To help you prepare for the upcoming shopping frenzy, we’ve curated a selection of ten standout email and SMS examples from successful Black Friday campaigns. These examples showcase effective strategies for engaging target audiences, creating a sense of urgency, and enticing customers with time-sensitive deals.

1. Make your Black Friday email promotions pop with countdown timers

A great way to drive clicks and sales is through urgency, scarcity, and FOMO (fear of missing out).

Adding countdown timers in emails gives a sense of urgency, and the design can make the email feel interactive and visually engage the reader.

Virgin Atlantic’s Black Friday email campaign is a great example of how to effectively use a countdown timer. The brand ingeniously combined an animated countdown timer with a boarding pass.

The whole ticket graphic looks personalized, with the first name field matching the email body copy. Now, imagine you’ve been searching flights to a particular destination, and then you get this email land in your inbox. Seeing your name on that ticket would certainly tempt you.

The email is undeniably on-brand and different from generic campaigns, so it stands out from the competition.

2. Showcase your brand values 

The Black Friday and entire Cyber Week period isn’t just about huge discounts. Campaigns that show your brand supporting a charitable cause or giving back to the community can be a refreshing change of pace that stands out and is well received by your audience, improving brand loyalty overall.

This campaign from clothing brand Everlane is as refreshing as the alpine air in the photograph used. The email lets readers know how their support of the brand has in turn supported cashmere farmers and the regeneration of Mongolian grasslands.

The brand shares what it’s doing for good, but doesn’t make it about them, rather about the support of the customers. It also educates, in a non-preachy way, letting people know why this is important.

The campaign’s mixture of blocks showing stats, meaningful copy, and real-life photography of gorgeous Cashmere goats makes it one of the best email examples out there.

3. Don’t be limited to Black Friday itself

This campaign from Thortful, a card marketplace, is a couple of years old now, but we still love it.

Black Friday is a busy day for inboxes, so don’t be afraid to think outside the box and make your own occasion.

From November 24 to 27, Thortful introduced “Thortsgiving” – a celebration that gives back to its creators. This unique take on a Black Friday message sends a powerful message to customers: Thortful is not just a place to buy meaningful cards; it’s a tight-knit community that stands by its creators and supports small businesses.

Thortful skillfully establishes an emotional connection with its customers, using the attention around holiday promotions to drive sales and build deeper connections with its audience, all the while remaining true to its core values.

4. Create memorable copy

Writing memorable copy is important during the holiday rush. With so many messages fighting for attention, your goal should be to create copy that stands out and leaves a lasting impression.

Use persuasive language to stimulate your subscribers’ curiosity and emotions, and create a sense of urgency that encourages them to take action.

For instance, Coach was able to successfully target its SMS subscribers during Black Friday by weaving a sense of urgency into its message, without resorting to shouty ALL CAPS messages with lots of exclamation marks.

In the brand’s typical quiet luxury style, the urgency is conveyed, but not pressured, with the copy emphasizing that it was the final chance for customers to save big on their purchases before the deals disappeared.

Why use SMS for Black Friday sales

SMS gets a click-through rate seven times higher than email at 25.7%. You can learn all of the basics on SMS marketing here, written by our SMS expert, Lucia.

SMS lends itself especially well to flash sales, which are very popular during Black Friday. We know that Black Friday is a hectic time for marketers, so adding SMS into your channel mix isn’t much extra work at all.

If you want to send cross-channel campaigns but are short on time, Dotdigital’s AI tools mean you can convert your existing emails into SMS messages in one click. It will automatically adjust your message to fit the character limit, suggesting copy that aligns perfectly with your email content.

5. Offer exclusivity with VIP deals

Technically, this is another example of Black Friday campaigns not being tied to Black Friday as it’s about a ‘spring Black Friday’ offer, but the part of this campaign we love is the exclusive early access for email subscribers.

Making your customers feel valued and giving them perks for being subscribed is never a bad idea. Dotdigital’s recent survey of 4,000 global consumers found that 27% of shoppers want loyalty schemes to offer early access to new products and sales.

This example from PLUSH + OAK tells subscribers that they’re on the brand’s VIP mailing list, so they’re getting access to a big discount a whole three days before other people will even know about the sale. This is extra valuable to subscribers as the email highlights how the brand anticipates certain items to sell out, so this pre-sale window is a valuable perk for email subscribers.

6. How to say more with fewer words

On Black Friday, shoppers are eager to find deals from their favorite brands quickly and effortlessly. As SMS messages have a limited character count, getting your message across in just a few words is necessary, but you can still build excitement.

BCBG’s SMS campaign is a great example of how keeping things short and clear can really pay off. During its Black Friday promotion, BCBG sent out a simple and clear SMS message to subscribers that provided all the essential information about the offer, without overwhelming recipients with unnecessary details.

In just a few words, the message tells shoppers:

• The crux of the offer (40% off everything)
• Highlights that it’s for a limited time only
• Evokes scarcity and FOMO tactics by saying things are selling fast
• And ends with a simple and clear call to action and link

7. Have fun with it

One way to leave a lasting impression during the Black Friday email scramble is to avoid using basic, overused design templates.

By creating a unique and cohesive design that stands out from generic email layouts, you can set your brand apart and draw attention to the content within.

Vans’ Black Friday email campaign is an excellent example of innovative and fun design.

The email features a mountain-side ski scene that offers a playful interactive game feel in the styling of the design and CTA button placements.

When it comes to the content, the campaign has something for everyone. From regular shopping CTAs to helpfully curated gift selections sorted by price range, and even a holiday playlist option so that people not looking to shop still get something to enjoy from the email.

8. When and how to use emojis

Emojis are part of modern communication and can be perfect for adding emotion and personality to text-based messages.

SMS is still a channel that’s used for chatting with friends and loved ones, so using emojis along with a conversational and relatable tone here can make the message feel less salesy and more natural.

Youth to the People’s message added a clock emoji to deliver the sale information in a more visually engaging way and to show an element of fun to the campaign.

When using emojis in your SMS marketing campaigns, moderation is key. Using too many emojis can overwhelm your audience and feel spammy.

And always be sure that you’re on top of your character count, as some newer emojis can count as two characters instead of one.

9. Prioritize mobile optimization

Across the month of November in 2025, mobile saw 52.8% of all online orders, and on Cyber Monday it accounted for 57.5% of orders, so your Black Friday email campaigns need to be optimized for mobile users.

Your promotional emails need to look good on every device. Whether someone opens them on a phone, tablet, or desktop, a well-formatted email makes it much easier for them to click through and buy.

Most email marketing platforms have mobile optimization built into the email builder, so this doesn’t need to be something you think about too hard. The main thing to check is that elements like CTAs and side-by-side content blocks stack into a single column on smaller screens, making your emails just as easy to read on a phone as they are on a desktop.

10. Send last-minute reminders

Last-minute reminders are a great way to make the most of Black Friday hype and give anyone who’s been on the fence a reason to finally hit buy.

Snacks brand, Nuts, used this SMS to make one thing very clear: this was their last chance to shop the Black Friday sale. The loudspeaker emoji helped dial up the urgency without needing to say much more.

The key is to be clear about what’s ending and when. And keep those deadlines genuine; repeatedly extending a sale can quickly frustrate customers, who’ll see through the urgency tactic. In the EU, brands have also faced fines for misleading practices around fake discounts and deadlines.

A well-timed reminder can bring back customers who missed, forgot about, or simply needed one final nudge to take advantage of your offer.

Get Black Friday ready

As we approach Black Friday, now is the perfect time to start planning your marketing strategy. It’ll be upon us quicker than you know it, and anything we can prep in advance will make it a lot easier. We hope these examples can provide a springboard for inspiration when designing your upcoming email and SMS campaigns. And remember, you’ve got this.

The good news is that prompting is a skill you can pick up fast. It’s less about finding a magic phrase and more about giving clear, specific direction, the same way you’d brief a new team member on a task.

This post covers the habits that make any agent prompt more reliable, then shows how they play out in two agents built into Dotdigital: Segment Agent and Content Agent.

Why prompting matters

An AI agent isn’t a mind reader. It only has two things to work with: the instructions built into it and whatever you type. If your prompt is vague, the agent has to guess what you mean, and a guess is only ever going to be a guess.

This matters more with AI agents than with a general chatbot. A chatbot will go along with almost any request. An agent usually has one job, like building a segment or drafting an email, and it works best when you ask for things specific to that task. Ask it to go outside that lane, and you’ll get a workaround at best, or nothing useful at worst.

