Email Marketing Predictions for 2025

We asked the following people from our team for their predictions:

Adam: Co-founder & CMO
Wiehan: CEO
Bogdan: Head of Strategy
Abubakar: Head of Technical

Let’s dive in to see their answers.

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1. Which ESP will be Klaviyo’s main competitor in 2025 and why?

Adam: If you look at ESP penetration within the Shopify Plus ecosystem, Klaviyo is so far ahead of the competition that you could make a convincing case that the only real threat to their business is themselves. And if that was going to come to fruition, it would have been in the aftermath of their IPO when people wanted to cash in and the product went to crap. What we’ve seen is actually the inverse: innovation and expansion have grown exponentially and I don’t see them slowing down this year.

But while Klaviyo focuses on the enterprise segment, it does leave an opportunity in the SMB space for more price-sensitive DTC brands and those who buy into the ‘consolidation’ narrative around tech.

We’ve seen last year that price-sensitive brands are not the best businesses for software companies to scoop up. Most of the time, they’re distressed and cutting costs which don’t make them attractive.

So if nobody can compete on features with Klaviyo, what will they compete on? In my opinion, it’s consolidation of tech which is continuing to pick up pace as a narrative and adoption in the eCommerce industry.

And the only real credible threat here is Yotpo. Yotpo offer reviews, loyalty, solid analytics and a robust ESP & SMS platform. In many ways, it’s a more polished ‘retention’ platform than Klaviyo, even though it isn’t on par as an ESP.

Yotpo can win customers from Klaviyo not just on price but also on features and that’s a critical differentiator from the rest of the chasing pack (I also wrote about this back in late 2023 here).

We’ve seen that Sendlane has got a large rebuilding job on its hands and Omnisend is not doing great marketing on social media.

So I think this is going to come down to a battle of two titans and a long-term market monopoly until some native AI tool can disrupt both completely on ease-of-use, intuition and cost, but who knows when this will happen?

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Wiehan: Two major alternatives are emerging: Yotpo and Omnisend. Of the two, Yotpo has the strongest chance to challenge Klaviyo. 

Here’s why I believe it will become a turning point for them in 2025:

1. DTC Industry Presence
   Yotpo is widely used in DTC, especially for its review platform, though some teams still remember its past high pricing.
   
   
2. Fast Product Updates
   They’re releasing email/SMS updates quickly, though still catching up in niche features.
   
   
3. Integration Growth
   A dedicated team is rapidly expanding third-party integration support and they’ve moved rather fast in this area.
   
   
4. Large Brand Database
   Their full-suite offerings (reviews, loyalty, subscriptions) provide cross-sell opportunities. This is where Klaviyo is limited since their side-products have not seen the adoption it was hoping for (my take on it).
   
   
5. Creative Marketing
   Yotpo uses aggressive and innovative campaigns to grow its presence in the email space.
   
   
6. Migration Discounts
   They offer compelling discounts to brands switching from Klaviyo. Everyone loves a good discount on SaaS subscriptions.
   
   
7. Better Pricing Model
   Their “pay for what you send” model avoids inefficiencies common with Klaviyo’s pricing. This is a really attractive model for DTC teams, especially when trying to optimize Operational Expenses (OpEx).

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Bogdan: Klaviyo has shown themselves to be the dominant player in the industry but it seems to be steering toward enterprise stores. With all the recent tier regulations, Yotpo will fill that void for SMBs that doesn’t require all the whistles and bells. 

Why Yotpo? They’ve learned from the past and shifted towards listening. They listen to their customers and their partners. With a pay-as-you-go model, you no longer need to worry about forgetting to decrease your plan. 

Simply put, it gets the job done. Why Yotpo and not other competitors? I’m sure the different tools out there will want a share of the pie but looking at the speed of updates the Yotpo team constantly adds, along with taking what customers and tech partners have to say and implementing based on feedback, I put them on the spot for #1 competitor to Klaviyo. 

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Abubakar: Yotpo will be Klaviyo's biggest competitor in 2025 and beyond. The reason why that is because they are moving fast and not afraid of challenging the beast. All the core features exist already, they are showing care about the customer base and taking feedback. 

In 2024, we saw lots of paid shilling and incentivised posts that backfired when we saw poor support during peak periods and lots of unhappy customers when that platform broke. While I have worked in Klaviyo for hundreds of hours and I believe it's a great choice for most brands, Yotpo will also get its share of the pie as months go by.

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2. How will the role of an email marketer evolve in 2025?

Adam: There are 2 ways to answer this question.

Let’s start with the obvious one: AI. All marketers should now be allocating dedicated time throughout their week to learn about how the software works and developing new use cases to improve their skills, speed and efficiency as professionals. This is an area I’ve benchmarked myself to improve in 2025 keep progressing as an individual.

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Platforms like Klaviyo have released a raft of AI updates in the last year

The second part is the additional pressure email marketers (and agencies) are facing to become more holistic lifecycle marketers with a solid understanding of business mechanics. This means becoming less channel-centric and more fluent in terms of core business metrics, including basic accountancy and financial understanding. There’s never been a more critical time for marketers to become connected to the inner-workings of financial performance in DTC, as margins get compressed and the demand for more integrated services increase.

Expect to see terms like “incrementality” thrown around a hell of a lot more in relation to our services. At Magnet Monster, we’re ‘restarting’ or mission to propel email beyond revenue generation tactics, and we see this as the future in our space to continue to add value to our clients.

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Wiehan: Three key factors: faster, cheaper, and more efficient.

DTC brands are feeling the pressure with rising CAC and high OpEx.

