PMG Digital Made for Humans

Insights from the Inbox: How Retailers Can Stand Out in the 2025 Peak Season

November 11, 2025 | 4 min read

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Emory Paine, Loyalty & CRM Lead

Emory Paine is a Loyalty & CRM Lead at PMG, with nearly a decade of experience in lifecycle marketing strategy across B2C and B2B brands. Emory has built and led high-performing CRM teams, driving impact in marketing automation, customer retention, and data activation. He loves to help brands cultivate meaningful, long-term customer relationships through scalable email and SMS programs.

As the holiday season grows more competitive, the inbox remains one of the most powerful—and crowded—places for brands to connect with consumers. PMG’s latest research report, Insights from the Inbox: Email Considerations for the 2025 Peak Season, analyzes how more than 100 leading retail and lifestyle brands showed up in shoppers’ inboxes from October through December 2024.

The findings reveal the subtle yet strategic choices that separate brands that get opened from those that get overlooked, and offer practical takeaways for marketers looking to maximize impact in the year ahead.

  • How Inbox Volume Shapes Competition: Discover how consumers received more than 100 marketing emails per day—and how inbox activity surged by over 100% on Cyber Monday—raising the stakes for visibility and engagement.

  • The Promotional Patterns That Work: See why 91% of subject lines featuring an offer used a percentage discount, and how alternative value framing (like dollar savings, free gifts, or free shipping) helped some brands stand out.

  • The Ideal Subject Line Length & Style: Understand why the sweet spot for engagement fell between 28 and 45 characters, and how short, bold subject lines, often in all caps, captured attention during high-volume periods.

  • Sender Name Strategies That Build Relevance: Learn how brands like Macy’s used multiple sender profiles (Macy’s Beauty, Macy’s Black Friday) to connect with different audiences and improve open rates.

  • Visual Trust & Brand Recognition with BIMI: Explore how adopting Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) helps brands display verified logos next to subject lines, signaling authenticity and trust.

  • Timing and Testing for Peak Performance: See how retailers that adjusted send times—reaching users at midnight, early morning, or late evening—more effectively met shifting consumer behaviors during key retail days.

In a year defined by heightened competition and consumer fatigue, inbox strategy has become a true differentiator of brand performance. PMG’s research shows that small optimizations, like timing, tone, format, and sender identity, can significantly influence engagement and conversion.

Download the full report to learn more.