Five habits that make any prompt more reliable

1. Say exactly what you mean

A vague request forces the agent to fill in the gaps, and it won’t fill them in the way you would. “Find my best customers” means five different things depending on the day. “Contacts who’ve bought more than three times in the last 90 days” means one thing. Give the agent conditions, values, and dates it can act on, not ideas it has to interpret.

2. Build it in steps 

You don’t need the perfect prompt on the first try. Get one part right, check it, then add the next. Most agents are built for back-and-forth conversation, and a series of small, correct steps beats one long prompt trying to do everything at once.

3. Use your real field and list names, not general terms 

If your data has a field called “Loyalty tier” or a list called “VIP customers,” say that, not “important customers.” Agents built to work in your marketing platform are designed to match what you type to your account data, but they can only match what’s there. The closer your wording is to your real fields, the less room there is for a wrong guess.

4. Check the output before you use it

An agent can build something fast, but fast isn’t the same as correct. Read through the logic, the copy, or the rule it’s generated before you rely on it. Treat it like a first draft from a new team member: useful, but yours to sign off on.

5. Ask it to explain itself

If a result looks complicated or you’re not sure it did what you asked, ask the agent to summarize what it built or walk you through its reasoning. It takes ten seconds and catches a wrong assumption before it goes anywhere near production.

What does this look like inside Dotdigital

Dotdigital has two agents where these habits make a real difference. Segment Agent helps you build and edit audience segments, and Content Agent helps you draft and check email copy inside your email builder. Here’s what applying these habits looks like in each.

Segment Agent

Segment Agent builds and edits segments from a plain-language request and can summarize the logic in a segment you already have. It’s designed to match field and list names to your account data even if your wording is a little off. For best results, be specific and build your segment gradually rather than describing a complex segment in one go.

Start simple:

• Create a segment of contacts subscribed to email
• Build a segment of contacts whose country is the UK and who are subscribed to email

Then refine with follow-ups:

• Also include contacts subscribed to SMS
• Exclude contacts who purchased from any catalog in the last 30 days
• Limit this segment to contacts in the VIP list

Once it’s built, check your work:

• Summarize this segment.
• What rules are being used in this segment?

Worth knowing: Segment Agent is a doer, not a brainstormer. It won’t suggest ideas or scan your data to surface new segments, and it won’t tell you how many contacts match until the segment runs. But bring it a clear idea, and it’ll bring it to life and build it fast.

Content Agent

Content Agent lives inside our email builder and helps with the copy itself: brainstorming angles, drafting a first version, tweaking tone or length, checking a draft before you send, adding personalization, and generating or editing images. Nothing it produces goes into your campaign until you’ve reviewed and approved it.

The same habits apply. Start specific:

• Brainstorm ideas for a “we miss you” email after 90 days of inactivity
• Draft a paragraph explaining the benefit of signing up

Refine rather than starting over:

• Change the tone of the email to be friendly but not overly familiar
• Shorten this paragraph to two sentences

And use it to check your own work, not just generate new copy:

• Check my email copy against my brand voice
• Check whether this paragraph is too salesy for our brand voice

For the best results, set up your brand voice details in your Dotdigital account first. The more Content Agent knows about how your brand sounds, the less editing you’ll do later.

Start small, then build the habit

Treat AI agents like a new team member. Give them specific tasks, clear direction, and simple, step-by-step explanations, then check in before moving on.

Pick one prompt from this list and try it for yourself. These habits become second nature fast, and that’s how prompt writing goes from something that slows you down to something that helps you get through your to-do list faster.

Learn more:

• Segment Agent overview
• Use Segment Agent to build and edit segments
• Content agent overview | Dotdigital Marketing Help Centre
• Content agent prompt guide | Dotdigital Marketing Help Centre

Get the lowdown on the consumer spending patterns from last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend. See how consumers have been shopping on the big sales dates of 2026 so far, and get a clear recommendation for when to send your first sales campaigns based on data from billions of email and SMS campaigns.

What is Cyber Week?

Cyber Week is the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and is one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year.

Adobe data shows that Cyber Week in 2025 brought in $44.2 billion online, up 7.7% year-on-year. Cyber Week is big business and marks the beginning of the holiday season. 73% of WooCommerce merchants report that the BFCM and holiday period accounts for over 20% of their annual revenue.

Black Friday statistics for 2026

Black Friday itself saw a record online spend of $11.8 billion in 2025, up 9.1% year-on-year, and for the second year in a row Black Friday growth outpaced Cyber Monday.

Black Friday 2025 commerce stats

Shopify data tells us:

• Shopping peaked at 12:01 p.m. EST on Black Friday as sales reached $5.1 million per minute
• The average cart price on Black Friday 2025 was $114.70
• The hottest product categories were: cosmetics, clothing tops & pants, activewear, fitness & nutrition

When is Black Friday 2026?

Black Friday falls on November 27, 2026. But the opportunity doesn’t start and end on one day. Shoppers are active across several weeks, with key moments building up through November and into peak holiday season.

Key holiday sales dates for your diary

• Singles’ Day: November 11
• Thanksgiving: November 26
• Black Friday: November 27
• Small Business Saturday: November 28
• Cyber Monday: November 30
• Giving Tuesday: December 1

Holiday marketing for good

Giving Tuesday follows Cyber Monday; it’s a day to celebrate donations and support of not-for-profit organizations. It’s not just for the not-for-profit sector either; this is a great time to highlight any charity initiatives your company supports to showcase your brand values.

Check out holiday marketing ideas if you’re in the not-for-profit sector, including Black Friday campaign inspiration.

When to send Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales emails

Knowing when to start promotions around key sales dates is an ongoing dilemma for marketers and ecommerce planners.

Go too early, and you risk giving away margin, overwhelming your audience, or prompting unsubscribes.

Go too late, and your competitors may have already captured the attention and sales.

So let’s have a look at what the data shows. We’ve analyzed billions of email sends to identify the average number of days before a major sales holiday that marketers begin referencing those holidays in their email subject lines.

When to send Black Friday emails 2026

Black Friday 2025

Aim for around two weeks before Black Friday itself, and use the lead-up to encourage people to sign up to mobile marketing channels like SMS, MMS and WhatsApp. This gives you another way to speak to your audience, which is especially valuable during some of the busiest weeks of the year for email inboxes.

When to send Cyber Monday emails 2026

Cyber Monday 2025

The global average in 2025 was three days before, meaning Black Friday itself. However, you don’t want to cannibalise your Black Friday strategy. Instead, consider that as soon as the clock strikes midnight and Black Friday ends, it’s Cyber Monday lead-up time.

In the US, brands are going earlier and beginning the Cyber Monday promotions a full week in advance.

Holiday email timing

Remember, this is an average number and what works best for your brand will be unique to you and your offering. This is the average data from 2025; check out the full three-year data for BFCM and other key sales holidays to see how the promotion window is changing over time.

Examples of good Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing emails

Now you know when to send your holiday campaigns; get some design inspiration in our 2026 holiday lookbook. Take a look at the standout campaigns from last year alongside a review of why they worked, and tips on how you can make yours even better.

How to capture Black Friday attention early

Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions go on for a lot more than just the days of the week they are named after.

Here are some ideas to keep your email marketing content varied and stop your audience from getting overwhelmed or disinterested during the build-up.

3 tips to avoid BFCM fatigue

• Switch up your offers by focusing on a different category each day. Position it as a Cyber Week countdown or advent calendar-style promotion so customers look forward to something new every day
• Encourage shoppers to curate their own wishlists in anticipation of the big discounts to come during Cyber Week. This means they’re already mentally committing to your brand ahead of any promotions going live
• Segment wherever you can and use personalized content and product recommendations to not bombard your entire database with discounts to categories they don’t shop from.

Shopping trends in 2026

We’ve covered how BFCM played out last year; now let’s have a quick check-in on consumer behavior during large sales events so far in 2026.

Retail giant Amazon’s Prime Day in the summer is a good mid-year comparison and potential indication of the current sales appetite among consumers.

Adobe reports the sales event saw $26.4 billion in online spend over the four-day event from June 23 to June 26, which was a 9.3% year-on-year growth.

Discounting insights for 2026

So what kind of promotions enticed consumers to shop? Data from Amazon’s Prime Day shows the top categories for discounting and the level of discount compared to 2025. Every category saw either a flat discount year-on-year or an increased discount percentage.

