Retail’s holiday surge forces B2B senders to delay campaigns, defend visibility and rethink Q4
BOSTON — Oct. 15, 2026 — Validity, the leading provider of Enterprise AI solutions for digital marketers, today released its Holiday 2026 Marketer Survey, which found that holiday email continues to deliver for marketers but is becoming harder to optimize and measure as AI reshapes how messages reach the inbox.
Based on a survey of over 250 B2B and B2C marketing professionals, the research shows that holiday email strategies are becoming more complex. Marketers are adapting content, shifting volume across channels and investing in new approaches as AI-generated inbox summaries and intent-based search create new considerations for how messages are optimized and surfaced.
More than half of marketers are already adapting their email strategies for AI-powered inboxes. Overall, 72% have changed or plan to change their subject-line or preview-text strategies in response to AI-generated summaries, including 17% who have made significant changes and 35% who have made minor adjustments.
However, only 29% say their organization is well prepared to optimize email content for intent-based search and AI-powered inboxes, while 56% say they are somewhat prepared or not prepared at all. That concern is particularly pronounced during high-volume periods: 58% of B2B marketers are concerned that AI-generated inbox summaries will deprioritize their non-promotional emails.
“Email continues to be one of the most important channels for reaching customers during the holiday season, but the way marketers approach it is changing,” said Cynthia Price, SVP of marketing at Validity. “And B2B senders can’t opt out of the holiday inbox. Even without sending single holiday sales email, their messages compete in the same crowded, AI-summarized space. Marketers in all industries need to look beyond traditional holiday strategies, adapt to how AI-powered inboxes surface content, expand their channel mix and use data to understand performance and ROI.”
At the same time, email remains a key area of investment heading into the holiday season: 43% of organizations are increasing email investment in Q4, while 38% are maintaining current investment levels and only 7% are decreasing investment. Organizations increasing investment are also more likely to adjust their strategies for AI-generated inbox summaries, with 73% changing their subject-line approach, compared with 44% keeping investment flat.
Holiday email planning is not limited to consumer brands sending traditional holiday promotions. Among primarily B2B organizations, 58% delay or reschedule non-holiday campaigns, such as newsletters, product updates and nurture sequences, to avoid competing with increased retail email volume.
While marketers are taking steps to protect deliverability ahead of the holiday season, many will continue to build out their holiday safeguards as the sales season unfolds. Nearly three-quarters of primarily B2B organizations ramp up email volume ahead of the holidays, while 41% have added Q4-specific deliverability safeguards such as send throttling, list hygiene or monitoring
For B2C marketers, holiday email remains an important revenue channel, but proving impact remains a challenge. More than 4 in 10 say holiday email programs generate higher revenue than other marketing channels, while 80% identify at least one barrier to proving holiday email ROI, including limited resources for analysis, inconsistent tracking and attribution challenges.
Marketers are also expanding beyond email alone during the holiday season. Nearly 60% of organizations have shifted some holiday email volume to other channels, including SMS, push notifications and social media, specifically to reduce inbox competition.
To learn more about Validity’s Holiday 2026 Marketer Survey findings, visit www.validity.com/resource-center/holiday-2026-marketer-survey.
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About Validity
Validity created Engage, the Enterprise AI platform behind the world’s most successful email programs. For nearly 30 years, Validity has operated at the center of the email ecosystem — shaping how it works, setting the standards others follow, and earning the trust of the world’s biggest brands and mailbox providers.
That trust is built on the world’s largest email data network: proprietary signals from ISPs, exclusive mailbox provider partnerships, and more than 2.5 billion behavioral data points processed daily. This data-driven foundation powers Validity Engage, the Enterprise AI email platform for digital marketers that helps enterprise teams know what to send, when to send it, and who’s ready to receive it—so every send is smarter than the last. For more information, visit validity.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.
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