The year 2025 will be remembered as the year when email marketing had to reinvent itself under regulatory and technical pressure. After years of warnings and recommendations, email providers took action. Google and Yahoo imposed their new requirements in February 2024, with Microsoft joining them in April 2025. In June, the French CNIL launched a public consultation on tracking pixels, which could revolutionize audience measurement practices.
Some immediately cried death to emailing. Others have adapted their practices and continue to achieve excellent results. Contrary to what the doomsayers predicted, the DMA France statistics remain stable: 18.15% average open rate, 5.35% click-through rate. Emailing isn’t dead, it’s just become more professional.
Here’s a factual review of what really changed in email marketing in 2025, and above all what we need to remember to tackle 2026 in the best possible conditions. No doom and gloom, no double talk. Just the facts, their concrete impacts, and the actions to be taken.
En 2025, l'email-marketing s'est professionnalisé sous la pression technique et réglementaire. Authentication SPF/DKIM/DMARC obligatoire chez Google, Yahoo et Microsoft. Projet CNIL sur les pixels de suivi nécessitant probablement un consentement explicite. La réputation de domaine supplante celle de l'IP. Les statistiques restent stables (18,15% d'ouverture) : seules les mauvaises pratiques sont pénalisées.
New requirements from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have become the norm
February 2024 marks a turning point. Google and Yahoo, who for months had been announcing the arrival of new requirements for email senders, are now implementing them. Not abruptly, but gradually. First, temporary errors on a small percentage of non-compliant emails. Then, from April 2024, increasingly systematic rejections. In June 2024, the one-click unsubscribe obligation becomes effective.
In April 2025, Microsoft officially joins the movement with similar requirements for Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live.com. The message is clear: what used to be considered best practice is now mandatory. Email authentication is no longer a “nice to have”, it’s a prerequisite for reaching inboxes.
The requirements are simple to state but technical to implement. SPF, DKIM and DMARC must be correctly configured. One-click unsubscribe must be present in all marketing emails. The complaint rate must remain below 0.3%. And it must be strictly forbidden to use @gmail.com or @yahoo.com as the sender address, failing which messages will be systematically rejected.
These new rules officially concern bulk senders, i.e. those who send more than 5,000 emails per day to Gmail or Yahoo. But in reality, all senders are affected. What is mandatory today for high-volume senders will become mandatory tomorrow for everyone.
The impact on the field was immediate and brutal for some. Companies using generalist platforms without appropriate technical configuration saw their deliverability rates plummet. Emails arrived as spam, or were simply blocked. The platforms themselves had to adapt their infrastructures as a matter of urgency.
Platforms specializing in B2B prospecting, such as Ediware, which already offered dedicated IPs with SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration by default, enjoyed a considerable advantage. Their customers didn’t have to take any action – everything was already in place. No account suspension, no drop in deliverability, no panic.
Another major change goes almost unnoticed: domain reputation becomes more important than IP reputation. Messaging providers have realized that shared IPs, especially in the cloud, make IP reputation unreliable. The domain, on the other hand, is linked to brand identity. It is stable, traceable and verifiable. It becomes the main indicator of trust.
For 2026, three actions are essential. Check your DMARC configuration with Google Postmaster Tools. If you’re still using a shared IP on a general-purpose platform, seriously consider migrating to a dedicated infrastructure. And keep an eye on your complaint rate: above 0.3%, you’re entering the red zone.
The year 2025 separated those who did emailing professionally from those who improvised. The latter paid a high price. The former are quietly going about their business, with the same results as before, if not better, thanks to the elimination of some of the competition.
CNIL’s draft recommendation on tracking pixels turns practices upside down
On June 12, 2025, the French CNIL launched a public consultation that sent shockwaves through the email marketing ecosystem. Its draft recommendation on tracking pixels in e-mails proposes applying the same consent rules as for web cookies. In other words: explicit consent required to track who opens your e-mails.
The consultation closes on July 24, 2025. The CNIL is currently examining the contributions received, and should adopt a final version of its recommendation by the end of the year or early 2026. This approach is not an administrative whim. It is a response to the growing number of complaints from citizens who feel “spied on” by the emails they receive.
As a reminder, a tracking pixel is an invisible 1 by 1 pixel image embedded in an e-mail. When the recipient opens the message, this image is loaded from a remote server. This loading makes it possible to know that the e-mail has been opened, at what time, on what device, from what location. This is the basis of the open rate as we have known it for the past twenty years.
The CNIL’s draft recommendation is clear: these pixels are tracers, in the same way as cookies. They are therefore subject to Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act. In concrete terms, this means that the explicit consent of the recipient must be obtained before using a pixel to find out whether he or she has opened your e-mail.