Customer experience tips for Black Friday 2026

Offer a range of payment options

Great marketing campaigns can get people to your site, and then your on-site customer experience takes over.

Last year’s holiday season saw buy now pay later (BNPL) hit a record high with $20 billion in online spend, up 9.8% year-on-year.

The flexible payment method was used most on Cyber Monday, driving $1.03 billion in online spend.

The vast majority of BNPL transactions are happening on mobile devices. On Cyber Monday, 79.4% of BNPL orders were placed on a mobile device (vs. desktop).

Drive sales with influencer marketing

Earlier this year, we surveyed 4,000 consumers to find out what they want from brands and how they shop. 44% of consumers report discovering new brands through the creators they follow on social media.

This tracks with Adobe data from last year’s holiday season, where ‘affiliates and partners’, which includes social media influencers, saw a revenue share of 21.8%, up 7.4% year-on-year.

Social Snowball helps you scale affiliate revenue with creators, and as it’s part of the Dotdigital group, getting started is super simple.

Get ready for Black Friday

See what consumers actually want from brands and make sure you’re set up to turn new customers into loyal ones.

Hi, I’m Layla, Content Producer here at Dotdigital and your go-to for planning your social media calendar. Across Europe, the UK, and the US summer is coming to an end and back-to-school season is in full swing. And while the Northern Hemisphere is getting ready for fall, spring is beginning to appear south of the equator. Overall it’s a time of renewal, education, and support. Wherever you are, there’s plenty happening to inspire your campaigns this September.

This guide will walk you through key themes and observances to help you plan your September social media calendar. We’ve included ideas to inspire not only your social media posts but also your email marketing campaigns too.

Important dates for your September social media calendar

• 1 September – World letter writing day #WorldLetterWritingDay 
• 2 September – World coconut day #WorldCoconutDay 
• 4 September – Janmashtami (Hindu Holiday) #Janmashtami 
• 4 September – National food bank day #NationalFoodBankDay 
• 5 September – World beard day #WorldBeardDay 
• 5 September – International day of charity #DayOfCharity 
• 6 September – Read a book day #ReadABookDay 
• 8 September – World physiotherapy day #WorldPhysiotherapyDay 
• 8 September – International literacy day #LiteracyDay 
• 10 September – World suicide prevention day #WorldSuicidePreventionDay 
• 12 September – End digital poverty day #EndDigitalPoverty 
• 15 September – International day of democracy #DayOfDemocracy 
• 15 September – World afro day #WorldAfroDay 
• 16 September – International day for the preservation of the ozone layer #OzoneLayerDay 
• 21 September – International day of peace #DayOfPeace
• 21 September – World Alzheimer’s day #WorldAlzheimersDay 
• 21-27 September – Organ donation week begins #OrganDonationWeek 
• 22–28 September – Recycle week #RecycleWeek 
• 27 September – World tourism day #WorldTourismDay 
• 29 September – World heart day #WorldHeartDay 

Themes for the month

• Childhood cancer awareness month
• Suicide prevention month
• Back to school

September 2 – World coconut day

Bring that tropical energy to your September campaigns with world coconut day. Food and beverage brands can use the day to spotlight coconut-based products, share recipe inspiration, or show customers how they can use coconut in new and unexpected ways. It’s also a fun opportunity to partner with creators, run a recipe challenge, or ask customers to share their favorite coconut creations.

September 6 – Read a book day

Get people to put their reading skills to the test with read a book day. Brands could take inspiration from interactive books like Where’s Wally? and create their own “spot the difference” or “find the hidden character” experience, giving customers something fun to search for while tying it back to their products. You could also start a virtual book club, inviting your audience to vote on a book, read along together, and share their thoughts or recommendations on social media.

September 15 – World afro day

Beauty and fashion brands could use the day to spotlight different hair textures and styles, share stories from customers, or showcase products designed to care for afro hair. It’s also a chance to highlight Black creators and businesses and share educational content around the history and cultural significance of afro hair.

September 21 – International day of peace

Brands could use the day to share messages of kindness, highlight the people or organizations working to make a difference, or encourage their communities to think about what peace means to them. In an email, invite subscribers to choose their own “act of peace” from a few simple options, like doing something kind for someone else, taking some time to switch off, or donating to a good cause. Each choice could then take them to a tailored landing page with something relevant, whether that’s a playlist, activity, recipe, or more information about a charity.

September 20 – 28 – Recycle week

Give your customers a reason to rethink what they throw away during recycle week. Brands could use the week to showcase a new product made from recyclable materials, or challenge their product teams to get creative and see what they can make from materials that would otherwise go to waste. You could bring the idea to life across email and social by taking your audience behind the scenes and showing how the product was made. It’s a great opportunity to make sustainability feel tangible and give customers a reason to think twice about what they put in the bin.

September 27 – World tourism day

Travel brands could create an interactive “choose your destination” campaign, letting customers answer a few questions about their ideal trip before revealing a destination that matches their personality. You could bring it to life with travel inspiration or even a virtual tour, giving your audience a chance to explore somewhere new without leaving their inbox.

September 29 – World heart day

Give your audience a little heart-to-heart with world heart day. Brands could create a “How healthy is your heart?” quiz for email or social, asking a few simple questions and giving people personalized tips based on their answers. It’s a great chance to get creative, sharing heart-healthy recipes or asking your community to share what makes their hearts happy. It’s also a great opportunity to team up with a heart health charity and use the campaign to raise money. 

September subject line ideas

Here are some September-themed subject line ideas to inspire your campaigns:

World coconut day – You’ll be coco-NUTS for this one

Read a book day – Add this to your reading list

World afro day – Your curls are going to love this

Recycle week – Give old favorites a new life

World tourism day – Time for a change of scenery

World heart day – Take care of the heart that takes care of you

World letter writing day – A little love letter from us to you

These subject line ideas are a starting point, but they work best when shaped with your brand’s voice. Add personality, emojis, or a touch of urgency to help them stand out and drive opens.

For a little extra inspiration, Dotdigital’s Content Agent is ready to help you draft and test subject lines. It’s trained in your brand voice, so the suggestions sound like you, not like generic AI copy.

Spark engagement with your September marketing campaigns

Whether it’s the start of fall or the first signs of spring, September is packed with seasonal moments and awareness days, giving brands plenty of opportunities to create campaigns that feel timely, relevant and connected to what their audiences are talking about.

This article is for general informational purposes and isn’t legal advice. As the sender, you remain responsible for your own compliance. We advise you to work with your legal or privacy team to confirm how these requirements apply to your marketing communications.

If you send marketing emails to contacts in France or Italy, the rules on tracking pixels have changed. According to regulators CNIL (in France) and Garante (in Italy), the tracking pixel behind your email open rate now needs its own consent. This tracking consent is separate to the opt-in consent your audience gave to receive emails initially.

We’ve collated information on what each regulator is asking for, go-live timings, and how the Dotdigital platform supports these changes – to help you stay ahead.

TLDR

You can no longer combine email tracking consent with your general marketing consent. You need to provide an easy way for people to opt-out of email tracking, and be able to switch this tracking pixel off for those contacts in France and Italy who choose to opt-out. 

So, what’s actually changing…

First, the basics. A tracking pixel is a tiny, invisible image that loads when someone opens your email. It’s how open rates get measured, and it’s been sitting quietly in the background of email marketing for years. The CNIL and the Garante now treat it the same way they treat a cookie: as something that can be used to identify a person, which requires their permission.

Consent to send a marketing email and consent to track if the email has been opened are now two separate considerations that need to be treated differently. Contacts also need an easy way to opt-out of open rate tracking without unsubscribing from your emails altogether.

Both regulators use the same underlying structure, but the go-live dates differ by country. Your contacts fall into one of three groups, with each group requiring a slightly different course of action.

1. Existing contacts, collected before the new consent requirements were published. This group falls within a transition period, so tracking can continue for now, but contacts need to be notified of the changes and given a way to opt-out by a set deadline
2. Contacts collected during the gap between the new consent requirements being published and the compliance deadline. There is no transition period for this group. You need to provide an affirmative opt-in before you can track the email opens for this segment, with tracking staying off until consent is received
3. New contacts, collected after the compliance deadline: consent needs to be captured at sign-up, before any tracked email goes out

Here’s how those three groups map to publication dates in each country. 

