Email marketing has been declared dead a good dozen times since 2010. And yet, it continues to generate results that are the envy of most digital channels. In 2026, the landscape is changing on several fronts: artificial intelligence, stronger authentication, stricter regulations. But not all the announced trends are materializing at the same pace. Here’s what really deserves your attention this year, and what needs to be put into perspective.
Email remains the most profitable marketing channel
The figures speak for themselves. According to Statista and Radicati projections, there will be 4.73 billion email users worldwide in 2026, with around 392 billion emails sent and received every day. The volume is not slowing down, quite the contrary.
When it comes to return on investment, studies converge. Litmus estimates the average ROI at 36 dollars for every dollar invested. DMA UK goes even further, with a ratio of 38:1, i.e. $38 recovered for every dollar spent. Some sectors, such as e-commerce, perform even better, up to 45:1 according to Litmus benchmarks by sector of activity.
France is no exception. With 8.3 billion emails sent daily, it ranks 4th worldwide, on a par with the Netherlands and the UK. Only the United States does better, with 9.7 billion emails per day. Email marketing remains an essential channel for French companies, and the figures for 2026 only confirm this reality.
The email marketing market itself is valued at $7.5 billion according to Statista, with a projection of $17.9 billion by 2027. An annual growth rate of 13.3% testifies to advertisers’ confidence in this channel.
AI promises much, but platforms are not there yet
There are countless articles announcing the AI revolution in email marketing. Autonomous agents, real-time personalization, automatic delivery optimization. The promise is seductive: campaigns that optimize themselves while you sleep.
The reality is more nuanced. Yes, some platforms offer predictive sending, i.e. the ability to send each email when the recipient is most likely to open it. Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, for example, integrate these functions.
But this concerns only a minority of advertisers in the e-commerce sector. For the majority of French companies using more generalist solutions, AI remains a marketing promise rather than an operational reality.
In fact, even the most advanced software publishers recognize that their tools remain assistants rather than autonomous decision-makers. We’re talking about AI agents that suggest, recommend and propose. Not yet systems that manage an end-to-end email strategy without human intervention. That day may come, but in 2026, we’re not there yet.
What works in practice: assisted generation of subject lines, segmentation suggestions based on past behavior, and optimization of dispatch times. Real efficiency gains, but far from the revolution announced.
Hyper-customization replaces traditional segmentation
The first name in the email subject line was the personalization of 2015. In 2026, expectations have changed. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers now expect personalized experiences based on their preferences and history. Not just their name, but content that truly matches their interests.
Behavioral segmentation takes over from demographic segmentation. Instead of targeting “men aged 35-45 in the Paris region”, we target “contacts who have opened the last 3 emails on subject X and clicked on Y”. The difference in performance is significant.
The concept of the customer lifecycle is also essential. A prospect who has just signed up does not receive the same messages as a customer who has been loyal for 3 years. Automated sequences adapt to each stage: welcome, activation, loyalty, reactivation. Open rates for these automated flows regularly exceed 50%, whereas standard campaigns plateau at around 20% in France, according to the DMA France.
For B2B acquisition emailing strategies, this approach is a game changer. We no longer bombard a list of prospects with the same generic message. Instead, we tailor content according to engagement signals, website activity and previous interactions.
Dynamic content takes this a step further. The same email can display different products according to the recipient’s profile, offers adapted to their purchase history, personalized recommendations. Platforms offering these features report a doubling of ROI compared with static emails.
AMP interactive emails: promising but virtually unusable in B2B
AMP for Email has been the talk of the town for several years now. The principle: integrate interactive elements directly into the body of the email. Functional forms, clickable carousels, surveys with submission without leaving the inbox. Tests show impressive results: 5.2 times more responses to integrated surveys than to links to external forms.
On paper, it’s revolutionary. In practice, deployment is problematic.
Gmail and Yahoo support AMP. So does Mail.ru, which is especially important for the Russian market. These three email clients account for around 40% of email opens worldwide. This average masks significant disparities between targets.