Prior information is now mandatory. The recipient must know that a tracker is present in the e-mail, what it is used for, and who has access to it. The option to refuse must be as simple as the option to accept. And the recipient’s choice must be recorded, so that he or she is not solicited again in subsequent e-mails.
The CNIL does, however, provide for exceptions. Pixels strictly necessary for deliverability, security or a service explicitly requested by the user would not require consent. The debate concerns the definition of “strictly necessary”. Is a global deliverability statistic necessary? Probably yes. Is it necessary to know precisely who opened a mail at what time in order to score a prospect? That’s less obvious.
The potential economic impact is considerable. That’s why the CNIL has launched a complementary questionnaire to assess the impact on business models. For decades, the open rate has been the benchmark metric in email marketing. Campaigns are optimized on this basis, automated scenarios are triggered by opens, and lead scores incorporate this data.
The B2B sector is particularly concerned. Unlike B2C, where opt-in to receive emails has been generalized since the RGPD, B2B prospecting has historically operated on an opt-out basis. Professionals are contacted on their professional email, they can unsubscribe if they’re not interested. Adding consent for the tracking pixel introduces an additional layer of complexity into practices that are already framed.
What’s likely to change in the coming months: nominative tracking will require consent. Knowing that “John Smith from company X opened my email on Tuesday at 2:37 pm” will require explicit consent. On the other hand, aggregated and anonymized statistics will probably remain authorized without consent. Knowing that “my campaign generated 18% of opens” doesn’t pose the same privacy problem.
The method proposed by the CNIL for gathering consent is pragmatic: send an initial e-mail without tracking pixels, containing a link to a page where the recipient can explicitly choose to accept or refuse tracking. Failure to respond will be considered as a refusal. This first email could also integrate this choice into a larger preference center.
For companies involved in email marketing, now is the time to think ahead. Start now to get your contacts used to the idea of choice. Include preference forms in your emails. Explicitly offer your recipients to choose what they receive and how you track their interactions.
Develop alternative KPIs to the opening rate. The click-through rate is much more reliable and less affected by these trends. Conversions, sales generated and customer lifetime value are far more relevant business indicators than simply knowing whether an email has been opened.
Make greater use of declarative data. Preference centers, surveys and forms allow you to collect information with explicit consent. It’s better quality data than invisible tracking, and will always be authorized.
In B2B prospecting, overall campaign statistics will probably remain your main tool. You’ll always know that a campaign generated 22% opens and 6% clicks. You’ll still be able to identify clickers and follow them up. It’s systematic individual tracking that’s likely to require consent.
The CNIL’s final recommendation has not yet been adopted. Discussions are ongoing. But one thing is certain: invisible, systematic e-mail tracking is a thing of the past. The year 2026 will be the year of transparency and explicit consent. We might as well get ready for it now.
Domain reputation supersedes IP reputation
The new requirements from Google and Yahoo send a message that goes far beyond simple technical authentication. They mark a paradigm shift in the way e-mail providers assess a sender’s reliability. IP reputation, which has reigned supreme for twenty years, is gradually giving way to domain reputation.
This switchover is no whim. It responds to an inescapable technical reality: shared IPs, especially those of cloud services, have made IP reputation less and less reliable as an isolated indicator. Your deliverability depends on the behavior of thousands of other users sharing the same IP. One spammer in the bunch, and the whole IP is penalized.
The domain is directly linked to brand identity. It’s stable, verifiable and traceable. When you send an e-mail from contact@votreentreprise.com, the domain “yourcompany.com” becomes your signature. Email providers can build a lasting reputation around this domain, regardless of the IPs used to send it.
This evolution is profoundly changing deliverability strategy. Improving domain reputation mechanically improves all other indicators: inbox placement rate, visibility in priority tabs, treatment by anti-spam filters. This is the most powerful leverage effect in modern email marketing.
DMARC, one of the three pillars of mandatory authentication, places the domain at the heart of the system. This policy allows domain owners to define how email providers should handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. It’s a public statement: “Here’s how to authenticate emails sent from my domain, and here’s what to do with emails that don’t comply with these rules.”
Technical configuration therefore becomes strategic. Your SPF record must list the servers authorized to send from your domain. Your DKIM signature must be correctly configured on your sending server. Your DMARC policy must clearly indicate your intentions. All this takes place at domain level, in your DNS records.
Consistency between sending domain and tracking domain takes on new importance. If you send from contact@votreentreprise.com but all your links point to a generic tracking domain provided by your platform, you’re creating an inconsistency. Messaging providers are paying increasing attention to these details. A personalized tracking domain, consistent with your sending domain, strengthens your credibility.
