7 Email Marketing Challenges Savvy Brands Avoid in 2025

Common email problems eating away at your campaign results?

Whether you want to gain new subscribers or improve engagement, finding solutions and techniques will help you get the most out of your email marketing. 

Read on to learn more about seven common email marketing challenges and how you can solve them!

Explore: How to Build the Best Email Marketing Strategy in 2025

Email marketing problems businesses face in 2025

Let’s look at 7 of the most common email challenges hindering your campaigns:

1. Relevance
2. Frequency
3. Engagement
4. Display
5. Delivery rate
6. List growth 
7. Retention 

1. Relevance

Think about how many emails you receive in a day — and keep in mind everyone on your email list is in the same boat. Most people get numerous emails every day, many of which are marketing-based.

You need to provide something relevant and useful to ensure people click on your emails. What will get their attention? What content are they looking for? Relevance correlates closely with your open rate. The more beneficial your emails are to your subscribers, the higher the likelihood they open the email. 

Improve subject lines and “from” names — but remember that what’s inside the email counts, too. Send relevant information your subscribers can use to learn more, make purchasing decisions, or stay informed.

2. Frequency

In addition to relevancy, another common email marketing challenge is to find the right email frequency. Sending marketing emails too often or not enough can drive subscribers away.

You can do some tests to see what frequency is right for your market — and it’s even more beneficial to segment your email subscribers. 

You can also opt to give your subscribers the choice of how frequently they want emails. While they may initially sign up for weekly emails, allowing them to change their mind later will help you connect with and retain them.

3. Engagement

Engagement is a vital part of any email marketing strategy. You need your subscribers to open their emails and actively read and engage with them. 

Again, sending relevant content that provides informative or helpful information will get users to click on links inside your email. Subject lines, market segmentation, and the content you send all play a role in engagement.

Other ways to boost engagement with your emails include:

• Polls or surveys 
• Images 
• Share links 
• Interactive content
• Mobile optimization 
• Strong call to action (CTA) 
• Personalization 

You can also consider re-engagement email marketing to gain the attention of less active subscribers.

4. Display

When you send an email, you need to ensure it’s visually accessible for users across devices. Hard-to-read text, blurry images, and text or pictures appearing halfway or completely offscreen prevent users from reading your emails.

Remember to do as much with your words as your visuals. You can provide links to external sources or helpful descriptions of a video or image you wanted to include.

Additional ways you can ensure your subscribers can read emails across multiple devices include:

• Keeping copy short and to the point 
• Using more visible CTAs 
• Shortening the subject line length 
• Adding pre-header text 
• Formatting links and anchor text correctly 
• Performing A/B testing 

Getting the display right makes your emails more readable and encourages your audience to stay up to date on your business.

5. Delivery rate

You should also consider if your emails are landing in your subscriber’s inbox. Are they making it through spam filters or firewalls?

If you look at your data and notice that a large portion of your emails ends up in the spam box, you’ll need to take steps to rectify the situation. The tips we discussed above can help you improve the legitimacy of your email marketing.

You can also take a look at validation and subscription processes. Other top steps for improving email deliverability include:

• Adding an extra step that prompts users to confirm their opt-in to your emails 
• Taking spammy words out of your subject line 
• Removing inactive email addresses from your contact list 
• Providing a way for subscribers to update their contact information 

When you follow these tips, you’ll increase your deliverability rate in your email marketing campaigns.

6. List growth

One of the most common email marketing challenges is list growth. While appealing to your subscribers is crucial, obtaining new subscribers is even more crucial. If you’re having issues getting new people to sign up for your emails, it might be time to rethink your approach.

Many marketing teams find it helpful to use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to improve interactions with new and existing customers. These systems will also give you better insight into how you can acquire new subscribers and grow your list.

7. Retention

Once someone subscribes to your emails, you need to find a way to keep them on board. If a reader no longer sees your information as valuable, they may stop opening emails, let them go to spam, or unsubscribe altogether. 

Again, several of the suggestions already mentioned in this post will help improve retention rates. However, you can also:

• Ask for customer feedback 
• Use a CRM 
• Provide high-quality customer service 
• Build trust with your subscribers 
• Give advice or insight into industry trends 
• Improve branding techniques 
• Displaying relevant product offers

Following these guidelines will help you acquire and retain subscribers in your email marketing campaigns.

Tackle your email marketing challenges with WebFX

If you’ve experienced email marketing problems and want an effective solution to solve them, WebFX is here to help. We’ll take email marketing off your hands so you can focus on other aspects of your business.

We offer three email marketing plans that allow us to help you with up to four emails per month while creating an email marketing strategy. Our team will also perform email copywriting, open rate analysis, email subscriber segmentation, and more.

If you’re ready to get started with email marketing services, contact us online or call 888-601-5359 today!