In B2B, the situation is catastrophic. Outlook, which largely dominates the professional market, does not support AMP. Microsoft had launched a test phase in 2019 before abandoning it in September 2020. Apple Mail doesn’t support it either. Yet these two clients account for the majority of mail opened in professional environments, particularly in France, where Outlook remains the benchmark in the corporate sector.
Result: if your target audience is B2B decision-makers who check their email on Outlook or Apple Mail, your AMP efforts will simply be invisible. They’ll see the fallback version, a classic email with no interactivity.
For a consumer target with a high proportion of Gmail users, AMP may be worth the investment. For B2B, it’s better to invest elsewhere. Technology remains a gimmick as long as business customers don’t follow suit.
BIMI and authentication: an investment put into perspective
Email authentication is no longer optional. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are now the minimum requirements for reaching the inbox. Messaging providers are becoming increasingly strict, and a poorly configured domain will see its messages land directly in the spam folder.
BIMI goes one step further, allowing you to display your brand logo next to your emails in compatible inboxes. Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail support this feature. The reported impact: up to 90% increase in recipient trust and 4-6% improvement in open rates, according to Red Sift.
But the cost of entry is high. To obtain a VMC (Verified Mark Certificate), expect to pay between $1,000 and $1,500 a year. The CMC (Common Mark Certificate), introduced in 2024-2025 for non-trademarked companies, costs around $1,100 a year. For a small or medium-sized business, this is a substantial budget.
And this is no guarantee of display. Gmail reserves the right not to display your logo even if you have the certificate. The exact criteria remain opaque. Having the certificate is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
For large companies with comfortable marketing budgets and high mailing volumes, BIMI can be justified. For more modest structures, the investment is difficult to recoup. The first step is to ensure that the foundations are solid: SPF, DKIM and DMARC correctly configured, domain reputation monitored, list hygiene beyond reproach.
Zero-party data: voluntary collection replaces third-party cookies
The marketing data landscape is changing. Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies by default. Chrome long announced that it would do away with them, but has since backed down, but the underlying trend is clear: traditional advertising tracking is becoming increasingly difficult.
In this context, email takes on a new strategic importance. It’s the ideal channel for collecting what’s known as zero-party data, information that users voluntarily share: preferences, centers of interest, purchasing intentions.
The concept was formalized by Forrester Research in 2018. Unlike behavioral data, which is deduced from users’ actions, zero-party data is explicitly communicated. An email survey, a well-designed preference center, an interactive quiz: these are all ways of collecting valuable information with the active consent of the contact.
The advantage is twofold. Firstly, the data is more reliable, as it is directly declared. Secondly, data collection naturally complies with regulatory requirements, since it is based on a voluntary approach by the user.
Brands that invest in zero-party collection mechanisms build a lasting asset. An email base enriched with declared preferences enables far more relevant personalization than segments built on behavioral assumptions.
The open rate is no longer a reliable indicator, and it’s likely to get worse
The open rate has long been the king of email marketing metrics. Simple to understand, easy to track, it made it possible to compare performance from one campaign to the next. Those days are gone.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection, launched in 2021, is a game-changer. With a 95% adoption rate among Apple users, this feature preloads email images, including tracking pixels. As a result, “opens” are counted when the recipient has never actually viewed the message. According to Litmus, Apple Mail now accounts for 49% of email opens. This means that almost half of all opening data is potentially distorted.
Traditional statistics become unusable without filtering. At Ediware, we offer an option for filtering opens and clicks generated by robots and privacy protection systems. This is the only way to retrieve usable metrics and manage campaigns based on reliable data.
But the situation could get even worse. In France, the CNIL launched a public consultation in June 2025 on a draft recommendation concerning tracking pixels. The text envisages requiring explicit and specific consent before any opening tracking. In concrete terms, two separate consents would have to be obtained: one to receive marketing emails, another for statistical tracking.
Alliance Digitale reacted strongly, estimating that acceptance rates for this double opt-in would be between 1% and 5%. Such a regulation, without equivalent in other European countries, would create a French specificity that would penalize advertisers.
The final decision is expected in early 2026. In the meantime, the advice is clear: stop steering your campaigns on the basis of open rates. Instead, focus on actual clicks, conversions and sales generated. These indicators remain reliable and reflect a concrete commitment on the part of the recipient.