Another practice to avoid is the multiplication of sub-domains. Each subdomain builds its own reputation. If you send from newsletter@votreentreprise.com, marketing@votreentreprise.com or info@votreentreprise.com, you’re fragmenting your reputation. It’s better to concentrate on a limited number of domains and methodically build up their reputation.
A dedicated IP remains important, contrary to what some may have understood from these developments. It gives you total control over your sending reputation. But it’s no longer enough. The IP and the domain work together. The IP provides technical stability, the domain provides brand identity. The two are complementary.
Building a domain reputation takes time. Six to twelve months minimum to establish a solid reputation. You need regular mailings, quality practices and consistent authentication. It’s an asset that’s built up gradually, campaign after campaign.
Google Postmaster Tools is your best ally in this process. This free tool lets you track your domain’s reputation as perceived by Google. You’ll see your spam rate, overall reputation, authentication problems and IP reputation. It’s the essential dashboard for managing your deliverability in 2025.
For 2026, remember these three principles. Your domain is your signature; invest in its reputation as you would invest in your brand. Ensure consistency between all your sending and tracking domains. And build that reputation over time, with impeccable practices, month after month.
IP’s reputation remains important, but she’s no longer the star of the show. It has become the supporting role, while the domain takes center stage. Companies that have understood this by 2025 are already several months ahead of the game. The others will have to catch up by 2026.
Eco-responsibility in email marketing
An unexpected trend emerged in 2025 in the world of email marketing: ecological awareness. Email marketing, long perceived as a virtually free channel with no environmental impact, is now under the spotlight for its energy consumption. Every email sent, stored, transmitted and read consumes energy. Multiplied by the billions of emails exchanged daily, the impact becomes significant.
The most advanced companies have begun to integrate this dimension into their emailing strategy. Not out of pure altruism, but because eco-responsible practices often go hand in hand with good deliverability and sales efficiency. Sending less but better is both ecological and profitable.
Templates are getting lighter. No more 500 Kb emails with ten high-resolution images. Companies are optimizing the weight of their messages to reduce the bandwidth required for transmission.
In fact, using emojis in your email subject lines is a great way to capture attention without weighing down your messages.
An e-mail of 80 Kb instead of 300 Kb means four times less data to transmit, and four times less energy consumed by the network. And, incidentally, faster loading on cell phones and fewer rejections by mail servers.
Images are compressed and resized to their actual display size.
Beware also of animated GIFs, which pose specific problems with Outlook and can considerably weigh down your e-mails.
Why send an image 2000 pixels wide that will be displayed at 600 pixels? Modern formats such as WebP enable far greater compression than traditional JPEGs. Emails become lighter without losing visual quality.
Regular cleaning of contact databases is becoming standard practice. Addresses that have been inactive for six months, those that have never opened a single email or those that systematically generate bounces are deleted or quarantined. The result: fewer emails sent in a vacuum, fewer servers solicited unnecessarily, less wasted energy.
This practice has a dual advantage. It certainly reduces environmental impact. But above all, it drastically improves deliverability. Mail providers penalize senders who continue to send to disengaged contacts. Cleaning up your database protects your reputation as a sender.
Some companies are going one step further and experimenting with emails with expiry dates. The message contains a mechanism that automatically deletes it after a certain period. A promotion valid for one week no longer needs to be stored for years on mail servers. This practice remains marginal in 2025, but it illustrates the current thinking on infinite data storage.
Segmentation becomes an ecological argument. Sending 10,000 untargeted emails, 9,000 of which will be deleted unread, is a waste. Sending 1,000 perfectly targeted emails with a high engagement rate is more effective commercially and more environmentally responsible. Quality versus quantity, again and again.
The marketing argument is beginning to bear fruit. A few pioneering companies are communicating their eco-responsible email practices. “We optimize our emails to reduce their carbon impact.” “We regularly clean up our lists to contact only the people who are really interested.” This communication resonates with a segment of the public that is sensitive to environmental issues.
For 2026, four concrete actions emerge. Optimize the weight of your templates, with a target of less than 100 Kb per email. Clean up your databases every six months by removing chronic inactives. Segment your mailings to reduce overall volume while improving relevance. And if it fits in with your positioning, communicate your eco-responsible approach.
Eco-responsibility in email marketing is not a communication gimmick. It’s the convergence of environmental awareness and good business practice. Lightweight emails load better, clean databases deliver better, segmentation converts better. Ecology meets sales efficiency.
