Understanding & Overcoming Top Email Marketing Challenges

For most brands and retailers, robust email marketing campaigns are integral to success. Email strategies offer benefits up and down the funnel, creating brand awareness, driving traffic and encouraging conversions. However, a recent study by Smart Insights, found that the average email open rate across all industries was 36.5% in 2024, indicating a lack of strong email marketing campaigns for many brands.

Email Marketing Challenges Include Spam Traps And Disposable Domains 

Email inboxing can be significantly affected by challenges like spam traps and disposable domains. Spam traps are used to identify spammers and can cause damage to a brand’s sender reputation by having their emails automatically flagged as spam by major email service providers, drastically reducing open rates and engagement. Additionally, disposable domains — temporary email addresses used to evade detection — pose a risk to deliverability, as they often lead to higher bounce rates and are flagged by spam filters. To overcome these challenges, marketers must maintain clean, verified email lists and adopt best practices like double opt-ins to ensure better inbox placement.

Marketers Should Take Action To Avoid Email Inboxing Challenges

To maximize email deliverability and engagement, marketers should focus on regular list maintenance to clean up their data without drastically decreasing database volume. Additionally, email marketers can deploy certain content and technology strategies that make the most of their email campaigns and targeting opportunities, including:

• Creating relevant content reflected in subject lines, including promotions, deals, timely offers and breaking news, increasing interaction and improving deliverability.
• Making sure brand reputation is top shelf, with clean IP addresses that keep email moving past spam filters and blacklists.
• Prioritizing emails that do not come from anonymous sources or unfamiliar domain names.
• Following all CAN-SPAM guidelines, including the presence of unsubscribe buttons.
• Creating email groups for targeted, personalized strategies, increasing open rates by enhancing relevance.
• Utilizing double opt-in processes to avoid bad actors and junk email addresses as email lists are expanded. 
• Optimizing email strategies when bounce rates are up and click through rates are down.

Building Healthy Subscriber Lists Is Essential To Mitigate Deliverability Issues

Regular maintenance of subscriber lists continues to be essential in 2025, and email subscriber acquisition is an extraordinarily scalable and cost effective way to keep subscriber lists growing while inactive subscribers are filtered out. Advertisers who leverage Digital Media Solutions for email subscriber acquisition are connected with high-intent subscribers who opted in to receive communications.

Email subscriber acquisition helps marketers:

• Build email lists or customer loyalty programs with real-time, verified, first-party consumer data
• Continually grow email lists with opted-in hand-raisers to maintain freshness
• Support ongoing cross-channel branding, messaging or customer acquisition campaigns

Unlike buying or renting a list, email subscriber acquisition reaches consumers who have opted in and are expressly interested in hearing from a specific brand.

Seeking New Ways To Maximize Your Customer Acquisition?

DMS is a technology-enabled, data-driven performance advertising solutions provider connecting consumers and advertisers. Contact DMS today to learn how our first-party data asset, proprietary technology and expansive digital media reach can help you scale your customer acquisition results.