In my recent “2026 predictions” blog post, one of the things I touched on was Artificial Intelligence. I mentioned that while it was certainly a component of deliverability, it is mostly already driving spam filters in ways you’re already accounting for, so don’t really worry too much about it, as far as gating for the inbox. The goal, generally speaking, remains the same.
About ten seconds after I posted that, Google announced that “Gmail is entering the Gemini era,“ and yeah, email enders are worried about it, specifically the new A.I. inbox functionality. Will recipients even see their email marketing messages any more? Are marketers going to get pushed out of the way and relegated to a robotic “below the fold” or “out of site, out of mind” position when it comes to inboxes of email recipients?
The short answer is, it’s too soon to tell exactly what comes from this. But here are a couple of points to keep in mind. Starting thoughts, if you will.
First, not everybody will love this functionality. Remember the promotions tab? My friend Lauren Meyer pointed out, 2024 survey data says that only about fifty percent of email users have a tabbed inbox enabled. That's still significant, for sure, but it does highlight that not everybody enjoys letting the machine organize their inbox for them. Meaning, it is too soon to assume that everyone will be head over heels in love with the A.I. inbox; a significant number of Gmail users could end up ignoring it or disabling it.
Second, the machine wants to serve up what people want to read. That works in your favor, if you’re a good sender. That likely very much works in your favor if you’re a newsletter sender. If the whole reason people signed up for your emails is because they want your specific newsletter with its specific focus on your specific content, they’re still going to want to read it. The A.I. inbox won’t stop that from happening.
As a newsletter sender myself, I feel like I am (at least somewhat) freed from some of the concerns more likely to face people sending (only, primarily) marketing emails.
If you are sending simple upsells to people who were already barely interested, and if your emails can be completely summarized down to a single sentence without any loss of context, then you might be right to be worried.
Bram Van Daele from Engagor has a couple of great points: Some marketers should be concerned, but for everyone else: “You've been competing against noise. That noise is about to get filtered out.” Meaning that a better-than-average sender continues to have a great chance to connect with subscribers. Maybe better than in years past.
This effectively rewards the good senders, and punishes the not-so-good senders. Which brings it back to sending wanted, engaging mail that people actually are interested in. An inbox is not just a place to blindly dump a simple, unsophisticated email advertisement. Do better, and you’ll be rewarded.
In my recent “2026 predictions” blog post, one of the things I touched on was Artificial Intelligence. I mentioned that while it was certainly a component of deliverability, it is mostly already driving spam filters in ways you’re already accounting for, so don’t really worry too much about it, as far as gating for the inbox. The goal, generally speaking, remains the same.
About ten seconds after I posted that, Google announced that “Gmail is entering the Gemini era,“ and yeah, email enders are worried about it, specifically the new A.I. inbox functionality. Will recipients even see their email marketing messages any more? Are marketers going to get pushed out of the way and relegated to a robotic “below the fold” or “out of site, out of mind” position when it comes to inboxes of email recipients?
The short answer is, it’s too soon to tell exactly what comes from this. But here are a couple of points to keep in mind. Starting thoughts, if you will.
First, not everybody will love this functionality. Remember the promotions tab? My friend Lauren Meyer pointed out, 2024 survey data says that only about fifty percent of email users have a tabbed inbox enabled. That's still significant, for sure, but it does highlight that not everybody enjoys letting the machine organize their inbox for them. Meaning, it is too soon to assume that everyone will be head over heels in love with the A.I. inbox; a significant number of Gmail users could end up ignoring it or disabling it.
Second, the machine wants to serve up what people want to read. That works in your favor, if you’re a good sender. That likely very much works in your favor if you’re a newsletter sender. If the whole reason people signed up for your emails is because they want your specific newsletter with its specific focus on your specific content, they’re still going to want to read it. The A.I. inbox won’t stop that from happening.
As a newsletter sender myself, I feel like I am (at least somewhat) freed from some of the concerns more likely to face people sending (only, primarily) marketing emails.
If you are sending simple upsells to people who were already barely interested, and if your emails can be completely summarized down to a single sentence without any loss of context, then you might be right to be worried.
Bram Van Daele from Engagor has a couple of great points: Some marketers should be concerned, but for everyone else: “You've been competing against noise. That noise is about to get filtered out.” Meaning that a better-than-average sender continues to have a great chance to connect with subscribers. Maybe better than in years past.
This effectively rewards the good senders, and punishes the not-so-good senders. Which brings it back to sending wanted, engaging mail that people actually are interested in. An inbox is not just a place to blindly dump a simple, unsophisticated email advertisement. Do better, and you’ll be rewarded.
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