Does email marketing still work in 2026? What the data says

You post every day, reach drops every month, and someone on LinkedIn insists newsletters are dead. Meanwhile, the store next door says half its sales come from email. Who is right?

Short answer: yes, email still works, and works well, for talking to people who already know you: people who signed up, bought, or asked to hear from you. It does not work for getting discovered by people who have never heard of you. That is what social, search and ads are for. The rest of this article covers what the studies say (with the caveats almost nobody mentions), the most common objections, and when email is the wrong channel.

What the data shows (and what it doesn't)#

Plenty of email statistics circulate without a source, or with the source distorted. Below are only figures from published studies, each with the caveat you need to read it correctly.

What you can honestly conclude:

1. People who measure email generally report strong returns. But these are self-reported survey numbers, and they vary a lot. None of them predicts your business's return.
2. The money is in automation, not blasts. The Klaviyo figure comes from a company that sells automation, and last-touch attribution favors email. Even discounting that, the pattern makes sense: an email triggered by what the person did (signed up, abandoned a cart, did not activate) arrives at the right moment.
3. There are a lot of abandoned carts to recover. With roughly seven in ten carts abandoned on average, a reminder email is one of the most obvious automations for any store.
4. Email only works if it arrives. A meaningful share of legitimate email never reaches the inbox. SPF, DKIM, DMARC and a clean list are what put you on the right side of that number (SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide).

And one number you cannot rely on: open rate. Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection, many opens are machines. That is why studies of welcome email open rates give very different numbers depending on the source (Stripo's roundup). People who say "nobody opens email anymore" or "opens went up" are often looking at a number that stopped measuring people.

"Why a newsletter if I can post on X, Instagram or LinkedIn?"#

It is a fair question. Posting is free, fast and reaches new people. The difference is who controls reach.

• On social media, the algorithm decides how many of your followers see each post. A rule change, an automated report or a locked account and the audience disappears at once. It is a rented audience.
• With email, the message goes to each person on the list. Spam filters can divert some of it, but nobody "lowers the reach" of your newsletter because the algorithm changed. It is an owned audience.

The two do not compete. Social brings new people; the list turns people who arrived into customers. The best newsletters usually grow from people who already follow you and want your content without depending on the algorithm. We cover this in detail in rented vs owned audience.

"Will AI in Gmail kill email?"#

Email apps are adding AI summaries, suggested replies and AI sorting, and AI agents already read inboxes on people's behalf. That changes how email is read, not whether it is read.

What changes in practice:

• Being clear beats tricks. An automatic summary picks up the subject and the first lines. If the email says what matters up front, the summary says it too. If the email is an image with "check it out!", the summary has nothing to say.
• Email people want still gets through. Filters and sorting exist to move what people did not ask for out of the way. The welcome, the confirmation, the receipt, the reply they were waiting for: none of that disappears.
• Transactional email matters more. Login, password reset, billing and account notices are exactly what people and their agents need to find. They have to arrive, fast and authenticated.
• The rules are stricter, and that helps senders who do it right. Since February 2024, Gmail requires authentication and one-click unsubscribe from bulk senders (Google's sender guidelines); since May 2025, Outlook rejects senders of more than 5,000 a day without SPF, DKIM and DMARC (Microsoft's announcement). Less spam in the inbox means more attention for senders who follow the rules.

Nobody knows exactly what inboxes will look like in five years. What you can say today is that filters, AI or not, exist to protect people from what they did not ask for. The email they asked for and recognize is exactly what those filters try to deliver.

"Nobody reads email" and "SMS works better"#

"Nobody reads email." This usually comes from a low open rate (or from a list that never asked to hear from you). Look at clicks, replies and revenue from the list, not opens. If those are low too, the problem is usually the list, the frequency or delivery, not the channel.

"SMS works better." For short, urgent messages, it often does. But it costs far more per message, has strict consent rules in most countries, and has no room for receipts, documents or longer content. Email is better for what needs to be kept and found later: receipts, invoices, access links, contracts, long-form content. The two coexist: email as the foundation, SMS or push for what is urgent.

When email is not the right channel#

Email is not for everything. It is the wrong choice when:

• You need to be discovered. Email talks to people already on the list. To reach new people, use search, social, partnerships and ads, then bring them onto the list.
• The message is urgent within seconds. "Your driver is here" or "the code on screen expires in 30 seconds" call for an in-app notification or SMS. Email arrives fast, but people are not watching their inbox all the time.
• You have nothing useful to say regularly. A monthly newsletter with no substance teaches people to ignore you, and that weighs on delivery of the emails that matter.
• The list did not ask to hear from you. Bought lists or old contacts who never heard of you generate complaints and bounces that hurt delivery of every email you send, including password resets and receipts. In the EU, UK and Canada, you generally need consent before emailing them at all.
• You are not going to measure. Without tracking where sales come from, email becomes a cost with no known return, and the "does it work" debate never ends.

How to find out if it works for you in 30 days#

Instead of trusting industry averages, run a short test:

1. Week 1: verify your sending domain (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) and add an honest sign-up form that says what people will get.
2. Week 1: send a welcome email at sign-up (5 ready examples).
3. Week 2: build a 3-email sequence triggered by sign-up, with an automatic exit when the person buys or activates (how to build it).
4. Weeks 2 to 4: tag links with UTMs or use the sequence's conversion event, and track clicks, replies and sales.
5. Day 30: compare revenue from the list with its cost (tool plus hours of work).

On Couryo, the Free plan includes 3,000 emails a month and 1 active sequence with up to 3 emails, enough for this test. Contacts and events, sequences and campaigns have no per-contact charge; only emails sent count. The quickstart takes about 5 minutes.

FAQ#

Is email marketing dead?#

No. It stopped working for people who blast generic campaigns at bought lists, and it works well for people who talk to those who asked to hear from them, at the right moment. ROI studies are self-reported and vary a lot, but they point the same way.

What is the ROI of email marketing?#

It depends on your business. The most cited study, from the DMA, measured £42.24 per £1 using 2018 UK data; Litmus, in 2025, found about 35% of marketers report between US$10 and US$36 per dollar and about 30% between US$36 and US$50. Treat these as a reason to test, not a forecast.

Is open rate still useful?#

Barely. Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection, many opens are automatic. It can still hint at trends when you compare an email against itself over time; for decisions, use clicks, replies and conversions.

Newsletter or social media: which should I pick?#

Both, with different jobs. Social brings new people; the newsletter keeps in touch with those who already arrived, without depending on an algorithm. Use social to invite people onto your list.

Does email work for small businesses?#

Yes, and it is one of the cheapest tools a small business has. A small list of people who asked to hear from you is worth more than a big one of people who didn't. Start with a welcome email and a short sequence.