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MarTech » Email marketing » What Apple and Google’s 2025 updates mean for email and SMS in 2026
Email and SMS didn’t undergo a seismic shift in 2025, but they did change in ways that materially affected performance and strategy.
Three updates, in particular, reshaped how messages are delivered, displayed and engaged with across email and SMS campaigns:
Based on what we are seeing in the back end of programs entering our agency’s pipeline in late 2025 and early 2026, there is significant room for improvement for brands looking to fine-tune their email marketing in the months ahead.
iOS 18.2 was released at the end of 2024, but the updates and their impact became clearer as 2025 unfolded.
First, the updates:
Here are my recommendations for mitigating the impact:
Dig deeper: Apple and Gmail make it harder for email campaigns to get to the inbox
Gmail’s Manage subscriptions feature gives users a centralized view of active subscriptions and makes it easier to unsubscribe, particularly from high-volume senders.
The feature’s design is worth noting. Subscriptions are sorted first by email volume, then alphabetically. This reinforces an existing reality: Send frequency is one of the biggest drivers of unsubscribe behavior, especially when it outpaces engagement.
Rather than introducing a new problem, Gmail made an existing dynamic more visible to subscribers.
Here are the adjustments we have made to client accounts to minimize the update’s impact:
Dig deeper: More AI for the Gmail inbox isn’t the end of email marketing
SMS had its turn in the spotlight with Apple’s iOS 26 update, which improved the “Unknown Sender” filter and can divert brand messages out of the primary message view, similar to email promotion tabs.
Overall impact has been muted so far. Most users are unaware of the functionality, and Apple has not prompted users to opt in as part of updates to date. However, if adoption increases in future updates, the impact could be significant.
For the small percentage of users currently leveraging the feature, broad SMS campaigns have been most vulnerable. Because most consumers do not save brand numbers as contacts, many nonpersonalized messages are filtered.
Engagement disruption is likely. Brands without strong subscriber relationships should expect declines in SMS engagement and prepare accordingly as adoption increases.
Here’s how we have been helping clients adjust:
When should you tackle all of these changes? ASAP. More updates are coming this year, and brands that react quickly will maintain an advantage over competitors.
Dig deeper: Why syncing email and SMS is critical to marketing success
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