France: the CNIL’s timeline

The CNIL’s recommendation took effect in stages between April and July 2026, and the last of those dates, 14 July, has already passed. In practice, that now leaves two groups:

• Contacts you notified and gave a chance to opt-out before 14 July 2026, who didn’t object: you can keep tracking their opens

• Everyone else, meaning contacts who weren’t notified before July 14th, contacts you collected after 14 April 2026, or anyone new: turn off open rate tracking for this group until they opt-in

If you haven’t already removed tracking pixels on email open rates, you are now required to take that step for contacts in France (the rule came into force on July 14th 2026).

Italy: the Garante’s timeline

The Garante published its own guidelines (Provvedimento n. 284) in April 2026, with a six-month runway. Contacts within this region are grouped as follows:

• Contacts collected before April 29th 2026: Transition group
  You can keep the open rate tracking pixel on for now, but notify them and give them a way to opt-out of tracking (separate from unsubscribing entirely) by 28 October 2026

• Contacts collected from April 29th 2026 and onwards: No transition
  This applies immediately, not just after 28 October. Turn off tracking for these contacts until you’ve got their affirmative opt-in

• Contacts collected from October 28th 2026 onward: New sign-ups
  Consent needs to be captured at sign-up, before any tracked email is sent

What we’ve changed in Dotdigital

The Dotdigital Marketing platform has been updated to help you meet these new requirements. 

• You can now turn on a setting that allows contacts to opt-out of tracking, via a link in your campaigns

• Open rate tracking consent can be updated in bulk for each audience segment, so once you’ve identified your France and/or Italy contacts, you can opt them all out with one action

• Every consent change is logged against the contact, providing a record of what changed and when

This broadly covers off the requirements set by CNIL and the Garante, tracking consent that’s kept separate from marketing consent, and an easy way to manage it. Whether that’s a contact setting their own preference, or a marketing team updating entire segments at once.

However, you will still need to check the compliance of your own marketing programs with your legal and/or privacy teams to check the individual considerations for your organization.

What to do now

1. Read our help centre article on managing open tracking consent. It gives step-by-step guidance on activating the new settings, adding the opt-out link, and updating consent in bulk
2. Talk to your privacy team about which of your contacts are in scope, and how you will inform your audience of any necessary changes
3. Build a segment of the contacts that require permission updates (such as contacts based in France and Italy) and update their open tracking consent in bulk
4. Add the open tracking opt-out link to your campaign footers, next to your unsubscribe link

If you have any questions about the new guidance (we know, it’s a tricky one), reach out to us through Live Chat within the platform, or on the Dotdigital website, or talk to your Account Manager.  We’re happy to help you work through it.

But that creates a different question: what should you do with the time you’ve gained?

As AI takes on more manual work (like building reports, analyzing data, creating content, and building segments), marketers’ day-to-day is changing. The to-do list is still long, but now there’s more room to improve campaigns, analyze results, and plan campaigns that deliver stronger results.

So, where should you invest your time? Here are four marketing skills that can help you get even more from every campaign, along with practical ways to start developing them.

1. Turning data into decisions, not dashboards

Getting answers from your marketing data is becoming much easier. Connected platforms and integrated AI assistants mean you can spend less time building dashboards or digging through reports, and more time understanding what the data is telling you.

You’ve now got more time to dedicate to spotting patterns, challenging assumptions, identifying what’s worth testing, and deciding what to do next. AI can bring insights to you, but turning them into better marketing decisions still depends on you.

Skills to focus on

The insights you get depend on the questions you ask of your data. Whether you’re using AI features built into your marketing tools or working with an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude, thoughtful prompts help uncover insights you can act on.

Understand campaign performance

Start by understanding what happened before deciding what to do next:

• How much revenue did email generate compared to the same period last year?
• Which campaigns contributed the most assisted revenue?
• Which customer segments generated the highest revenue per recipient?
• Which campaigns performed above or below expectations, and why?
• Were there any unusual changes in open rates, click-through rates, conversions, or unsubscribe rates this week?
• Which journeys generated the highest revenue with the fewest sends?

Spot trends you can repeat

Knowing what performed well will help you find patterns you can apply to more campaigns:

• What do my top-performing campaigns have in common?
• Which subject line styles consistently drive higher open rates?
• Do shorter or longer emails generate more clicks for different audiences?
• Does sending at different times change engagement for different customer segments?
• Which calls to action (CTAs) generate the highest click-through rate?
• Are there content themes that consistently lead to more conversions?

Turn insights into action

Finally, move from reporting to planning. Ask AI to help prioritize your next steps rather than simply summarizing performance: 

• Based on this data, what are the three biggest opportunities to improve performance?
• Which campaign should we test first, and why?
• Which audience segments are underperforming, and what should we change?
• Where are we losing customers in the journey?
• If you were planning next month’s email calendar using this data, what would you prioritize?

Knowing which insights deserve your attention and which ones are worth acting on is one of the most valuable marketing skills you can spend time developing. With data backing up your decisions, it’s much easier to create customer journeys that deliver real value.

2. Owning the strategy behind the automation

A clearer understanding of your customer journey helps you identify the moments where automation will have the biggest impact. Focus on the journeys that will make the biggest difference to your customers rather than trying to automate everything.

Skills to focus on

A strong automation strategy isn’t about creating more journeys. It’s about choosing the ones that solve a genuine customer need.

Identify the moments that matter

Check whether key moments in customer journeys have automation flows in place:

• New email subscriber or account creation
• Abandoned cart 
• Abandoned browse
• Post-conversion (e.g., post-purchase)
• Review request 

With those covered, use your reporting to uncover the moments unique to your customers:

• Are customers churning thirty days after a purchase? Build a re-engagement flow to keep customers engaged
• Does customer engagement spike around a specific date in your calendar? Create a journey that builds anticipation ahead of the event
• Is there a specific product customers love above all others? Turn every new product launch into an automated journey for your biggest fans

These insights help you decide which customer journey flows to build next.

Build a testing calendar

Once your core journeys are running, your time shifts from building more automations to improving the ones you already have. Regular testing helps you understand what resonates with your audience and gives you the confidence to keep refining your campaigns over time.

Here are some top testing tips: 

• Test one automation flow at a time 
• Choose one element to test at a time, for example
  • Subject lines 
  • Content length
  • Email style or layout
  • Images used 
• Keep track of your results 
• Run your optimized campaign for three months before testing again

With key customer moments automated, the next step is to make every message feel relevant, so you’re addressing them directly in the moment.

3. Making every message more relevant

Only 15% of 4,000 shoppers surveyed in the Customer trend index consider the marketing they receive to be relevant in the moment. That doesn’t mean you have to personalize every message, but you do have to go further than a first name. AI can help you personalize at scale, but deciding who needs a different experience and when is still up to you.

Skills to focus on

Personalization should be intentional. As you build your campaigns, decide which audiences need a different experience and what will make that journey more relevant.

Identify your most important audiences

AI agents can help you build the segments in seconds, leaving you more time to decide which audiences matter most. Try prompts like these:

• Build a segment with customers who haven’t engaged with an email in the last 90 days
• Create a segment of customers who have made two or more purchases in the last six months
• Find customers who browse regularly but haven’t completed a purchase
• Build a segment with customers who are close to becoming VIPs based on their purchase history
• Create a segment of customers who have never redeemed a loyalty reward
• Identify customers who bought from a specific product category but haven’t purchased again in the last six months
• Find customers who consistently open emails but rarely click through
• Build a segment with customers who joined in the last 30 days but haven’t made their first purchase

Personalize the experience

After you’ve identified the right audience, think carefully about what actually needs to change. Sometimes it’s the offer, sometimes the message, and sometimes simply the timing. 

The most effective personalization solves a customer problem or makes the customer journey smoother. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Win-back campaigns
  Tailor messages in your win-back campaign to speak to customers differently depending on their customer lifetime value (CLV). Customers with higher CLV receive a free gift with their next order, while those with lower CLV see an offer of free shipping to tip them over the line.

• Localized banners
  Update messages or images based on the segment’s geographic location, like showing winter clothes to a shopper in New York in December and your summer collection to those in Sydney. 

• Replenishment campaigns
  Send replenishment reminders based on when customers typically reorder, rather than a fixed number of days, so it lands at the best time for them.

Every relevant interaction gives customers another reason to come back. Over time, those moments strengthen the relationship and create more opportunities to keep customers engaged.

