and relevant to the reader, they may stick around, but many will unsubscribe shortly after receiving the offer.

One way to combat this churn and keep people subscribed is to make it clear up front is to offer ongoing benefits to your subscribers, and make that clear up front. When someone signs up for email marketing based on an initial offer, make sure to tell them that email subscribers get exclusive discounts throughout the year, or are entered into a draw every month, or something similar. The easiest action a person can take is no action at all, so if they have an incentive to stay subscribed, they will.

The 60/40 content rule

A general rule of thumb with email marketing content is the 60/40 rule. This means you want 60% of your emails to have no selling involved.

What do I email my customers if I’m not selling to them? I’m glad you asked.

Nonprofits are often better at this, because they can share stories of impact, of how your donations are helping their cause. But for-profit businesses have plenty to talk about. You just have to get more creative.

Do you sell food products? Share recipes. Clothing? Share outfit inspiration. Service-based business? Share tips on when, why, or how often people should be using your service, and how to maximize its impact or usefulness.

This is also a good place to get interactive with your customers, offer giveaways, and otherwise get them engaging with you. Ask them to send in photos of themselves using your products in order to win a prize. Ask them to share their recipes for inclusion in a future recipe. Get creative with it.

That 60% of your email marketing is truly the most important long-term. The remaining 40% where you sell your products or services, or ask for donations, etc, is only useful if your subscribers are sticking around and opening your emails.

We can help

Need help getting started on your email marketing program? Struggling to attract new subscribers, or keep people subscribed long-term? Get in touch today to book a free discovery call – we work with all kinds of businesses and nonprofits on their digital marketing strategy and would love to help make your email program work better for you.

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