The Litmus State of Email 2026 report makes one thing very clear. Email marketing has changed dramatically in just 12 months. AI is now shaping what gets seen, not just how emails are created.

And while most teams are using AI to send more, fewer are thinking about what happens when AI is deciding what gets read. Expectations are rising faster than most email programs are evolving.

AI is now controlling the inbox, not just helping create emails 

One of the biggest shifts in the Litmus report is where AI is having the most impact.

Most of the focus has been on using AI to create emails faster. Writing copy, generating images, speeding up production.

But the bigger change is happening inside the inbox. AI is now filtering, summarising, and prioritising emails before a user looks at them.

You’re now competing with how AI decides what’s worth showing in the first place. Most email teams aren’t building their campaign around that at this moment in time. The report highlights that fewer than a third of marketers have a strategy for AI-driven inboxes.

It’s something we’ve been looking at closely at Spotler.

We’ve already started exploring how AI inboxes are changing behaviour, from Gmail’s AI overviews to how content is being summarised and surfaced.

If you want to go deeper on this topic (which I highly recommend), we’ve covered it here:

AI is raising expectations, but exposing weak email programs 

AI is raising the bar for email marketing. But it’s not fixing the underlying problems. If anything, it’s exposing them. The Litmus report highlights ongoing challenges around data, integration, and proving ROI.

If your data is incomplete, outdated, or poorly structured, AI doesn’t improve your output. Instead, it scales the problem.

AI is being positioned as the solution, but in reality, it’s more of an amplifier. Good email programmes get better and weak ones get exposed.

Without solid data foundations in place, AI won’t be the silver bullet that makes your email marketing better. It just makes it faster. And faster isn’t always better.

There’s also a more technical side to this that often gets overlooked.

Email hygiene still matters. Things like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC aren’t new, but they’ve become more important as mailbox providers tighten their requirements and filtering gets more aggressive.

If your setup isn’t right, it doesn’t matter how good your email is. It may never reach the inbox in the first place.

Email teams are under pressure, and the role is changing fast 

Now that AI is shaping our lives, email marketers need to adapt their skillset to keep up.

At the same time, it’s worth acknowledging what email teams are dealing with right now. It’s a huge paradigm shift and the pressure is building.

Teams are being asked to do more, move faster, and deliver better results, often without any extra resource.

This stat really sums up the change in production speed.

  • In 2024, 62% of teams took two weeks or more to produce a single email.
  • Today, most are turning emails around in 1 to 3 days.

AI has played a huge role in that. It’s removed bottlenecks, sped up content creation, and made it easier to get emails out of the door.

But it’s also changed what the role of an email marketer looks like.

Not that long ago, different parts of the process were split across teams. Copywriters wrote, designers designed, and developers built.

Now, in many cases, one person is doing all of it:

  • Planning the campaign
  • Writing the copy
  • Creating images
  • Building the email
  • Testing it
  • Sending it
  • Reporting on it

And the consequence of this is that some of those specialist roles are starting to disappear from our industry.

The report highlights that demand for dedicated email design roles is shrinking, with far fewer teams prioritising design and template development in hiring.

AI can now generate layouts, suggest copy, and even optimise designs across devices. Those tasks used to sit with separate specialists.

The job is changing fast. It’s moving from “I build emails”, to “I make sure this campaign delivers results.”

That sounds like progress and in many ways it really is. But it also means the expectations are higher.

Email marketers are no longer just responsible for getting an email out. You’re responsible for how it performs, how to make it more personalised, and how it fits into the wider strategy that you now also need to deliver.

Email is shifting from campaigns to relationships 

As if the change in role wasn’t enough to deal with, email marketers are also dealing with a shift in execution.

Email is moving away from campaigns, and towards relationships. Promotional emails still drive the most revenue. That hasn’t changed and is to be expected.

What was interesting though is that the report shows a clear rise in newsletters, onboarding, and customer engagement emails. Newsletters alone are up 12% year on year.

Litmus found a pattern between the teams seeing the highest ROI. They’re investing in relationship-building emails.

Things like:

  • Welcome journeys
  • Lifecycle emails
  • And behavioural triggers

Emails that respond to what a user is doing, not just what a brand wants to send.

That shift is critical for the AI-driven inbox. Because if AI is deciding what gets surfaced, then relevance to the user becomes everything.

This is where the idea of “Return on Relationship” comes in. Instead of asking “did this email drive a sale?“, the focus shifts to “is this building trust over time?”

