What’s your winter arc look like?
For those that don’t know the meaning of this Gen Z-inspired phrase, a winter arc is essentially the new way to phrase a fitness-focused New Year’s resolution. With 400k+ #winterArc posts on Instagram and 600k+ posts on TikTok, people locking into a winter arc set goals for themselves and use the cold, dark months to achieve them.
We think that marketers can have their own winter arc too! In fact, 2025 marketing trends tend to focus on efficiency and payoff—two excellent goals to improve the “health” of your marketing program.
Here, we take a look at a few ways marketers can implement the best marketing tools available today—such as Backstroke’s AI email generator, among others—to get on track early for their 2025 goals. Think of these tips as ways to whip your campaigns into shape this winter, setting your brand up for success across the new year!
2025 Marketing Trend: Email AI Workflows
You’ve likely been hearing this for a few years, but the best AI marketing tools yet are just a click or two away . . . And they’ll only get better as time goes on! As Backstroke Founder & CEO R. J. Talyor explains in the video below, how AI can be one of your biggest time-saving solutions in this new year.
Backstroke CEO R. J. Talyor asks: What would you do with up to 17 extra hours per week?
How Will This Get Your Marketing Into Shape?
At this point, 70% of marketers are using some form of AI in their workflows. The teams that use email AI specifically, report that it removes anywhere from 10 hours to 8 weeks from their email processes. When you factor in the design processes, content creation, editing, testing, list management, and personalization processes, email marketing without AI can be a pretty lengthy process!
When implementing the right email AI tools though, these timelines will drastically decrease. AI can write the best email subject lines, summarize email content, and even design entire emails that are tailored to fit your customers’ shopping interests and habits. Right now, you can create a beautiful, optimized email in just a few clicks . . . And that certainly beats 10 hours of work!
Watch Head of Design Tyler Hill create an effective retail email in just a few clicks.
2025 Marketing Trend: Email Personalization
Adding email AI to your workflows will help you save time and create better content. Pin-pointing exactly whom you’re sending to will make sure the right subscribers receive the right offers, images, subject lines, and more.
Segmentation divides subscriber lists into smaller, more targeted audience groups, and it’s a critical practice to implement this winter. This is because segmented email campaigns achieve nearly double the open rates of unsegmented lists.
As you start your 2025 winter arc, make sure that the email marketing tools you’re using allow you to segment audiences to a fairly granular degree. Backstroke’s email AI, for example, lets users generate the most effective email subject lines and emails for nearly limitless combinations of people across ages, locations, device types, spending habits, and more.
How Will This Get Your Marketing Into Shape?
Email personalization delivers 6x higher transaction rates. By sharing details with your email AI tools about whom you want to message, you’ll then be able to determine the most effective marketing contents and mediums to use across your audience groups.
Starting off the new year with the 760% increase in message-driven revenue that email personalization promises is a resolution any ecommerce brand can get behind.
You can learn how to make the most of AI-powered segmentation and personalization in our guide: Email Segmentation Strategy: 5 Ways to Segment Audiences & Create Custom AI Messages.
Click above to read our full guide on audience segmentation!
2025 Marketing Trend: Ensure Easy Summarization
Now that iOS 18 has arrived—and we hope most people have updated their operating systems ahem—most iPhone users are seeing summarized email content and preview text from Apple Intelligence. Email marketers need to account for these updates in their work, from here on out.
How Will This Get Your Marketing Into Shape?
The updates that Apple has put into iOS 18 give marketing teams new opportunities to focus on when optimizing their emails this year, namely:
- You will have to write clear, straightforward body copy that AI can digest, interpret, and summarize.
- Your subject lines will have to be very good, as they’re now more valuable and important than ever.
Regarding the first point, it will be critical to ensure each message has a strong and consistent brand voice. Establishing a unique creative voice for your brand is obviously a best practice, but it will also help your content stand out amongst crowded inboxes.
Regarding the second point, injecting creativity, personalization and timely offers into your subject lines is more important than ever. Since Apple summarizes email preview text, marketers need to ensure that the copy they can still write—i.e. the subject line—is eye-catching enough for consumers to notice. Using an email subject line generator and editing its filters to include slang, emotions, timely offers and demographic-beloved language is an easy way to craft great email subject lines or just gather inspiration.
To see what other updates iOS 18 is bringing email marketing in 2025, check out The Email Marketer’s Guide to iOS 18 (Plus 4 Actionable Takeaways to Use Right Now!).
Click above to read our comprehensive guide to iOS 18 and email!
2025 Marketing Trend: Act With Authenticity
It’s not just Gen Z that prioritizes authentic, genuine marketing content. All generations have messaging preferences that align with their tastes and values! As the lines between our digital and physical lives continue to blur and evolve, brands will need to keep a finger on the pulse of the values and language their target demographics actually connect with.
Let’s look at a brand who does this well. e.l.f Beauty, is a favorite cosmetics brand of Gen Z and Millennials, in large part because of their branding, value and authentic voice in the beauty market. This authenticity carries throughout their email marketing too. e.l.f. Uses email to connect with customers using a friendly, socially-conscious, and slangy tone (and all without trying too hard). The proof of their authenticity’s effectiveness lies in the numbers, as e.l.f.’s digital sales have grown 90% year-over-year.
Having the right insights into subscriber preferences—in this case how generations connect with slang in subject lines—can make all difference!
How Will This Get Your Marketing Into Shape?
Combining your established brand voice and values with timely offers will connect with consumers who yearn for authenticity more and more in 2025. Whether you’re emailing people who are on the younger side, older side, or somewhere in the middle, consumers are more likely to interact with content where your personality shines through!
When using email AI like Backstroke and its Trends Dashboard, marketers will surface the exact phrases, offers, emojis, and contents brands are sending right now. This will then help you make informed decisions on whether you should go with the flow or buck the trends.
Using AI and data to inform creative decision making is a must for marketing messaging in 2025. Combining AI’s creative insights, time-saving tools and email personalization capabilities will help you better connect with the actual people you’re sending to in both authentic and effective ways that work for them as individuals.
