There’s a special kind of magic in an end-of-year Wrapped email. It’s the one time of year when brands openly admit they’ve been watching you, but somehow it feels flattering instead of a spy-games-grainy-surveillance-footage-of-you-eating-cold-pizza-out-of-the-fridge-at-midnight kind of way. A Wrapped email is basically a scrapbook of your digital habits: How many times you replayed the same song, how much you saved on your energy bill, how many followers you gained...

We eat that stuff up. Humans love being handed a mirror (as long as the lighting is forgiving and helps us brag about being a functional adult). That’s why Wrapped summaries work. They turn data into a story. They make “you used our thing slightly more than last year” feel like a triumph.

But the real secret? Wrapped emails tap into the ancient, primal desire to be the main character. For one glorious moment, it’s your year in review. Your personal highlight reel. Your stats that absolutely nobody asked for but now you will defend with unshakable pride. And what makes the best ones special is that they embrace someone's identity in the process.

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Holiday inboxes are intense, and mailbox providers tighten filters to fend off a surge of spam, scams, and rookie senders. Even legit marketers can get flagged if they switch things up too fast (spikes in send volume, sloppy authentication, or cloned content).

This one suggests some creative, nontraditional uses of email: from “community mosaics” to episodic storytelling (“email as a binge-worthy series”), and other formats that go beyond sales or newsletters.

A useful look at what confirmation emails have in common, elements you should be using, and design ideas to change things up.

Black Friday 2025 saw strong sales numbers on the surface — but digging deeper shows a less enthusiastic consumer. Online order volume dipped, discount rates stayed flat, and inflation pushed up average prices. Standout winners were retailers offering exclusive in-store perks and those using AI tools, while the real loser might be the consumer, relying more on “buy now, pay later” to keep spending.

Based on a survey of 357 copywriters, this is a detailed report of what worked in the past year and is a good summary of what’s rising (or fading) in copy trends.

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Thanks for reading and learning since you joined on 2023-01-19!

- Mike and the rest of the RGE team.