Not every email is meant to convert immediately. Some are there to educate, onboard or just to stay relevant. Those are often the emails that lead to better long-term performance.

It’s a shift in mindset, and not always an easy one to sell internally.

Email is still seen as an instant channel for generating leads, revenue, and sales rather than a long-term relationship builder.

Email design still isn’t where it should be – Email accessibility and mobile responsiveness 

Email design is another area where things aren’t quite where they should be.

One stat that really stood out to me: only 47% of companies are designing fully responsive, mobile-friendly emails.

That’s surprising and annoying. Mobile email isn’t new. It hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve been building mobile-friendly emails since the iPhone 3. That was back in 2008.

So, seeing that more than half of companies still aren’t doing this properly is frustrating.

At this point, it shouldn’t be something we’re still getting wrong. Especially with modern email builders like Spotler’s, which has an excellent and easy-to-use mobile editing functionality allowing you to adapt layouts, styles and padding separately from the desktop design.

Accessibility follows a similar pattern.

The report shows that while teams are picking up individual tactics, far fewer are following proper standards like WCAG.

It ends up being a bit piecemeal. A few improvements here and there, but not something that’s properly built into the process. Small companies with fewer than 10 employees are nearly 3x more likely to skip accessibility entirely. That’s disappointing.

The same applies to things like dark mode. If it’s not considered early, it shows up badly in the inbox.

We’ve looked at this a lot at Spotler, from accessibility for both humans and AI, to building emails that work well in dark mode.

Because in the end, it all comes back to the same thing. Your emails should be built around what’s right for your customers, not what’s easiest to get out the door.

It’s not all bad news though, Advanced AI adopters are closing this gap – they are 54% more likely to follow WCAG.

Email metrics have changed. It’s about revenue now

The final shift is in how success is measured. And this isn’t new. We’ve been saying for years that opens and clicks are metrics that do not paint the full picture of success.

But what’s changed is how seriously that’s now being taken. Email teams don’t really get away with reporting on engagement anymore.

The expectation now is much more direct. What did this campaign drive?

  • Revenue
  • Pipeline
  • Demo requests
  • Conversions

That’s the conversation email marketers are now having.

And it links back to the pressure email teams are under. When you’re being asked to do more, move faster, and prove impact, surface-level metrics aren’t enough.

You need to show how email is contributing to the business. Not just how people interacted with it.

The Litmus State of Email Report reflects that shift. There’s more focus on revenue attribution, multi-channel reporting, and understanding email’s role across the full customer journey.

But at the same time, there’s also a growing recognition that not every email is meant to convert immediately. That’s where the idea of “Return on Relationship” comes in.

Some emails are there to build trust, stay relevant, and keep your brand top of mind. And both matter. Email marketers need to create campaigns of both types which dovetail perfectly into each other.

Adapting to what comes next 

The inbox has changed, but the fundamentals haven’t. You’re still trying to reach a real person, in a crowded space, with something worth their time. 

The difference now is that expectations are higher, the tools are more powerful, and the margin for getting it wrong is smaller. 

And if the last 12 months are anything to go by, 2026 is going to be another year of big change and adaptation for the email industry.  

Key stats from the report 

If you just want the highlights, these are the numbers that stood out:

AI adoption and impact 

  • 34% of teams are using AI regularly across multiple areas
  • 28% are still in early-stage or limited use
  • Only 5% report advanced, fully integrated AI usage
  • 30% of UK companies claim advanced AI adoption, ahead of other regions
  • 33% of teams expect 50–75% of their email operations to be AI-driven by the end of 2026

Speed, pressure, and production

  • 76% of marketers produce and send emails within 3 days
  • In 2024, 62% of teams took two weeks or more to send a single email
  • Only 47% of companies are designing fully responsive, mobile-friendly emails

Email strategy and priorities

  • Top priority: increasing engagement and click-through rates (43.8%)
  • Followed by:
    • Strengthening compliance (39.6%)
    • Expanding AI usage (37.5%)
    • Enhancing automation and workflows (38%) (Page 35)

Send frequency 

  • 36% of companies send emails several times per week
  • 23% send emails daily
  • The majority of brands are in the inbox multiple times per week or more

Performance and ROI 

  • Advanced AI adopters are 75% more likely to achieve ROI above 45:1
  • Most programs see:
    • 30–40% open rates
    • 3–5% click-through rates
    • 3–4% conversion rates

Accessibility and experience gaps 

  • Only 26% of teams follow WCAG accessibility standards
  • 1 in 6 people globally live with a disability