At Magnet Monster, we’ve seen this firsthand as brands push hard to negotiate during the sales process. Combined with advancements in AI, this will challenge agencies and email specialists to balance:

• Speed: How fast can you work to match past volumes?
• Cost: How affordable can you be while maintaining output? (dangerous race to the bottom)
• Quality: How can you stay fast and affordable without sacrificing results?

Achieving this will demand exceptional skills in production, workflow, and prioritization.

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Bogdan: AI impacted a large part of the workforce, and email marketing was one domain with a significant part of that disruption.

In my opinion, the role of an email marketer will slowly evolve into a jack-of-all-trades. With ChatGPT being able to create copywriting and other AI tools designs, we already see email marketers handling both of those roles. 

On the other hand, I see email marketers evolving and becoming more skilled at their job because of all the new tools and the reduced time needed for miscellaneous tasks, like writing briefs. More time available means more opportunities to dive deeper into strategies, data analysis and ultimately deliver more value for the store. 

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Abubakar: I think it’s obvious that AI is the biggest buzzword at the moment. Everyone wants to use it but no one is putting enough hours into learning and making systems with it. 

For 2025 and beyond, a lot of email marketer jobs will be A LOT more automated than they think it can be. From strategist to engineer role, every job will see some kind of disruption in form of new tools, new platforms emerging (Yotpo) and new hurdles coming (Privacy Issues) and margins shrinking (Good ol’ Meta).

We will also see email marketers thinking beyond just revenue. 

AI Agents are the new hype here so I won’t be surprised if some VC spends a good amount of money in our space and we see our current workflows being automated. We have seen lots of the same stuff being talked about in the space and there’s too much noise out there. This will push everyone for new ideas and tools usage for the brands.

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3. What are the must-have tools to plug into your ESP in 2025?

Adam: The rest of the team will have a lot more hands-on knowledge than me in this area, so I’d like to answer this question in a slightly different way.

The real challenge for all of these tools will be fighting against the narrative of ‘consolidation’ as ESPs like Klaviyo and Yotpo continue to develop their own in-house to add value to merchants. We’ve seen this recently with Klaviyo’s advanced event tracking threatening server-side tools, their pop-ups improving in the past to render external 3rd-part tools somewhat obsolete, and their analytics making improvements to the point where they’re mitigating the need for more tech bloat.

The challenge of course comes down to execution. Developing the tools is one thing, but having them strong enough to be a direct replacement for 3rd-party alternatives is another. I will be observing this one closely.

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Wiehan: This is a big question :-)

Firstly, DTC teams will focus on consolidating their tech stack and cutting tools that do not show clear ROI (looking at you, loyalty program SaaS).

Secondly, they will prioritize tools that deliver a positive return, optimize customer support or improve data and measurement (yes, the attribution debate).

Some of these tools include:

• Subscription: ReCharge, Loop, Skio
• Bundling/ Upselling/Cross-selling: ReBuy, Aftersell
• Server-side tracking: LittleData, Elevar
• Customer support / Operational Optimization: Gorgias, OrderEditing, Loop Returns
• Reporting: Triple Whale, Northbeam, GA4 alternatives
• Other: Fondue (cashback), Social Snowball (referrals), HiTide (SMS list growth)

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Bogdan: I’m a believer in having as many tools under one roof as possible. On the one hand, it’s more practical and saves you money (because of discounts when bundling) and secondly more often than not the communication between tools under the same umbrella will have better utilisation.

1. Okendo - One marketing platform to rule them all. With reviews, referrals, quizzes, loyalty and surveys under a single umbrella just makes things a lot easier. They’ve invested a lot in customer care and updates on their tools and deliver the basics that almost every store needs.
2. Hiro Analytics - with Klaviyo gatekeeping CDP and Advanced Analytics for paying clients (and it’s not a small amount) Hiro gives you the understanding that you need to make data driven decisions. Be it time between purchases or if you’re just frustrated with Klaviyo’s custom reporting, Hiro Analytics is the go-to solution. 

Hiro Analytics has quickly proven itself as a competent tool to add to your retention marketing arsenal inside Klaviyo

3. Wonderment / Aftership: every store needs a post-purchase tracking app. That should be a non-negotiable (unless you’re careful with your budget). With more and more people ordering online you need to keep the communication active with your customers and ensure they’re up-to-date with their order status. Not only that but transactional emails/SMSs are a great way to engage with your customers and drive traffic back to your website. This correlates to an increase in repeat purchases as well. Last but not the least, it takes the burden off your customer support team with where is my order tickets. 

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Abubakar: Wonderment is the obvious choice for brands to provide a branded experience. It's a great tool with a solid team and the ROI is Insane.

Rebuy is also very overlooked in the email space. There’s a lot that can be done using it but I see most brands just have it installed and not utilising its Klaviyo integration.

Littledata is a great tool for many brands with the right pricing and tech enabling for tracking missed subscribers and triggering more events in Klaviyo. With privacy putting more pressure on our space I expect these tools to come up with something innovative that klaviyo might be undercutting. So definitely something to have installed and using for putting more water in the bucket.

ReviewsIO is probably the most robust review tool for ESP integration and features. You can do lots of cool stuff using it as its feed sync feature is great. One of them must have tools to show dynamic reviews in the email instead of static reviews that never change.

Hiro Analytics is one of the tools that I’m bullish on for 2025. We all know how painful it is to get reports out of Klaviyo in a quick and timely manner. This solves that problem. Worth the install and money to remove reporting as something that’s tedious and time-consuming to be full of insights and actionable.

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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

2024 was a breakout year for AI features and more eCommerce disruption in the macroeconomic climate. 2025 will be a year of more intense competition and technological innovation and we’re braced for impact.

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