4. Building relationships that last

The strongest retention strategies give customers reasons to come back long before they’re at risk of leaving. AI can now identify customers at risk of churning, uncover loyalty opportunities, and recommend the next best action. That gives you more time to think beyond reactive marketing and create experiences that keep customers engaged for the long term.

Skills to focus on

Retention works best when it’s planned with the same care as acquisition. Instead of treating it as the final stage of the customer journey, build a strategy that continually engages customers.

Build retention with intention

Loyalty programs are one of the most effective ways to turn retention into an ongoing strategy. Our Customer Trend Index found that loyalty programs influence 53% of shoppers to feel more loyal to brands, while loyalty program members spend 67% more than non-members on average. A well-designed program gives customers a reason to come back between purchases, rather than only hearing from you when you’re trying to win them back.

Here are a few ways to build a loyalty program that customers genuinely value.

1. Reward the behaviors that matter
   Build your loyalty program around the behaviors you want to encourage. If customers naturally buy from you again, rewarding repeat purchases makes sense. If they don’t, or if you have a longer buying cycle, consider rewarding other actions that build a stronger relationship, such as reviews, referrals, or product engagement. 
   
2. Create rewards customers actually want
   Customer data gives you a much clearer picture of what drives your audience. Use those insights to shape rewards that feel genuinely worthwhile rather than offering the same incentives to everyone. When rewards reflect what your customers need, they’re far more likely to keep engaging with your brand.
   
3. Keep improving your program
   Launching your loyalty program isn’t the final destination. Customer expectations change, new opportunities emerge, and what motivates one audience today may not work tomorrow. Set aside time to review performance, listen to customer feedback, and refine your rewards so the program continues to deliver value for both your customers and your business.

There’s a lot more to loyalty program design than these three points. The Dotdigital Academy course on building customer loyalty covers it in full.

Where to invest your time

Now that AI is doing more of the manual work, how you spend your time matters just as much as the tools you use.

Understanding your customers better helps you design more thoughtful customer journeys. Those journeys create more relevant experiences, and relevant experiences build stronger customer relationships over time.

With more of the execution handled for you, there’s more time to focus on the decisions, creativity, and customer understanding that shape better marketing.

The more you invest in these skills, the more valuable every campaign, customer journey, and customer relationship becomes.

That’s the idea behind human-to-human (H2H) marketing. Your audience is human first and customer second, whether you sell to businesses (B2B) or straight to consumers (B2C). A company has never bought anything; the people inside it do. 

In this guide, we’ll cover what H2H marketing means, how it fits alongside B2B and B2C, why it matters more in the age of AI, and how to put it into practice.

What is human-to-human marketing?

Human-to-human (H2H) marketing is an approach that treats every marketing interaction as a conversation between two people, rather than a transaction between a business and a target segment. Instead of asking “how do we message this audience,” it asks “how would we talk to this person?”

In practice, that means marketing built on empathy, plain language, honesty, and genuine two-way communication. You’re still meeting a customer’s needs, but you’re doing it in a way that shows there are real people behind your brand, and that those people can be trusted. It’s the model that responsible marketing is built on, which is relationships with customers and prospects based on long-term trust and respect.

H2H vs B2B vs B2C: what’s the difference?

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, a person makes the final call. The marketing manager choosing a platform and the shopper choosing trainers are doing the same thing: weighing up options, working out who to trust, and deciding who to buy from. So, B2B and B2C are your industries; H2H is your approach.

Why is human-to-human marketing important?

Our Customer trend index found that only 15% of consumers say marketing messages feel very relevant to them, down from 23% last year. When so few messages connect, every campaign has to work harder for a smaller share of attention.

The same research points to what people respond to instead. Friends and family are 45% more likely to influence a customer’s loyalty to a brand than they were a year ago, which tells us that when a recommendation comes from a real person, people trust it enough to act on it.

Your marketing can’t replace a friend’s recommendation, but you can move it closer to one by writing like a person, showing the people behind your brand, and talking to customers the way you’d want to be talked to. The more your marketing feels like a conversation with a real human, the more trust it builds along the way.

When you get this right consistently, three things happen:

• People trust you more. Trust builds one interaction at a time, and every message that feels honest and personal adds another layer of it

• People forgive you more. Everyone slips up from time to time, whether it’s a broken link, a mistimed send, or a pricing error. When your brand has a human voice, a genuine apology lands better, and people move on rather than heading for the unsubscribe button

• People buy from you more. Feeling understood is persuasive, and a message that speaks to someone’s situation will always outsell one aimed at a broad segment

Best of all, this costs you nothing extra. Your team is already full of humans who know how to talk to people, so human-to-human marketing is less about new investment and more about letting their personality show up in the work.

Standing out when everything sounds like AI

We first published this article in 2021, a year before AI platforms like ChatGPT existed. Back then, AI worked behind the scenes of your marketing, like deciding when to send your email or which products to recommend, but a human still wrote every word your customers read. Nobody was worried about their emails sounding like a machine wrote them, because machines weren’t writing them.

These days, it can help write your emails, design your creative, and build entire campaigns. And with AI now built into most marketing platforms, almost every brand is using it to some degree.

The thing is, though, your customers have noticed. They’re wading through AI-written emails, AI-generated ads, and chatbots every day, and they’ve developed a sharp instinct for spotting them. People are getting tired of it, and when something feels automated, they scroll past without a second thought.

Which is exactly what makes the human stuff land better. A specific point of view or a bit of wit is what makes someone stop and think there’s a real person behind this brand. 

None of this is an argument against using AI. The point is to use AI the right way. Let it handle the work that eats your team’s time, like building segments, picking send times, running tests, and pulling reports, so the humans get those hours back for the work machines can’t do, which is: 

• Talking to customers
• Writing with personality
• Noticing what your audience cares about right now

How to build a human-to-human marketing strategy

1. Get your tone of voice right

Your brand voice is one of the first things customers notice about your brand. To build stronger connections with your audience:

• Be real: authenticity is about saying what the reader needs to hear, not what they want to hear
• Be empathic: let your audience know that you understand them, that you’ve been in their shoes
• Be personal: get to know your customer, know their names, likes and dislikes. It all goes a long way

Here’s an example:

Take the welcome email. Most are just a logo, a generic hello, and a discount code. Now imagine one that reads like a personal note: here’s what we’re about, here’s what you can expect from us, and if you fancy replying, a real human will read it. Nobody replies to a noreply@ address, but people will happily reply to a person, and those replies tell you more about your audience than any survey.

A helpful tip:

Before anything goes out, read it aloud, and if you wouldn’t say it to a customer, rewrite it until you would.

2. Ditch the jargon

Stuffiness, formality, and jargon put a wall up between you and your audience. Every acronym you don’t explain and every sentence that needs a second read is a small signal that you’re talking at people rather than to them. 

Write the way you’d explain something to a colleague or friend, using plain words, short sentences, and skip the fancy words. Talking to your audience as equals is one of the fastest ways to build connection, and it costs nothing.

3. Tell people what’s going on

Trust is built on openness, so tell your audience about the decisions that affect them. Explain why you’re collecting their data and what you plan to do with it. 

Here’s another example

KitKat showed how this works when thieves stole 12 tonnes of its chocolate in transit. The brand’s first move was a straightforward statement addressing what customers would want to know, which was that there were no concerns for consumer safety, and supply wasn’t affected. 

With the serious part handled, the brand had some fun with it, joking that someone had clearly taken the “have a break” slogan too literally, and eventually created a tracker that let people check whether their own bar came from the stolen batch. The post became the most-liked in the brand’s history, over 100 other brands joined in, and what should have been a supply chain headache turned into a Cannes-winning moment.

Now, you’ll probably never have 12 tonnes of chocolate go missing, but the same thinking applies to a broken link or a mistaken send: tell people about it openly, add a bit of personality (where it’s appropriate), and you’ll build far more trust than hoping nobody notices.

4. Make your automation feel personal

Use the data you hold to make experiences genuinely better, like:

• A well-timed reminder about something they left behind
• A recommendation that reflects what they’ve browsed
• A birthday message that arrives on the right day

A helpful tip:

The test for every automated touchpoint is whether it makes the customer’s experience smoother or more relevant. Let your customer journey data show you where you can add real value.

5. Make it easy to reach a human

In a two-way conversation, customers have a direct connection to the people behind your brand. Live chat, social media, and messaging apps all give people a direct line to your team, and how those conversations feel matters as much as how fast they happen. Let your support team write like themselves, sign off with their names, and drop the script when the script isn’t helping. 