Will this trend remain marginal or become widespread? Difficult to predict. But one thing is certain: companies that reduce their volume of mailings to focus on quality achieve better results. Whether out of ecological conviction or commercial pragmatism, the result is the same. Fewer emails, better targeted, more effective.
Back to basics: quality and relevance
In the midst of all these technical and regulatory changes, one thing becomes clear when looking at the 2025 statistics: email marketing has not suffered. The figures published by the DMA France remain remarkably stable. Average open rate 18.15%, click rate 5.35%. Virtually identical to previous years.
This stability is all the more remarkable given that the number of emails sent continues to rise. 139.87 billion emails routed in France in 2021, an increase of over 12% on the previous year. Internet users receive an average of 7.44 emails per day. Solicitation is increasing, but performance remains stable. Why is this?
The answer can be summed up in one word: professionalization. The new technical and regulatory requirements have not penalized good practices. They have eliminated bad practices. Companies that were already doing quality emailing continue to achieve the same or even better results, thanks to the reduction in spam competition.
Those who abused untargeted mass-mailing, who bought low-quality files, who never cleaned their databases, who didn’t configure their authentication correctly, saw their performance plummet. Their emails stopped arriving in their inboxes. Their accounts are suspended. Their reputation was destroyed.
The market has cleaned up. Successful companies in 2025 will be those that understand one obvious fact: quality always beats quantity. Sending 1,000 perfectly targeted emails generates more results than 10,000 random emails. This truth was true before, but new constraints have made it inescapable.
Value-added content remains the best performance lever. A white paper, an industry study or a practical guide generate incomparably higher engagement rates than a direct sales message. This practice hasn’t changed in 2025, it’s just become more widespread. Companies that persist in sending “Discover our offer, contact us” get mediocre results.
Fine segmentation has never been so important. It’s one of the fundamentals of deliverability in B2B emailing, which guarantees that your messages reach the inbox. Sending the same message to your entire base was already ineffective five years ago. It has become suicidal in 2025. Messaging providers analyze engagement by segment. If you systematically send to contacts who never open, your reputation deteriorates. Segmentation is no longer a luxury, it’s a technical necessity.
Real personalization makes all the difference. Not the simple insertion of a first name in the object, which no longer fools anyone. Real personalization: adapting content to the sector of activity, the specific issue, the history of interaction. Data enriched with quality files (such as those from DataProspects) enable this large-scale personalization.
Tracking clicks and conversions is becoming more important than the obsession with open rates. With Apple Mail Privacy Protection distorting open statistics since 2021, and the forthcoming CNIL recommendation potentially complicating tracking, open rates are becoming an increasingly unreliable metric. Clicks, on the other hand, remain trackable and relevant. Conversions even more so.
Successful companies change their logic. They no longer measure the success of a campaign by the number of opens, but by the sales generated, the number of qualified leads created, and the final conversion rate. These business indicators are infinitely more relevant than vanity metrics.
The use of behavioral data is becoming more systematic. Identify clickers, downloaders, multiple openers, and organize their escalation to sales teams. This practice existed before 2025, but is becoming more widespread. Companies that leave their hot prospects in the platform without exploiting them are losing a considerable competitive advantage.
Behavioral scoring makes it possible to continuously refine targeting. A contact who opens regularly but never clicks doesn’t have the same potential as one who clicks systematically. A contact who downloads a white paper and then visits your site is much hotter than a simple opener. These nuances enable you to prioritize your sales efforts.
New technical and regulatory constraints have forced us to go back to basics. File quality, relevance of content, fine-tuned segmentation, exploitation of behavioral data. These practices are not new, they’ve just become mandatory to survive.
For 2026, four priorities stand out. Prioritize conversion KPIs over vanity metrics. Invest in the production of high value-added content. Implement behavioral scoring to target more and more precisely. Organize systematic exploitation of clickers rather than passively waiting for conversions.
The lesson of 2025 is clear: email marketing no longer rewards improvisation. It rewards method, quality and relevance. Companies that have understood this continue to achieve excellent results. The others are gradually disappearing from inboxes, eliminated by spam filters and new technical requirements.
Emailing isn’t dead. It’s just got rid of those who were doing it wrong.
Frequently asked questions about changes in email marketing in 2025
WHAT ARE THE NEW MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS FOR GOOGLE AND YAHOO IN 2025?
SPF, DKIM and DMARC must be configured for all senders of more than 5,000 emails per day. One-click unsubscribe has been mandatory since June 2024. The complaint rate must remain below 0.3%. Microsoft joined these requirements in April 2025 for Outlook, Hotmail and Live.
WHAT DOES THE DRAFT CNIL RECOMMENDATION ON TRACKING PIXELS PROVIDE FOR?
