Email marketing remains a valuable channel for retailers, and incoming AI tools could improve it even more. A new survey by Optimove Insights points to opportunities and challenges for retailers using one of digital marketing’s oldest channels.

Shoppers prefer advertisers to market to them through email more than any other channel, but it's complicated.

• Email ranked as both the most (35%) and least (40%) attention-grabbing channel, according to Optimove Insights.
• 55% said they felt overwhelmed by emails at key shopping moments like holidays.

Here's what retailers should keep in mind when appraising their email marketing strategy.

All hail emails

Retailers looking for the best way to reach shoppers shouldn’t abandon email. It’s the top online channel (60%) that consumers prefer marketers to use, according to the survey.

• Other favored channels include social media ads (50%) and mobile and web push notifications (37%).

A global August 2025 CSG survey had email’s share of preferences even higher, at 73%.

However, email isn’t a magic bullet. Much of it goes unread.

• One third (34%) of shoppers have dozens of unread emails, according to the survey, and 9% confessed to having tens of thousands of unread emails.
• Only 11% of consumers claimed no unread emails, per Optimove.

Relevance is the key

Relevance was the top factor for getting a consumer to open a marketing email. A full 41% said that if the email was tied to a product they had purchased, they’d open that email. Another 18% said they valued deeper personalization, according to the survey.

While customers in the survey were overwhelmed by irrelevant emails, many invited emails specific to their interests and purchases.

Retailers who don’t want to turn away customers should offer multiple channels, and allow customers to choose which way they want to get contacted.

HJitting the right volume and cadence is a fine line.

• Only 9% of consumers get just the right number of emails, the Optimove survey found.

The rest of the audience gets too many, or even too few.

• The majority (56%) said they "would like to get many more” emails.
• 9% said they would like to get “a few more” emails.

Retailers who fear the backlash from sending too many emails should keep these high demand numbers in mind. If emails are relevant, and the retailer is a trusted curator of products, then more emails will find a welcome audience.

Less than a quarter (24%) of consumers surveyed said they would unsubscribe if they received too many emails.

Here comes AI

The enduring popularity of email for consumers could be sustained in the future by recent AI-powered summary tools from major email providers like Google and Yahoo.

Shoppers are increasingly adopting AI chatbots for conversational discovery, and these tools can summarize a user's inbox.

Email marketers are waiting to see how these new tools impact the channel over the next year or more. For shoppers feeling overwhelmed by too many emails, such summarizing capabilities give users a sense of control.

The bottom line: if retail consumers are subscribing to your emails, chances are they want more, not fewer, emails, as long as quality and relevance don’t fall.

This was originally featured in the Retail Daily newsletter. For more retail insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.