A helpful tip:

If you’re using AI or bots, be upfront about it, and always give customers a quick way to reach a real person.

6. Join the conversation on social

Social media was built for conversations between people, which makes it a natural home for human-to-human marketing. Answer questions, reply to comments, share what your customers create, and post content that is both light-hearted and useful. Going live, showing your team, and joining conversations rather than broadcasting into them all remind people there are humans behind the logo. The brands that get this right are easy to spot because their replies could only have come from them.

One more example:

Duolingo turned its owl into one of the most-followed personalities on TikTok by being genuinely funny rather than brand-funny. You don’t need a mascot or a viral moment, though. You just need your replies to sound like someone on your team wrote them, because they did.

Marketing made human

Behind every open, click, and purchase is a person who can tell when a brand is talking to them and when it’s talking at them.

Human-to-human marketing is the decision to act on that. Write like you’d talk, be honest about how you work, let AI take the repetitive jobs, and give your team the room to bring some personality to the rest. None of it needs a bigger budget or a new strategy deck, because the humans who can do this are already there.

And with so much marketing now generated at the push of a button, sounding like a real person is your brand’s biggest advantage. 

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know, including:

• What a martech stack is
• What the key components are
• How it maps to the customer journey
• How it’s changing with AI
• How to build or improve yours

By the end, you’ll have a better idea of what you’ve got, what you might be missing, and where to go next.

What is a martech stack?

A martech stack is the collection of marketing technology a business uses to plan, run, and measure its marketing. Your email platform, your CRM, your analytics tool – that collection of tech is your martech stack. 

According to the State of Martech 2026 report, the martech landscape now includes over 15,000 tools. That’s a lot of options, and a lot of potential for your stack to become more complicated than it needs to be. The challenge for most marketing teams is knowing whether the ones they already have are working together properly.

The importance of a martech stack

Your martech stack is what sits between your marketing ideas and your marketing results. When it’s working well, your data flows freely, your campaigns run without manual intervention, and your team spends less time on admin and more time on strategy.

A well-connected stack gives you a clearer picture of your customers at every stage, from the moment they first discover your brand right through to repeat purchase and retention. That means better targeting, more relevant experiences, and a much stronger understanding of what’s driving results.

When it’s not working well, you end up with gaps in your data and a customer experience that feels inconsistent, which is why getting it right matters.

What are the key components of a martech stack?

Every martech stack looks a little different depending on the size of the business, the channels they use, and the goals they’re working towards. But most stacks are built around a core set of tools that cover the same fundamental needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Your CRM is where your customer data lives. It stores contact information, purchase history, interactions, and anything else that helps you understand who your customers are and where they are in their journey with you.

Email marketing platform

Your email platform is where you build, send, and track email campaigns. It’s one of the most direct ways to reach your audience and, when connected to your CRM and other data sources, one of the most effective.

Marketing automation

Automation tools let you set up campaigns and customer journeys that run in the background, triggered by customer behavior, such as welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and re-engagement campaigns.

Analytics and reporting

Your analytics tools tell you what’s working and what isn’t. From website traffic and email open rates to revenue attribution and customer lifetime value (CLV), good reporting is what turns data into better decisions.

Content management system (CMS)

Your CMS is where your website and blog content lives. It’s how you publish and manage the content that attracts, informs, and converts visitors.

Personalization

Personalization tools let you create bespoke customer experiences, whether that’s dynamic content in an email, product recommendations on your website, or targeted messaging based on behavior.

Ads and retargeting

Paid media tools help you reach new audiences and re-engage people who’ve already shown interest in your brand. They work best when connected to your customer data, so your targeting is as accurate as possible.

How does a martech stack work together?

Buying a great tool and then watching it sit in isolation can be frustrating, but a well-connected stack fixes that. Data moves freely between your tools, so no one has to manually export, upload, or piece it together. When your tools are connected, every action feeds the next one:

• When a lapsed customer re-engages via a paid ad, your CRM updates
• When a customer makes a purchase, your automation platform triggers
• When they browse a product page, your personalization tool takes note

Everything talks to everything else, and your marketing becomes more relevant as a result.

The most common way tools connect is through integrations, either native connections built directly between platforms or via Application Programming Interface (APIs) that let different systems share data. Some businesses also use a customer data platform (CDP) to act as a central hub, pulling data from every tool into one place and pushing it back out again so every platform is always working from the same customer profile.

When your stack isn’t connected properly, it shows quickly. You end up with:

• Duplicate contacts
• Inconsistent data
• Campaigns that don’t reflect what a customer has already done
• A team spending more time fixing data problems than running campaigns

More tools don’t mean better marketing. The goal is a stack where everything connects, everyone can see the same customer, and nothing gets lost on the way.

The martech stack and the customer journey

Your martech stack does more than just support your marketing. It maps directly to how your customers move through their journey with your brand. Different tools do different jobs at different stages, and understanding that is what helps you spot where your stack might be letting you down.

Awareness

This is where potential customers first discover you. Your ads, social media, SEO, and content tools are doing the heavy lifting here. The goal is getting in front of the right people at the right moment.

Consideration

Once someone knows you exist, they start weighing up their options. Your CMS, personalization tools, and email platform help you stay relevant during this stage, giving people the information they need to move forward with confidence.

Conversion

Your ecommerce integrations, forms, landing pages, and automation tools are what close the gap between interest and purchase. A well-timed abandoned cart email or a personalized offer can make the difference here.

Retention

Getting a customer is one thing, but keeping them is where the real value is. Your CRM, loyalty platform, and automation tools work together to keep customers engaged, reward repeat purchases, and spot early signs that someone might be drifting.

Advocacy

Happy customers tell other people. Review platforms, referral tools, and social proof integrations help you capture that goodwill and put it to work, turning your best customers into your best marketing asset.

The important thing to remember is that your stack needs to support the full journey, and not just parts of it. Gaps at any stage mean customers slipping through, and that’s where the new blog we mentioned earlier comes in handy.

How the martech stack is changing

The martech landscape has always moved fast. But right now, it’s changing in ways that are reshaping how marketing teams work.

AI is moving from assistant to agent

A year ago, AI in marketing meant content suggestions and subject line recommendations. Now it’s doing a lot more. AI agents can build audience segments from a plain-English description, write and refine campaign content, and show insights from your data, all without you having to log into five different tools to do it. The shift from AI as a helper to AI as a doer is happening quickly, and the stacks that are built to take advantage of it will have a real edge.

MCP is changing how tools connect

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a relatively new standard that lets AI tools connect directly to your marketing platforms. In practice, that means you can ask questions about your campaign performance, contact data, or customer behavior directly inside tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, without switching tabs or logging into your marketing platform. It’s early days, but MCP has the potential to change how marketers interact with their entire stack.

Consolidation is winning over complexity

The days of adding a new point solution for every marketing problem are fading. Marketers are increasingly looking for platforms that do more in one place, reducing the number of integrations to manage, logins to remember, and places where customer data can get lost. 

First-party data is more important than ever

With third-party cookies largely gone and privacy regulations tightening, the data you collect directly from your customers has never been more valuable. The stacks best positioned for the future are the ones built around first-party and zero-party data, such as preference centers, forms, behavioral tracking, and loyalty programs that give customers a reason to share.

How to build your martech stack

Whether you’re starting from scratch or taking stock of what you’ve already got, the process is the same. It starts with seeing what’s working and what isn’t.

Start with your goals

The biggest mistake marketers can make when building a stack is starting with the technology rather than the problem they’re trying to solve. Before you look at any platform, get an idea of what you’re trying to achieve. More subscribers? Better retention? Faster campaign turnaround? Your goals should drive your tool choices, not the other way around.

Audit what you already have

Most marketing teams are sitting on tools they don’t use, tools that duplicate each other, and tools nobody quite knows how to turn off. A quick audit of your current stack – what you have, what it does, what it costs, and whether it connects to everything else – is a useful starting point. You might find you need less than you think.

Prioritize integration over features

A tool with slightly fewer features that connects well with everything else in your stack will almost always outperform a feature-rich tool that sits in isolation. When you’re evaluating anything new, the first question should be how well it plays with what you already have.

Think about your data flow

Follow the data. Where does it come in? Where does it go? Where does it get stuck? A good stack has clean, consistent data moving freely between tools, so your CRM, your email platform, your analytics, and your personalization tools are all working from the same customer picture.