The CNIL proposes applying the same rules to tracking pixels as to cookies: explicit consent is required to track by name who opens your e-mails. Aggregated and anonymized statistics would probably remain authorized without consent. The final recommendation is expected in late 2025 or early 2026.
DOES DOMAIN REPUTATION REPLACE IP REPUTATION?
Domain reputation is becoming more important than IP reputation, but the two remain complementary. The domain is linked to brand identity and enables e-mail providers to assess long-term reliability. A dedicated IP is still recommended to keep control of your sending reputation.
HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE CHANGES IN 2026?
Check your DMARC configuration with Google Postmaster Tools. Develop alternative KPIs to the opening rate (clicks, conversions, sales generated). Set up preference centers to collect tracking consent. Regularly clean up your inactive contact databases.
WILL EMAIL MARKETING PERFORMANCE DECLINE IN 2025?
No. DMA France 2021 figures show stability: 18.15% average open rate and 5.35% click-through rate. The volume of mailings is even increasing by 12% a year. The new constraints only penalize bad practices, not quality email marketing.
WHAT IS A TRACKING PIXEL IN AN EMAIL?
A tracking pixel is an invisible 1×1 pixel image embedded in an e-mail. When loaded from a remote server, it shows whether the e-mail has been opened, at what time, on what device and from what location. This is the technical basis of the open rate.
DOES ECO-RESPONSIBILITY HAVE A REAL IMPACT ON EMAILING?
Yes, optimizing email size (target less than 100 Kb) improves deliverability and reduces energy consumption. Cleaning up inactive databases protects sender reputation. Fine segmentation reduces overall volume while improving results. Ecology and efficiency converge.
Should we abandon the open rate as a metric?
Not totally, but it has to be put into perspective. Apple Mail Privacy Protection has been distorting statistics since 2021. The future CNIL framework could complicate nominative tracking. Give priority to clicks, conversions and sales generated: these are more reliable and sustainable business indicators.
To conclude
The year 2025 will be remembered as a pivotal one for email marketing. Mandatory authentication with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Draft CNIL recommendation on tracking pixels. Switch from IP reputation to domain reputation. The emergence of ecological awareness. So many changes that have reshaped the emailing landscape in just a few months.
And yet, despite these upheavals, email marketing is still going strong. The statistics bear this out: open and click rates are stable, the volume of mailings continues to rise, and companies are still investing massively in this channel. The prevailing doom and gloom was unfounded. Email isn’t dying, it’s becoming more professional.
To tackle 2026 in the best possible conditions, there are four priorities. Technical compliance is no longer optional. SPF, DKIM, DMARC properly configured, dedicated IP if you send more than a few thousand emails a month, monitoring of your complaint rate. These technical elements condition your ability to reach inboxes.
The CNIL recommendation on tracking pixels will arrive in the next few months. Anticipate it now. Develop alternative KPIs to the opening rate: clicks, conversions, sales generated. Make greater use of declarative data via preference centers. Get your contacts used to choosing how you track them. Invisible tracking is out, transparency is in.
A domain’s reputation is built over the long term. It takes a minimum of six to twelve months to build a solid reputation. Invest in building it as you would invest in your brand. Ensure consistency between your sending and tracking domains. Monitor your reputation via Google Postmaster Tools. Your domain is your signature, treat it as such.
Back to basics is not a slogan, it’s a necessity. File quality, content relevance, fine-tuned segmentation and the use of behavioral data. These practices were already recommended before 2025. Now they’ve become mandatory to get results. The new constraints have only eliminated those who did not apply them.
The Ediware ecosystem, with DataProspects for cleaned and enriched files, CleanMyList for validation, and the Ediware platform for routing with dedicated IP and technical support, is perfectly aligned with these evolutions. Customers using this integrated ecosystem did not have to undergo the upheavals of 2025. Everything was already in place: authentication configured, domain reputation built, quality files, proactive technical support.
The year 2026 will be no simpler than 2025. The CNIL recommendation on pixels will be adopted and will have to be applied. Messaging providers will continue to tighten their requirements. Regulatory pressure will not decrease, it will increase. But these changes will only penalize bad practices.
Companies that do quality email marketing will continue to achieve excellent results. Those who invest in clean files, who produce value-added content, who segment finely, who exploit behavioral data intelligently, have nothing to worry about. Their channels work, their campaigns perform, their leads convert.
Email marketing is not dying. It gradually eliminates those who do it badly. 2025 accelerated this natural selection. 2026 will continue it. Companies that have understood this evolution are already several steps ahead. The others still have a few months to catch up.
The message is simple: professionalize your approach or disappear from inboxes. There is no longer a third way.
