The Retention Trends Your Brand Needs to Consider in 2025
Email and SMS remain the cornerstones of retention marketing, but the landscape is rapidly evolving and the demand for consumer personalisation is higher than ever before. As we step into 2025, brands face new challenges in performance metrics, email deliverability, channel unification, and consumer expectations.
For brands, the post-peak season period is the perfect time to focus on retention-driven initiatives that not only nurture newly acquired customers but also drive repeat purchases and sustained engagement. By staying ahead of these trends, your brand can turn the challenges of 2025 into a competitive edge, ensuring your marketing strategies deliver measurable success in the year ahead.
The Death of the Open Rate: Time to Prioritise Clicks and Conversions
Privacy updates, like Apple Mail’s Mail Privacy Protection, have disrupted the reliability of open and click-to-open rates. Studies from leading Email Platform, Litmus, state that email open rates can be artificially inflated by as much as 40%, which in turn, affects click-through rates too. For email marketers, this shift underscores the importance of focusing on actionable metrics when measuring success, such as click rates and conversion attribution. These indicators not only provide a clearer picture of content relevance but also track customer interest more effectively over time.
In 2025, success will belong to brands that pivot their reporting metrics, avoiding pitfalls like inflated open rates, and instead prioritising true engagement from their database.
Deliverability Standards Are Tougher—And That’s a Good Thing
As we move into 2025, these security measures will continue to evolve, with widespread adoption of DMARC policies and protocols like BIMI to verify sender legitimacy. This means email marketers must stay ahead by ensuring robust authentication and reputation management to maintain inbox visibility.
Additionally, email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and Microsoft are sunsetting dormant accounts, tightening the reins on outdated addresses that harm deliverability rates. Brands that prioritise healthy deliverability and authentication practices, like regular list hygiene, monitoring for bounces and suppressing inactive users, will ensure your emails continue to be delivered to those who want to hear from you.
The Rise of Server-Side Tracking: Accurate Data, Better Results
In recent years, challenges like ad blockers, cookie restrictions, and browser security updates have fragmented how marketers track subscriber journeys. This has made it increasingly difficult to follow users across multiple touchpoints, which can impact the effectiveness of email marketing strategies.
To counter these issues, server-side tracking solutions such as Elevar and Black Crow have recently made their mark in the email marketing industry. These platforms enhance tracking accuracy and visibility by linking user actions, such as visits and add-to-cart events, across extended periods, often filling in the gaps that traditional email platforms may miss. This helps brands trigger crucial flows, like abandoned cart and purchase follow-ups, and opens the door for more targeted remarketing.
Recognising the need for improved data attribution, Klaviyo has recently released Additional Shopify tracking via Shopify Server Pixel along with Extended ID. These features are specifically designed to close the tracking gap, enabling brands to use Klaviyo as their source of truth, and gain deeper insights into customer behaviours and trigger automations such as Collection View & Submitted Search Flows.
Brands who leverage these server-side solutions are seeing significant improvements in performance and revenue generation, making this a must-have update for forward-thinking Email marketers.
Apple’s AI Inbox & Gmail Annotations: The Future of Email Marketing
With the launch of iOS 18.1, Apple Mail has introduced AI-driven features like Priority Messaging and AI Summaries, categorising emails by urgency and condense lengthy content into digestible highlights. Even Google's Annotation feature allows email marketers to enable dynamic discount codes and feature image content within the Gmail Promotions Tab, drawing eyes before the email is even opened. For marketers, these updates mean heightened competition and better planning to ensure every opportunity is maximised. To stand out in AI-curated inboxes, brands must craft attention-grabbing subject lines, compelling openings, and hyper-relevant content. Even alt-text and visuals will play a critical role in ensuring impact.
Unified Email & SMS Strategies: Seamless Journeys, Stronger Retention
In 2025, we’ll see more brands consolidating their Retention platforms under one roof to break down silos and deliver a unified customer experience. Platforms that offer more robust retention functionality, in one environment, will win. This approach not only simplifies operations for brands but also boosts customer retention and lifetime value.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) further enhance this unification, enriching zero- and first-party data to create dynamic segments and power personalised campaigns. Unified data is the backbone of omnichannel success, enabling cohesive, timely messaging across every touchpoint.
Going Beyond Basic Segmentation to Achieve Personalisation at Scale
With increasing expectations around personalisation and automation, marketers are turning to more advanced approaches like RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis to better understand and engage their audiences. Combining zero- and first-party data such as behavioural, demographic, and psychographic metrics allows brands to target with precision, at scale, creating messages that truly resonate with customers, no matter their stage in the customer journey.
Platforms like Klaviyo, Yotpo and Shopify are already leading the way with advanced segmentation features like RFM analysis and enhanced customer filtering, empowering brands to refine their targeting and personalise campaigns.
However, achieving personalisation at scale remains a challenge heading into 2025. On one side, there’s the risk of falling into the trap of “Spray & Pray” campaigns, sending out blanket emails campaigns that prioritise reach over relevance. On the other, hyper-personalised flows or campaigns target very narrow segments or specific product interactions, often don't see high enough volume. To truly drive meaningful impact and personalise at scale, brands must find their 'sweet spot'. The perfect balance between expanding their audience reach, while still leveraging strategic segmentation and tailored content to maintain high relevance.
Enhancing Your SMS Campaigns with Visuals
SMS has been around for a while, and everyone seems to be doing it. In Australia, however, Rich Communication Services (RCS) and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) are gaining traction, allowing brands to leverage images, videos, audio and interactivity into text messages, in turn, significantly enhancing engagement.
A Sinch Message Media study revealed that MMS messages with visuals achieve a 52% higher click-through rate than SMS alone. The takeaway? Investing in creative and experimenting with these channels can lead to stronger campaign results and better brand visibility.
Loyalty Programs: Building Advocacy, Not Just Sales
Designing effective loyalty programs requires research, strategy and a considered approach. From competitor analysis to customer surveys, successful programs align rewards and experiences with genuine audience needs. Micro-moments, personalised incentives, and seamless systems turn loyalty into advocacy, driving long-term growth.
Unlocking Retention Success in 2025: Embrace Innovation, Data, and Personalisation
2025 promises a retention marketing landscape shaped by innovation, data unification, and heightened consumer expectations. Brands that embrace these shifts—investing in authentic engagement, integrated platforms, and personalised strategies—will lead the way in retention success.
Now is the time to adapt and refine. Check out our Email and Lifecycle Marketing services, and chat to our team about how you can level up your retention strategies.