Don’t overbuild

There’s always a temptation to add more. A new AI tool here, a specialist platform there. But every tool you add is another integration to manage, another login to remember, and another place your data can get lost. Build for what you need now, which also gives you room to grow.

Review it regularly

Your stack should change as your business changes. What worked two years ago might not be the right fit today. A regular review, even just once a year, helps you stay on top of what’s earning its place and what’s quietly adding cost without adding value.

Examples of martech stacks

Every stack looks different, but here’s a simple example of what a typical ecommerce brand might be working with:

In Dotdigital’s case, a lot of these layers live in one platform, which means less time managing integrations and more time using your data. But whether you’re using one platform or several, the principle is the same. Each layer needs to feed into the next, so your marketing always reflects what your customers are actually doing.

Your martech stack is never really finished

Building a martech stack isn’t a one-time project. It’s something you come back to as your business grows, your goals shift, and new tools worth adding come along. The marketers with the strongest stacks aren’t necessarily the ones with the most tools. They’re the ones who are honest about what’s working, quick to cut what isn’t, and deliberate about how everything connects.

If you’ve read this far, you’re already ahead when it comes to understanding what a martech stack is and how to get the most from it.

The next question is whether your current stack is helping you hit your goals or quietly getting in the way, which is something we dig into in our next blog. Find out how to spot and fix the gaps in your marketing tech stack.

We’ll cover:

• What AI does well
• Where human creativity still has the edge
• How to make confident decisions about when to use which

What AI does well in marketing

AI is at its best when the task is repeatable, data-heavy, or time-consuming. Here’s what we’ve found useful, based on our own research, and what customers tell us they use day to day.

Getting a first draft down

AI is great for getting something on the page quickly to avoid blank page syndrome – the anxiety caused by staring at a blank Word doc. Subject lines and first drafts take minutes instead of hours. The output isn’t always great, but having something to edit can spark more ideas and get the job done faster.

Repurposing content across channels

Taking a piece of content and rewriting it for a different channel takes time, and it’s easy to deprioritize. A lot of marketers use AI to edit copy, keeping the core message intact while adjusting for character limits and channel context. It’s one of those tasks that’s easy to hand off once you’ve tried it.

Personalizing across a large contact list

When you have a large mailing list, building personalized, relevant marketing messages can feel daunting. But AI can help add personal product recommendations to campaigns without the extra workload. Using insights like a customer’s purchase history or browsing behavior, AI-powered product recommendations can boost conversions by over 53% and help increase revenue by around 20%.

Making sense of your data

AI spots patterns in your campaign data in seconds. It can highlight underperforming segments, predict when customers are likely to churn, and recommend the best time to send, so you spend less time searching for insights and more time acting on them.

Testing more without doing more

AI can generate different subject lines, different CTAs, and different content angles, so you can run more tests without doubling your workload. Experimenting with new subject lines can help keep your emails feeling fresh and improve engagement. Mountain Warehouse used AI to generate and test new ideas, increasing open rates to 50%, up from a typical baseline of around 35%.

Where human creativity still matters most

While AI is speeding up a lot of day-to-day tasks, there are some areas where the human touch cannot be replaced.

Knowing your audience on a human level

AI can tell you what the data says about your audience, but it can’t tell you what it means. Only you can interpret those insights to understand where someone is in their journey, why one message resonated more than another, or what your audience needs next. That’s the kind of context AI still struggles to replicate.

Brand voice and personality

AI can be trained to write in your brand voice, and with a good voice guide, it’ll get impressively close. But sounding like your brand and knowing what your brand should say are two different things.

Say you’re a retail brand with a playful voice, and your summer sale campaign is ready to go. Then your delivery partner has a meltdown and half your customers are waiting on late orders. The AI will happily write you a cheeky, on-voice sale email, because that’s what it was trained to do. It takes a person to see that the sale email should wait, and that what customers need first is a plain, honest update about their orders.

That call sits nowhere in a voice guide. It comes from someone who knows what’s happening with your customers right now and can judge how the brand should show up for it. Get it wrong and the same voice that usually feels charming suddenly feels tone-deaf. So let AI keep your copy consistent with the voice you’ve defined, and keep a person deciding how that voice meets the moment.

Creative ideas that feel original

AI is very good at producing content that’s technically correct and structurally sound. It’s less good at the kind of creative leap that makes a campaign memorable. The unexpected angle, the cultural reference that lands perfectly, and the idea that makes someone stop scrolling all still come from human creativity.

When a news story breaks, or your audience suddenly cares about something, the brands that land it are the ones where a person spotted the opportunity, judged whether it was theirs to join, and found the angle only their brand could take. AI can help you draft fast once you’ve had the idea, but the instinct for when to act, when to stay quiet, and what only you could say is human through and through.

The human touch in the process

Even the most AI-assisted campaign is full of human fingerprints, and that’s what keeps it feeling genuine:

• Someone edits the draft, catching the sentence that’s technically fine but doesn’t sound like you, and cutting the paragraph that says nothing
• Someone plans the campaign, deciding what to send, who should receive it, and what you’re trying to achieve beyond this week’s revenue target
• Someone sets the triggers and journeys, choosing which behaviors matter and what the right response to each one looks like

None of that work is visible to the customer, but all of it shapes what lands in their inbox. It’s the difference between a message that exists because a system could send it and one that exists because a person decided it was worth sending.

Audiences can’t see the process, but they can feel the result, and they’re getting better at telling the difference between communication with a person behind it and content that was generated.

How to decide when to use AI and when not to

The marketers we see getting the most from AI are the ones who’ve worked out where it saves them time without costing them quality, and where it doesn’t.

Use AI when:

• The task is repetitive and time-consuming
• You need help getting started or planning your content
• You’re generating ideas to test
• You need to create a first draft you can edit and improve
• Analyzing large volumes of data to uncover patterns and trends

A human touch matters most when:

• You need to understand your audience’s current mood or context
• Your message needs to feel distinctly like your brand voice
• The goal is to build an emotional connection, and not just share information

Where to go next

If this has got you thinking about how you’re using AI, these are some helpful reads to check out next, depending on what’s most relevant to you right now.

• See how marketers are using AI to create better campaigns

• Learn how to use AI without losing your brand voice

• Read our CMO’s take on the future of AI and human-led marketing

• Explore how Dotdigital’s AI helps you get more from every campaign

It’s your creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking that make your marketing stand out from others. By merging the best aspects of both AI and human input, you can create campaigns that are both effective and connect deeply with your audience.

Now’s the time to start working on your seasonal campaigns. The earlier your ideas come together, the more time you have to test, refine, and make improvements before the busiest sales period arrives.

We’ll show you what each email gets right, where it could go further, and how you can use these ideas in your own seasonal campaigns.

Halloween

October 31 

Halloween is a huge retail opportunity for marketers. Even if your products have nothing to do with pumpkins or candy, there’s plenty of room to join the conversation in a way that still feels true to your brand.

Why we love it

You don’t have to sell costumes, candy, or greeting cards to join the Halloween conversation, and this email proves it. We love the way the brand balances the holiday with its own quirky style rather than opting for an overly gimmicky black-and-orange template.

The copy pairs Halloween candy with its drinks, written like tasting notes you’d find in a craft beer magazine. It’s clever, on brand, and totally tempting, even if you don’t drink beer. 

Room to improve

This email relies heavily on images to tell the story. If those images don’t load, or if someone’s using a screen reader, the campaign’s message disappears with them.

Keeping copy separate from images, adding descriptive alt text, and making your CTA easy to spot and click, ensures accessibility for everyone.

Steal this for your campaign 

Use this checklist when you’re designing email campaigns to keep them accessible:

• Use both text and images to make your email easy to read
• Use clear fonts that are easy to read
• Add alt text to every image
• Use large buttons that are easy to tap for mobile devices
• Make link and button text clear, so readers know what to expect
• Write in Plain English 
• Keep important copy outside images so screen readers can read it

We’ve got a blog that covers everything you need to know about accessible email design and copy with practical tips you can use in every campaign.

11:11 Singles’ Day

November 11  

What began as a day for single people to treat themselves has grown into one of the world’s biggest shopping events. While it started in China, Singles’ Day now inspires campaigns across the globe. 

Why we love it

Singles’ Day falls on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, so 22% off (11 + 11) is a nice nod to the occasion. 

The email also does a great job of removing friction. Free shipping thresholds sit front and center, while the footer highlights the return policy and customer service links. Those details help remove blockers that could keep shoppers from reaching the checkout. 

