Given the steady introduction of new channels and platforms, you’d think email’s share of the marketing budget would start to slip. But it actually keeps growing. According to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, email accounted for 7.4% of total digital marketing spend — making it the only owned or earned channel to grow its budget share year over year, even as overall marketing budgets remained flat at 7.7% of company revenue.
The ROI data backs up that spending behavior. Research from Litmus from Validity found that 65% of email programs generate between 10x and 50x ROI. That kind of consistent, attributable performance is rare in a media environment where measurement is getting harder, not easier. It explains why email doesn’t get cut when budgets tighten.
But there’s a complication. The inbox where all that ROI is generated has become dramatically more competitive and technically demanding at the same time. There are now an estimated 4.73 billion email users worldwide generating approximately 392.5 billion messages per day, according to the Radicati Group’s Email Statistics Report, 2024-2028. Every one of those messages is competing for attention — and many of them never make it to the inbox at all.
These are some of the trends and issues we’ve covered in the latest update to our MarTech Intelligence Report on the category — Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide.
Deliverability is no longer a technical afterthought
Despite widespread adoption of email authentication standards, the average inbox placement rate is roughly 83%. That means about one in six marketing emails never reach their intended recipients, according to EmailToolTester’s deliverability testing.
Nearly half (48%) of email marketers cite avoiding the spam folder as their biggest challenge, per Mailgun’s 2025 State of Email Deliverability report. That number has real business consequences. You can have the best segmentation, the most compelling subject line, and a perfectly timed send — and still lose a meaningful chunk of your audience before any of that work matters.
The authentication environment has changed significantly in recent years. In February 2024, Google and Yahoo began enforcing requirements for bulk senders to implement Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), as well as one-click unsubscribe. Gmail tightened enforcement further in November 2025. Global DMARC adoption among top domains surged 64% between 2023 and 2025 — from 29.1% to 47.7%, according to EasyDMARC’s 2025 adoption report. In the U.S., 95.8% of analyzed domains now have a DMARC record.
What this means for buyers evaluating platforms: authentication and deliverability infrastructure have moved from assumed capabilities to primary evaluation criteria. Platforms with built-in DMARC monitoring, automated authentication configuration, and established relationships with major inbox providers offer a measurable, operational advantage. The gap between vendors with strong deliverability infrastructure and those without has widened as inbox providers continue to raise standards.
Email has become your identity infrastructure
The other shift I found myself returning to throughout this research is the fundamental change in the role of the email address. In a marketing environment shaped by privacy regulations, platform restrictions, and the erosion of third-party identifiers, the email address has emerged as the primary deterministic identifier for most marketers. It’s the key on which most commercial identity graphs are built because it’s persistent, portable across systems, and explicitly permissioned.
That changes what an email marketing platform is, functionally. These platforms aren’t just tools for sending campaigns anymore. They’re increasingly the systems of record for customer engagement — anchoring identity, unifying behavioral data, and supporting durable, permission-based relationships across channels.
This also explains why the vendor selection decision has higher stakes than it once did. Differences in data architecture, deliverability expertise, automation depth, and identity handling create meaningful switching costs, particularly for organizations operating at scale. The platforms in this market are not interchangeable, and the evaluation process deserves to reflect that.
The market is growing — and consolidating
The email marketing software market was valued at $1.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $4.27 billion by 2034, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.6%, according to Fortune Business Insights. That growth is attracting continued investment and driving consolidation — the dominant dynamic in this market right now is mergers and acquisitions (M&A), not new market entry.
Recent deals — including Zeta Global’s acquisition of Marigold’s enterprise software business, Braze’s acquisition of AI decisioning company OfferFit, Validity’s acquisition of Litmus, and Constant Contact’s acquisition of Moosend — reflect vendors assembling broader capability stacks rather than competing on individual features. That matters for buyers because the platform you evaluate today may have different ownership, integration depth, or pricing structure within 18 months.
None of this makes email less valuable. Quite the opposite. But it does make the platform evaluation more consequential than it’s been in years.
If you’re working through that evaluation — or just trying to understand where this market is headed — the 2026 MarTech Intelligence Report on Email Marketing Platforms is available now. The full PDF walks through capabilities, pricing, and a four-step evaluation process. We also produced a podcast episode covering key findings, and there’s a custom chatbot on the page that lets you ask questions specific to your situation. All three are free with registration.
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