Email remains one of the most powerful digital marketing channels available. And the latest Data & Marketing Association (DMA) report points to it delivering some of the strongest ROI in the space overall, with an average return on investment of around £41 for every £1 spent.
The question is whether your email campaign is built to capture those returns.
What the Data Says About Email Marketing
The DMA’s Marketer Email Tracker 2026 surveyed 250 marketers across sectors and business sizes, and here is what they found.
Automated emails are up nine percentage points since 2021, now accounting for 34% of sends. But bulk sends still account for 33% of all emails sent. Segmented emails have declined, from 28% to 26%. Dynamic content has also lowered.
In simple terms, brands are still using batch-and-blast measures rather than using their data to have the right conversations at the right time. That gap is where the money is, and the businesses that close it will compound an advantage.
What Great Email Marketing Looks Like
The DMA’s data shows email has grown significantly beyond its traditional acquisition role, with post-purchase communications up 24 percentage points and customer service usage up 22 percentage points since 2021. Email is now used for interaction at every stage of the customer journey.
Here’s what that looks like when it’s applied properly across the sectors we work with:
Destinations & Resorts
The post-visit window is one of the highest-value moments for any destination’s marketing strategy. A guest who stayed last summer is far more likely to book again. But they need a reason to think about you.
An automated post-stay sequence, triggered by departure, personalised to the type of stay they booked, followed by a seasonal prompt in the run-up to the same window the following year can turn a one-time visit into a returning customer.
The DMA data shows triggered messages have nearly doubled in importance as a driver of email effectiveness, from 16% to 26% of marketers citing them as a key driver.
Food & Beverage
Seasonality is the clearest email trigger for the food & beverage industry.
A restaurant or food brand that emails its list two weeks before a seasonal menu launches, follows up mid-run with availability and sends a “last chance” nudge in the final week has an email campaign that builds anticipation.
What the DMA data highlights for F&B businesses specifically is the discount dependency problem. Discounts now dominate email acquisition, cited by 54% of marketers as the most effective subscription driver, up 18 percentage points since 2021.
For restaurants and food brands building long-term customer relationships, the better approach is content that earns attention without incentivising it, such as seasonal stories, supplier relationships and the reasoning behind the menu, and then reserving discounts for re-engagement rather than acquisition.
Outdoor Industry
Customers of the outdoor industry tend to research, compare and then buy, and that can be weeks after their first visit to a product page. The research window is exactly where a well-structured email campaign earns its place.
The DMA data shows that interests are the most valuable piece of customer data in email marketing, cited by 43% of marketers. For outdoor brands, that translates into knowing whether a subscriber is a mountain biker, a trail runner, or a sea kayaker and which product lines they care about.
A welcome sequence built around why someone came to your site, with content written by people who genuinely use the gear, can build customer confidence.
Retail
The DMA data confirms retail and e-commerce are consistently achieving the highest email ROI of any sector.
This is usually aided by segmenting by purchase history, automating repurchase flows based on product lifecycle and building abandoned cart sequences that recover revenue.
The DMA’s tracker shows 77% of marketers now track active and inactive subscribers, up from 66% in 2021.
How to Get Ahead in Email Marketing
Improving your email performance doesn’t have to mean overhauling everything at once. These three steps are where we’d start.
- Replace bulk sends with a triggered flow. Identify your highest-volume campaign, your monthly newsletter and your weekly roundup to see whether they could be rebuilt as a sequence triggered by customer behaviour instead.
- Segment before your next send. Divide your list into customers who have bought or visited in the last 12 months and those who haven’t, then write different emails for each.
- Audit what you’re collecting beyond the email address. Start capturing what people care about; this will help you build a list with the context needed to personalise it.
Email is now the foundation of every great customer journey. The businesses with an above-average ROI are the ones with a well-thought-out strategy.
If you’re ready to turn your email list into results, we’d love to help; get in touch with us.