Room to improve 

The imagery mixes menswear and womenswear, suggesting this campaign was intended for a broad audience, which is a missed opportunity.

Segmentation and personalization can increase campaign clicks by 30% and deliver an almost 6x higher ROI. During busy sales periods, speaking directly to your audience is one of the easiest ways to make your campaigns relevant. 

Steal this for your campaign

Start by identifying the audiences you want to speak to. That might include:

• Gender preferences
• Location
• Product or catalog preferences 
• Marketing channel preferences

Once you’ve mapped out your segments, tailoring the creative parts becomes much simpler. 

Dynamic content is an easy place to start. It lets you change parts of an email based on who’s opening it, so different customers see different content without you having to build multiple campaigns. For example, you could swap the hero image so shoppers see products that match their preferences, rather than sending everyone the same generic version.

You can take the same approach with product recommendations. AI can recommend products based on someone’s purchase history, browsing behavior, or what similar customers are buying, helping you showcase the products people are more likely to buy. Those kinds of smarter recommendations can deliver up to 20x ROI. 

Thanksgiving 

November 26

Thanksgiving campaigns can easily get lost among the Black Friday promotions filling customers’ inboxes. But that also makes it a great moment to pause and celebrate the holiday before the shopping rush begins.

Why we love it

This email doesn’t mention discounts or promotions. Instead, it celebrates Thanksgiving by shining a light on the people behind the brand and thanking customers for being part of the journey. It’s warm, genuine, and a welcome change of pace in a busy inbox.

Room to improve 

There’s very little we’d change here. A small touch of personalization could make it more relevant. Addressing customers by name is an easy way to make a ‘thank you’ message feel like it was written just for them.

Steal this for your campaign

If you’re sending a Thanksgiving email, keep it simple. A personalized header like: “Thank You, Jenna, From The Cuts Team” is often enough to make the message more personal. This kind of campaign doesn’t need lots of dynamic content or complex automation; a sincere message and a touch of personalization can go a long way.

Black Friday 

November 27

Last Black Friday, 87.3 million people shopped online, and global spending reached $79 billion in just 24 hours. The appetite for Black Friday deals is still huge, but standing out in the inbox takes more than another “ENDS TONIGHT” subject line.

Why we love it

Countdown clocks are both simple and effective. During Black Friday, shoppers are bombarded with “last chance” messaging, and many brands end one sale only to launch another a few hours later. A live countdown adds credibility to the deadline, giving shoppers a clear visual cue that time is running out, driving them to act.

Room to improve

The email includes star ratings as social proof, but there’s no indication that the reviews are from a third-party source.

Reviews have a huge influence on purchase decisions.   If you’re going to use them, make sure they’re clearly connected to real customer feedback, otherwise the stars risk looking decorative rather than persuasive.

Steal this for your campaign

Try using countdown clocks throughout Black Friday and the holiday season at important points in the customer journey:

• Sale launch: Count down to the moment your sale begins
• Sale ending: Build urgency as the offer comes to a close
• Shipping deadlines: Show shoppers exactly how long they have left to order for holiday delivery

For social proof, pull reviews directly from a verified provider such as Trustpilot, Feefo, Bazaarvoice, or Reviews.io. Our latest Customer trend index found that brand recommendations from friends and family are now 45% more influential than they were a year ago, highlighting just how much people trust other people’s experiences. 

Verified ratings and recent customer reviews bring that same sense of authenticity to your emails, giving shoppers something far more convincing than a generic five-star graphic.

Special Black Friday campaign shoutouts

Black Friday is too big a moment to stop at one example, so here are two campaigns that stood out for very different reasons.

The anti-Black Friday email

This campaign from Patagonia is a great reminder that participating in Black Friday doesn’t always mean running a discount.

The brand stays true to its mission by encouraging customers to repair what they own, reuse what they can, and think twice before buying something new. Whether or not you take the same approach, the campaign is a strong example of how a clear brand mission can cut through the noise.

Black Friday abandoned carts

For most brands, Black Friday is all about conversions, making abandoned cart automations especially important. This example doesn’t rely solely on urgency. It reinforces the value of completing the purchase by highlighting benefits like flexibility and community, giving hesitant shoppers more reasons to check out.

Cyber Monday 

November 30

Capping off the Black Friday weekend, Cyber Monday continues to grow. Online sales were up 6% last year, and global spending hit $52.7 billion. But by the time Monday rolls around, shoppers have already seen hundreds of offers, so your campaign needs a fresh angle to make an impact.

Why we love it

After a weekend packed with percentage discounts, this offer feels different. A buy one get one free (BOGOF) deal, paired with free shipping, offers shoppers something more tangible than another “20% off” promotion. 

Our Customer trend index found that 53% of shoppers want free shipping and 45% want free gifts in exchange for their loyalty. So, framing the offer this way helps the campaign stand out while giving shoppers the rewards they value most. 

Room to improve

The offer is strong, but redeeming it could be simpler. Quite a few Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) campaigns still ask shoppers to copy and paste discount codes at checkout. It’s a small extra step, but it’s also another opportunity for shoppers to abandon their purchases or frustrate shoppers who forget to enter the code. The easier you make it for customers to redeem an offer, the more likely they are to complete it.

Steal this for your campaign

If your ecommerce platform supports it, create links that automatically apply discounts when customers click through from your campaign. That way, shoppers can go straight to checkout without having to type or copy and paste a promo code. 

You can use these links across email, SMS, and WhatsApp to create a smoother experience wherever customers engage with your brand.

Christmas 

December 1 – 25

It’s hard to pick one email that encapsulates a month’s worth of campaigns, so we didn’t. There’s no relief after the crazy BFCM period, as you’re launched straight into festive campaigns. Having a variety of marketing campaigns is a guaranteed way to stand out during the holiday season.

Why we love it

Customers trust other customers, so putting your community front and center is a smart move. This email leans into customer reviews and user-generated content, while the CTA “Shop Customer Faves” feels much warmer than a standard “Shop now.”

Room to improve 

This campaign celebrates customer content, but it misses the chance to invite more customers to get involved. A CTA encouraging shoppers to share their own holiday photos or reviews would keep the conversation going long after the email lands.

Steal this for your campaign

If you’re asking customers to share content, you’ve got to give them a reason to do it. Referral rewards, loyalty points, or a social competition can encourage shoppers to share photos, reviews, or holiday traditions featuring your brand. By the time next year’s holiday season comes around, you’ll have a library of authentic customer content ready to use.

Why we love it

Advent campaigns are great at keeping customers coming back, and this one takes a clever approach by making all offers available throughout the 12-day campaign. Customers have time to browse, compare, and decide what interests them, rather than feeling pressured to buy on the day. It’s a smart approach when 31% of shoppers are taking longer to make purchase decisions.

Room to improve 

The 12-day format already encourages repeat visits, but each email could build more anticipation for what’s next. The core offer doesn’t need to change. Instead, layer in something new each day: a teaser for tomorrow’s featured experience, an exclusive giveaway, or a fun interactive element. 

Steal this for your campaign

Add some gamification to keep customers coming back. Daily quizzes, scratch cards, spin-to-win games, bonus rewards, or sneak peeks at tomorrow’s featured offer all give shoppers another reason to open your emails. The goal is to make your Advent campaign an experience, not just a series of sales emails.

Why we love it

By the time Christmas is over, shoppers have spent weeks surrounded by discounts and urgency. Instead of leading with the sale, this campaign focuses on how the product fits into customers’ everyday lives. It feels calmer, more helpful, and stands out because it isn’t trying to shout the loudest.

Room to improve 

The campaign’s softer approach could go further by leaning into editorial content that helps shoppers make a decision. Give customers something worth reading, whether they’re ready to buy or not, and you’ll create a more valuable experience than another promotion alone.

Steal this for your campaign

Create editorial content that helps customers make a decision, like buying guides, product comparisons, and expert advice. These give you richer content to share across your campaigns while naturally leading readers to your product pages when they’re ready to buy.

This kind of content is exactly the kind of helpful, informative content that performs well in search and is more likely to be surfaced by AI when recommending products or answering shoppers’ questions.

Your holiday marketing, all wrapped up

As you start building your own campaigns, take a moment to ask the question: What would make this email even better?

It might be a countdown clock, some dynamic content, a smoother checkout experience, or a more editorial approach to your emails. Small improvements can make a big difference during the busiest shopping period of the year.