For more than a decade, the internet has confidently predicted the “death of email.” Every few years, a new channel emerges on social media, through push notifications, messaging apps, chatbots, influencer platforms, and the same headline resurfaces: email is dead.
And yet here we are in 2025, and the truth is the exact opposite.
Email remains the #1 owned revenue channel, outperforming social, SMS, paid media, chat apps, and conversational platforms combined. If anything, email is not dying — it’s evolving faster than any other channel in the customer engagement ecosystem.
This year at Dreamforce 2025, the direction became crystal clear:
Email is entering a new era powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), Einstein, Data Cloud, and the game-changing new layer — Agentforce AI Agents. What we’re witnessing is the largest transformation since marketing automation first gained mainstream adoption.
Below is a breakdown of why email is stronger than ever and how Salesforce is turning it into an intelligent, predictive, omni-channel engine for every business model — B2B, B2C, and D2C.
Table of Contents
Email Still Delivers the Highest ROI of Any Marketing Channel
Despite constant hype surrounding newer channels, email remains the most profitable and predictable investment for marketers. Based on 2024–2025 benchmarks:
- $40–$45 return for every $1 spent
- 4x higher CTR than organic social
- 3x higher conversions than paid ads
- 90% of consumers check their inbox daily
- 20–25% of eCommerce revenue consistently comes from email
- B2B marketers rank email as their #1 deal acceleration channel
Unlike social platforms, email does not come with:
❌ algorithm crashes
❌ sudden audience loss
❌ pay-to-play visibility
❌ political or policy volatility
Email is stable, predictable, and fully owned by the business. And with SFMC, it becomes deeply personalized, automated, and unified across channels — making its ROI even stronger.
AI Turns Email Into a Predictive, Adaptive Experience
The old batch-and-blast era is officially over. AI is reshaping every part of email marketing — from planning and creation to optimization and lifecycle orchestration.
With Einstein and Agentforce Marketing AI, SFMC now enables:
- Predictive send times
- AI-generated subject lines & CTAs
- Real-time content assembly
- Dynamic personalization blocks
- Automated A/B and multivariate testing
- AI-generated audiences
- AI-built multi-step journeys
- Smart product and content recommendations
Email is no longer static — it thinks, adapts, and evolves.
What’s next (2026–2027)?
AI will automatically maintain the entire lifecycle journey. Marketers will define goals; AI will manage execution.
Data Cloud Makes Email Real-Time, Context-Aware & Connected
The Data Cloud is the single most transformative shift in email since the introduction of automation.
It unifies:
- Identity data
- Intent data
- Behavioral patterns
- Web/app activity
- Sales and service interactions
- Predictive scores
Instead of weekly batch sends, email becomes real-time and behavior-triggered, with journeys activating the instant something meaningful happens.
Examples of real-time triggers:
- Pricing page views
- Cart abandonment
- Product activation
- Support ticket creation
- App feature usage
- AI chat interaction
- Churn risk updates
This is no longer marketing to last week’s behavior — it’s marketing to the moment.
Automation Makes Email Personal, Relevant & Human
Automation ensures email remains relevant without becoming spammy. Using Journey Builder, Automation Studio, and the new Next-Gen Journeys, SFMC ensures customers get:
✔ the right message
✔ at the right time
✔ through the right channel
✔ based on real intent
Automation is no longer workflow building — it’s lifecycle intelligence.
Future Outlook:
Journeys will be fully AI-orchestrated. Marketers will set objectives like:
“Grow active users by 25%,” and AI will design, optimize, and manage the journey.
Social Media ≠ Email — And Email Still Wins
Social media algorithms change almost daily. Ad prices rise unpredictably. Organic reach is collapsing. And platforms come and go.
Email, meanwhile, provides:
✔ Permanence
✔ Ownership
✔ Direct access
✔ First-party data
✔ Predictable ROI
✔ Personalized experiences
SFMC makes email even stronger with AI, real-time data, and conversational capabilities that no social platform can match.
MCAE (Pardot) Is Supercharging B2B Email Engagement
In B2B, email is still the backbone of the sales funnel — and MCAE (Pardot) continues to innovate.
AI now powers:
- Predictive scoring & grading
- Persona-based personalization
- Deal acceleration insights
- ABM orchestration
- Automated journey optimization
- Multi-touch attribution
The impact?
- More qualified pipeline
- Faster deal cycles
- Higher sales alignment
- Cleaner revenue data
Marketing Cloud Next: Email That Builds Itself
One of the biggest Dreamforce 2025 highlights was Marketing Cloud Next.
It introduces:
- Goal-Based Journeys — marketers declare the business goal; AI builds the journey
- Natural-Language Segmentation — “Find users likely to churn in 30 days.”
- AI Content Variants — multiple versions generated instantly
- Real-Time Personalization — content changes dynamically
Marketers focus on strategy. AI takes over execution.
Agentforce Marketing Agents: AI That Actually Does the Work
Agentforce is the evolution marketers didn’t know they needed — a 24/7 AI operations team.
These agents can:
- Write and improve emails
- Build segments
- Create AI content variants
- Monitor deliverability
- Optimize journeys
- Ensure compliance
- Detect churn early
- Run tests and improvements
- Fix decaying automations
Instead of “I need to build a new nurture journey,”
You simply say:
“Improve onboarding for inactive users.”
And the AI agent completes the task from analysis to creation to deployment.
The Death of “Do-Not-Reply” Emails
2025 marks the end of robotic, one-way communication.
Salesforce introduced conversational email, where replies go to:
- Einstein Bots
- Agentforce AI
- Support teams
- CRM inboxes
All in real time.
Why it matters:
✔ Higher engagement
✔ Better CX
✔ Improved deliverability
✔ More trust
✔ Faster resolution
Prediction:
By 2027, 85% of transactional emails will be conversational and AI-assisted.
New Skills Marketers Need (2025–2030)
Marketing roles are evolving. The modern marketer must be:
- A strategist
- A technologist
- An AI conductor
Key future skills:
- AI prompting
- Data Cloud identity resolution
- Personalization architecture
- Conversational design
- Cross-channel orchestration
- Compliance & deliverability
- AI-driven experimentation
Builders are becoming orchestrators.
Final Takeaway: Email Isn’t Dead — It’s Becoming Intelligent
Email isn’t just surviving — it’s entering its most innovative era.
With SFMC, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud Next, and Agentforce AI, email is now:
- Predictive
- Real-time
- Hyper-personalized
- Conversational
- AI-optimized
- Cross-cloud integrated
- Mission-critical for revenue growth
Email isn’t dying.
It’s evolving into the smartest, most profitable channel marketers have ever had.
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Resources
- [Salesforce Developer]- (Join Now)
- [Salesforce Success Community] (https://success.salesforce.com/)
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Raghavan Pulithevan
With more than seven years of experience as a Senior Developer specializing in marketing operations, automation, and analytics, I’m passionate about turning complex challenges into data-driven growth opportunities. As a Salesforce 5X Certified professional with expertise across Marketing Cloud Growth (Core), Account Engagement (Pardot), Data Cloud, AI, and Agentforce, I design and implement scalable marketing automation systems that enhance engagement and performance. My mission is to bridge the gap between technology and marketing—helping organizations harness automation, analytics, and AI to create transformative customer journeys and sustained growth. Let’s connect to explore how I can help your organization unlock the full potential of Salesforce technologies to accelerate marketing performance and innovation.
- Raghavan Pulithevan#molongui-disabled-link
