Progress is good, but it’s not everything. At a time when generative AI, dynamic content, and real-time personalization are invading our daily lives, it’s good to return to the essentials. And that is precisely what Litmus is doing with its report on the state of email in 2025. The first obvious point that emerges: behind the innovations and technological promises, the fundamentals continue to dictate performance. And perhaps that’s what we often forget: without a solid base, the structure collapses, no matter the brilliance of the tools. List cleaning, deliverability, AI explosion: let’s take a closer look at this 2025 report and see what it reveals.
1) One in six marketing emails never reaches the inbox
A figure that’s enough to make marketers tremble: 16.67% of marketing emails are filtered as spam or blocked before even being seen by recipients.
The reasons? Lists that are too old, inactive addresses, questionable collection practices, and/or a bad sender image.
However, basic good practices are widely known:
- Maintain a clean and updated database,
- Monitor your domain reputation,
- Boost subscriber engagement.
These are the three fundamental principles on which Captain Verify focuses its expertise. By cleaning contact lists, eliminating invalid, inactive, or risky addresses (disposable domains, syntax errors, etc.), the platform drastically reduces the risk of being placed in spam and protects the real performance of campaigns.
In 2025, verifying emails before sending is clearly no longer an option, but a mandatory step, a sine qua non condition.
2) Errors in emails undermine deliverability… and trust
Sending an email to an invalid address, inserting a broken link, or letting a tag error slip through are all too common mistakes that impact deliverability and tarnish a brand’s public perception.
The report highlights that 47% of marketing teams, or nearly half, use rendering and compatibility tools for emails to anticipate these errors, while 43% continue to test manually, even after sending.
Customer trust is hard to earn, and emails containing errors or that cannot be displayed will only harm your cause.
Explains Litmus.
In other words, each mistake (visible or invisible) is a lost point of trust. And trust is difficult to rebuild in emailing.
For Captain Verify, this observation reinforces the importance of systematically performing prior cleaning:
- Eliminate inactive, risky, or incorrect addresses,
- Reduce hard bounces,
- Preserve the domain and IP reputation.
Combined with a tested and refined email structure, this prior cleaning allows you to avoid costly mistakes, ensure long-term deliverability, and offer a good experience to recipients.
Once these foundations are laid, it is time for technology. Indeed, AI today promises to redefine the very way emails are designed, written, and sent.
3) AI adoption is redefining email creation
AI is now everywhere. According to our reference report, 49% of companies use it to write their emails, and 41% for dynamic content. Another interesting data point: 89% of marketers predict that up to 75% of their email marketing operations will be powered by AI by the end of 2026.
When asked which uses of artificial intelligence have the most impact on email marketing, here’s what stands out:
- Generative AI tools (content, image generation, etc.) – 25%
- Email content personalization (subject, body text, etc.) – 18%
- Campaign performance analysis for identifying trends and insights – 16%
- Optimization of sending times – 14%
AI is revolutionizing email marketing by enabling proactive strategies: predicting engagement, optimizing send times, and scaling content personalization.
Thamina Christensen (Product Manager for Oracle)
Artificial intelligence has far surpassed the trend and is emerging as a new norm that grows and changes every day. Whether we like it or not, we must tackle it. Companies that don’t equip themselves or test these 5.0 tools risk falling behind and quickly being left out, both in creation and in analysis and performance.
Send just to send better
In 2025, effective campaigns are those that respect the fundamentals. What the 2025 Litmus report reminds us of is that performance doesn’t come with just a touch of AI. New tools, no matter how sophisticated, don’t compensate for a lack of rigor. What you need above all are clean bases, well-thought-out sends, and intelligent segmentation.
One in 6 emails is never delivered? Clean your contact lists.
Mistakes undermine subscriber trust? Test, verify, secure in advance.
AI promises great things? Tame it, take advantage of what it has to offer to improve your campaigns.
These combined actions will directly influence deliverability, audience engagement, and your ROI. To perform, you must first invest where it truly matters.
One last piece of advice: forget the idea that doing better means doing more, because in 2025, the ultimate goal is to send less, but send right.
