Little did we know how much the world would change back in the 1990s when email made its first appearance. Some of us knew a professional world without email and some of us were just kids, but all of us were adopting a new technology that would completely change the landscape of communication forever.
We’ve never been the type to be dramatic (not us, no), but email is…kind of a big deal. If you think we’re just another ESP and email analytics platform trying to get you to send more email, think again. We’re but one small part of a massive, global community that’s seriously passionate about email.
Let’s talk about how massive, and more importantly, how meaningful email is:
💌 As of January 2025, MediaPost says there are 4.48B email users around the world — that is 4.48B opportunities to connect, share, and build meaningful relationships.
💌 Email volume grew from 281.1 BILLION emails sent in 2018 to 347.7 billion in 2023, with projections of up to 408.2 billion in 2027…which is just two years away now.
💌 In 2023, the global email marketing market was valued at $8.3B and the source projected the figure would increase to $18.9 billion by 2028. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for that period is expected to amount to 18.8%. That’s a lot of love being invested in email!
💌 Statista reports 87% of marketers have plans to increase or maintain their email marketing spending in the future. They understand that email isn’t just a transaction; it’s a conversation, a relationship.
These figures don’t even touch the nuance of email, like the increase in popularity of email newsletters as evidenced by the meteoric rise of companies like beehiiv, who are clearly killing it. People are craving connection, and email newsletters are a powerful way to deliver personalized messages straight to the hearts (and inboxes!) of readers.
Behind the scenes of email, things are evolving
Speaking of nuance, there are other signs email is not just here to stay, but growing. You might even say it’s having a moment (again). 🥲
And just like any relationship, email needs tending to keep the digital spark alive.
Mailbox Providers are investing
We’re talkin’ about increased financial investment by mailbox providers (MBPs) and email service providers (ESPs) in tools designed to make email better for senders and recipients alike.
From the MBP side, this includes a very real shift to domain-based sender reputation indicators, enforcement of higher security standards to reach inboxes at Gmail and Yahoo, and continual improvements to popular email performance management tools like Google Postmaster Tools (which got a refresh in 2024) and the Yahoo Sender Hub.
And let’s not forget Apple. They sorta got the ball rolling with Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) back in 2021. It was introduced to help protect users from having their activity tracked by marketers — which we can agree to love and hate at the same time. They’ve also introduced a tabbed mailbox experience a la Gmail.
The point is, MBPs are investing in more granular, privacy-minded email performance monitoring. Their goal is to protect their users and enhance their mailbox experience. Those of us on the sending side of the equation need to embrace that same line of thinking as well, because we can surely expect to see more updates and changes from these providers as enforcement of higher security standards ramps up over time.
Email service providers are investing
On the ESP side of the house, things are firing on all cylinders. For marketers…Have you heard of Yotpo? Beehiiv? KLAVIYO? SOCKETLABS?! These companies are changing the way email is done, from design to delivery. In fact, Beehiiv is so buzzed up about it, they launched a multi-million dollar fund specifically designed to support journalists just a few months ago.
Social media wants in
People are stepping away from Facebook (or is it Meta now?) in droves, TikTok is on the proverbial chopping block in the United States, and X is…well, it is what it is, and that’s all we should say about that.
We’re not saying social media isn’t important — it is. And we’re not here to suggest email could be a drop-in replacement for it, either. But all that chaos and volatility makes email’s calm waters seem like a dream for those who don’t like risk.
In fact, within the last few months, the owner of one of these social platforms has shown interest in starting his own email service to rival the likes of Gmail, Yahoo, and the rest. Put another point up on the board for email. 💌
AI has also entered the chat (errr, SMTP conversation?)
We’d be nothin’ but ostriches with our heads in the sand if we didn’t acknowledge AI arriving on the scene (and in our inboxes!) in a big way in 2024. MBPs use it, ESPs use it, even our Spotlight email analytics platform has some AI baked in so senders can surface contextual email performance insights in 3 clicks or less.
Regardless of how you feel about AI, it’s changing how we send and interact with mail every day. We’re not suggesting it’ll be replacing email jobs anytime soon, but it’s certainly shifting the focus from manual tasks and circular best practice conversations to more time spent playing 3D chess across email, SMS, push, direct mail (and any other channels their audiences prefer) just as easily as sitting criss cross, applesauce.
As practitioners with a deep appreciation and understanding of email, we can either be at the forefront of this next digital wave, helping to shape it, or we can stay stuck with whatever non-email specialists and experts decide to build for us. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At the very least, pay attention to what’s happening within AI. That’s all we’re sayin’.
Evolution isn’t always simple — even when it’s a good thing
Just like any good love story, email is constantly evolving. And while it’s simple to understand why email practitioners love our channel so much, it’s not exactly simple to put that love into daily practice.
Why is it so challenging? A couple reasons…
Domain reputation matters more than ever
First and foremost, MBPs are more concerned about the domain-based reputation of individual senders today, which is not typically how ESPs have been optimized. Originally, performance monitoring, email routing rules and just about everything else about sender reputation management was IP-based.
Without domain-specific rules in place to allow for easier optimization and analysis, senders with multiple domains can quickly get lost in deliverability “white noise”. The signals are there — and holy cow are there a lot of them! — but the context is missing, and the needle is soooo easily lost in the haystack.
