Cordial named a leader in email marketing report, reflecting years of innovation and partnership

Cordial is a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q1 2026. One of only 3 vendors out of 12 evaluated to receive that designation, receiving the highest possible scores in 10 criteria.

What this recognition represents is bigger than a graphic. It is what this moment means for the people who built it and the clients who trusted us with their most important marketing programs.

This result reflects years of focused product investment, relentless client partnership, and a commitment to building something that actually works for enterprise retail brands.

The scores that matter most are the ones tied directly to what our clients need to run sophisticated marketing programs. The highest scores possible in the criteria of Identity Resolution, Queries and Segmentation, Dynamic Messaging, and Content Management. Forrester specifically recognized our ability to ingest structured and unstructured data and make it immediately available for querying. These are not features we bolted on. They are the foundation we have been building on for years.

Forrester also called out something that we believe reflects our broader vision for what Cordial can be for retail brands: “Cordial is a great fit for cross-channel retailers that are reasonably comfortable with marketing technology and want to activate large, disparate data sets into highly customized communications.” That is exactly the customer we have built for, and it is gratifying to see that alignment recognized independently.

Thirty percent of our R&D investment goes into AI, and Forrester noted that specifically. That investment is about building the capabilities that will define what great marketing technology looks like over the next several years.

The Forrester report noted that our clients can Slack and text not just with their support team but with Cordial executives directly. One customer described us as “an extension of our team.” That is not something you can manufacture. It is the result of thousands of hours of our people showing up for clients, learning their businesses, anticipating their needs, and treating their success as their own. I have always believed that enterprise software without enterprise service is useless. What Forrester captured in that customer feedback is the proof point I am most proud of.

To the Cordial team: this is your recognition. The product work, the client work, the hard problems solved and the late nights spent solving them. I am proud of all of you.

To our clients: thank you for trusting us, for pushing us, and for building with us. This is as much yours as it is ours.

We did not become a Leader by standing still, and we do not intend to stay one by standing still either. The marketing technology landscape is evolving fast, and as AI moves from automation into true agentic capability, we are building to lead in that world too. There is a lot of road ahead and I could not be more excited about what we are building together.

Download the full report.