NEW Episode Drop! The funniest things email marketers did in 2025

What do owls, Drake, and 74,000 "exclusive" subject lines all have in common? They all showed up in email marketing data from 2025.

In this episode of Send It, we take a break from the serious stuff and dig into a fun data report from our partners at Omnisend. We review the emojis, celebrities, pop culture moments, holidays, animals, and overused cliches that dominated email campaigns throughout the year. The results are equal parts funny, surprising, and honestly pretty revealing about how email marketers think.

Want to take it a step further? Scroll on because we're unpacking the funniest sh!t from 2025.

5 Things we learned from the funny things email marketers did in 2025

1. Everyone is chasing the same moment

When Drake was the most name-dropped celebrity in email campaigns last year, it wasn't because brands suddenly became music fans. It's because he was unavoidable in culture, and marketers noticed.

The instinct to borrow cultural relevance isn't wrong. The problem is when everyone borrows the same thing at the same time. If 40 brands reference the same moment in the same week, none of them own it. The ones that win are the ones who get there first or find the angle nobody else took.

Cultural relevance has a short shelf life. Speed and originality are what separate a campaign that lands from one that blends in.

2. Cliches are a symptom, not a strategy

Last chance. Exclusive. Lucky you. These phrases didn't end up in tens of thousands of campaigns because they work exceptionally well. They ended up there because they're easy and they feel safe.

The data showing "exclusive" in over 74,000 campaigns says less about personalization and more about how often marketers reach for a word that sounds like it means something without having to do the work of actually meaning something. When everything is exclusive, nothing is.

The fix isn't finding a new cliche. It's slowing down long enough to say something specific.

3. The apology email is a tactic now

Six thousand campaigns went out with some version of "oops" or "sorry" last year. Some were genuine mistakes. Most probably weren't.

There's a version of the apology email that works — it's unexpected, it feels human, and it creates a moment of real connection. There's also a version that's just a discount dressed up as humility. Subscribers can tell the difference more than marketers think, and the more it gets used as a formula, the faster it stops working.

Authenticity at scale is hard. But manufactured authenticity is worse than none at all.

4. The holidays you think matter and the ones that actually do

Christmas and Black Friday at the top of the list makes sense. Halloween beating out Thanksgiving is the one worth paying attention to.

Halloween is creative permission. There's no expectation of a specific offer or a specific discount. It's a mood, and that gives brands more room to do something different. The campaigns that use holidays as a creative brief rather than just a sale trigger tend to be the ones people actually remember.

The calendar is the same for every brand. How you show up on it is still a choice.

TL;DR: Data shows what's common, but it doesn't tell you what to do.

Knowing what every other marketer is doing is useful context. It's not a playbook.

The most interesting thing the data reveals isn't what's popular. It's how much of email marketing is still running on autopilot.

Tune into this week's episode of Send It for the full breakdown and grab Omnisend's report here.

🎧 Here's what we're diving into:
03:44 The top 10 most used emojis in subject lines revealed
08:43 The TV shows and movies marketers referenced most
11:50 The most mentioned animal in email (it's not a dog or cat)
15:54 Internet culture moments brands actually leaned into
16:39 Protein, matcha, Stanley and the pop culture keywords of 2025
17:46 Viral moments that made it into email campaigns
20:12 How many brands actually talked about tariffs and politics
21:59 The holiday calendar every email marketer is working from
23:51 The worst marketing cliches showing up in thousands of campaigns
25:14 Why "exclusive" is everywhere and how much of it is AI
28:19 The oops and apology email - mistake or marketing tactic
30:12 How 82% of marketers start their emails

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Omnisend is an all in one eCommerce email and SMS marketing automation platform that enables marketers to engage customers and drive sales through personalized experiences.

Inboox.ai is an AI-powered library packed with over 1M+ Shopify emails. Explore send time data, full HTML codes, AI breakdowns and more from the fast growing DTC brands.

✌️,

Jimmy and Chase