In today’s domain-based world, senders need to be able to identify which domain needs a glow-up (and why). It’s nearly impossible to stay ahead of problems and make meaningful change using email analytics and management tools from decades past. Which brings us to the next reason why evolution isn’t simple…
Email provider technology isn’t keeping pace with all these changes
We can thank Google and Yahoo for helping email platforms move out of the stone age in a mad dash to get their customers compliant with their bulk sender requirements (effective starting in Feb 2024).
Since the initial shellshock has worn off, the industry has gotten behind the spirit of these changes — which is to make email a more secure and trusted channel for communicating with their users — we heard this directly from both mailbox providers during our webinar with Google and Yahoo last year.
But a lot of folks in the industry feel as though they’ve now spent their credits and won’t get much attention from dev teams unless something urgent forces their hand. This puts ESP customers into a rough spot.
Similar to the challenges we mentioned with identifying domain-based performance issues, how can you optimize delivery when one domain is being told to try again later (aka being temporarily deferred) and everybody else using that IP is stuck in line behind them?
Short answer: you can’t.
If you’ve ever been stuck in line behind someone when their credit card gets declined and they have to call the bank and troubleshoot before you’re able to buy a salty snack and a Gatorade for your road trip, you understand why this is a problem. It’s a lot of waiting around (and sometimes, giving up).
Translated to email speak: essentially, the retry window for deferred messages gets super long and is closing before legitimate mail that’s been stuck in the queue has a chance to be delivered. This leads to legitimate, mailable addresses getting rejected (aka soft bounced) instead.
And it’s something that’s actively happening with other ESPs. Here’s an example…
What you’re seeing (below) is a high-volume sender of ours that sends mail through us and one other ESP for redundancy purposes. It’s the same traffic, just split up to go through both sets of pipes.
Our Spotlight email analytics platform allows us to analyze performance across both providers in the same place, and what we’ve noticed is mail is being soft bounced at a much higher rate with the other ESP who is still using the old-fashioned one-line-to-the-mailbox route. Here’s a rundown of the changes we made to open “multiple checkout lines” about 10 months ago.
The people getting emails delivered behind the scenes of these companies are just as stellar as they always were, but their tools need continual care and tweaking to maintain consistently optimal delivery — in some cases, it’s simply not happening.
The role of email practitioners is changing
As a community, we’ve made so much progress in getting businesses to know and care about email. Unfortunately, not everybody’s gotten on board yet, contributing to an email-specific talent drain at big ESPs over the past couple years.
With email’s technical requirements getting more complex, email experts are needed now more than ever. We need people who understand data, and email. Folks who want to improve the email ecosystem, not morph it into a cold emailer’s dream or a lame-duck version of SMS.
We’re lucky to have a seasoned team here at SocketLabs who bring combined decades (and sometimes individual decades) of expertise to our customers. We also host monthly customer-only office hours to ensure our users have a direct line of support from our team without requiring a formalized professional services engagement.
Even if you’re not a customer of ours, you can attend our monthly virtual roundtables to meet likeminded practitioners and crowdsource solutions to your biggest challenges — because they’re facing the same issue or have been there, done that, and are happy to share what they learned the hard way.
Email’s future is very bright, and we couldn’t be more excited!
There are lots of email platforms and tools and email-lovin’ folks out there who are keeping up with all of these changes so their senders can stay on the leading edge. Data accuracy keeps getting fuzzier, but MBPs are being intentional about updating their own tooling to be as helpful as possible. LOVE to see it.
Automation is more possible than ever thanks to intentional (and huge) investments into AI, and SMBs have more options for supercharging their email revenue than ever before, with feature after feature being rolled out consistently from those big partners we mentioned earlier: Kit, Squarespace, Shopify, Yotpo, Klaviyo, and smaller shops with more niche options for niche needs.
We’re making intentional steps with our tooling here at SocketLabs, too. In response to the rapid innovation in email, we recognized the gap between email ops and email data, and the even bigger gap between most email folks and the rest of their organizations. Drawing on our email expertise, we developed an email analytics platform called Spotlight that uses reliable data, including your own delivery and engagement data, and insights from Google Postmaster Tools, to help you analyze, contextualize, and optimize performance.
ESPs and senders alike struggle with data challenges. Spotlight provides a direct solution, allowing our customers to consistently improve their performance with its insights. We are constantly analyzing the data we surface and developing new feature sets and options to put a giant spotlight (*WINK*) on issues hiding under cover.
You can check out a little video about how SocketLabs Spotlight email analytics works today and if you’re curious to know more, let us know. There’s LOTS happening here we aren’t able to fit into this love letter to our dearest friend, Email.
What would your love letter to email say?
Email has been a constant in our lives, evolving with us and continuing to be a powerful force for connection. It’s not just a tool; it’s a vital connection. At SocketLabs, we’re passionate about helping you harness that power. Spotlight is designed to give you the insights and tools you need to navigate the ever-changing (and oh-so-exciting!) email landscape and build stronger relationships with your audience.
We believe in the magic of email, and we feel blessed to have you as part of our #DearEmail story. Now, we want to hear from you! What do YOU love most about email?
Share your own #DearEmail love letter on social media and tell the world why email is so special! You can use our love letter templates (square or wide), create your own, or simply just shout “I love email” loud and proud across social media. You do you…just remember to use the #DearEmail hashtag.
If you need some inspiration, head over to our friend Al Iverson’s blog, and check out some letters posted on LinkedIn from Jaina Mistry, Andrew Bonar, and Anne Sophie Marsh.
And while you’re at it, reach out! We’d love to show you how SocketLabs Spotlight email analytics platform can help you write even more successful email love stories…even if you’re not sending email through us.
