If your emails feel like they’re working harder than ever to earn attention in the inbox, you’re not imagining it.
Gmail’s rollout of Gemini-powered features is quietly changing how emails are summarized, prioritized, and surfaced to users. Those changes have real implications for marketers, recruiters, and anyone who relies on email to build trust over time.
Industry data doesn’t give a single definitive figure, but multiple recent email client reports indicate that roughly 25-32% of all email opens (including marketing emails) occur in Gmail.1 With figures like that, the impact is far-reaching.
The good news is that these updates don’t require a full reinvention of your email strategy. What they do require is a sharper focus on clarity, structure, and relevance.
Let’s break down what’s changing, why it matters, and what you can do to adapt your email strategy.
What’s Changing in Gmail
Gemini is Google’s AI layer now embedded across Gmail. Instead of users manually reading, sorting, and responding to every message, Gemini can step in to summarize long threads, highlight key points, and help draft responses.
It also plays a role in how emails are prioritized. Messages may be surfaced based on perceived importance rather than simple recency, which means an email’s clarity and usefulness can influence how visible it becomes.
For marketers, this introduces a new reality. Your email may be interpreted by AI before it’s read by a human, and that interpretation can shape how your message gets attention, or if it gets attention at all.
Why These Updates Matter
For years, inbox performance has been tied to familiar metrics and tactics. Subject lines, sender reputation, and engagement signals like CTOR still matter, but Gemini adds a new layer to consider.
How easily can your email be understood and summarized?
If your message is vague, overly clever, or packed with competing ideas, Gemini may compress it into a summary that strips away the nuance or the intent entirely. On the other hand, emails that are focused and well-structured are more likely to be summarized accurately and acted on.
In practice, this means clarity is no longer just a best practice; it’s a requirement.
Writing Emails That Hold Up in a Gemini Inbox
Lead with the point
Many marketing emails build toward a conclusion. In a Gemini-powered inbox, that approach can work against you.
If your main message does not appear early, it may never make it into an AI-generated summary. Leading with the point ensures that both the reader and the AI understand why the email exists within the first few lines.
This does not mean abandoning storytelling. It simply means anchoring the story in a clear purpose from the start.
Structure matters more than style
Well-written emails are still important, but structure now does more of the heavy lifting.
Short paragraphs, clear transitions, and intentional spacing make it easier for Gemini to interpret your message correctly. Dense blocks of text increase the risk that key ideas get flattened or lost when summarized.
Think of your emails less like essays and more like briefings. The goal is to make the message easy to grasp at a glance.
Give each email a single job
When an email tries to educate, promote, announce, and nurture all at once, the core message becomes harder to define.
Gemini reflects that ambiguity back to the reader. The result is often a generic summary that does not clearly communicate what to do next.
Before sending, it helps to ask one simple question: What is the primary takeaway or action this email should drive? Writing toward that answer makes the email more effective for both AI and humans.
Be explicit with calls to action
Vague calls to action have always been a weak point in email marketing. In a summarized inbox, they become even easier to miss.
Clear, specific CTAs give Gemini something concrete to surface and give readers confidence about what happens after they click. Instead of relying on broad phrases, aim for language that reflects the value of the next step.
The more explicit the action, the more likely it is to survive summarization intact.
Rethink how you measure success
As AI reduces the need for users to open every email, open rates may continue to decline. That shift does not mean your emails are underperforming.
This is an opportunity to focus on metrics that reflect real impact. Click-throughs, replies, downstream engagement, and speed to action are often better indicators of whether an email is doing its job.
The Bigger Picture
Gmail’s Gemini updates are not killing email marketing. Rather, they are exposing weak habits.
Teams that already prioritize clarity and intention will adapt quickly. Teams that rely on volume, novelty, or ambiguity will feel more friction.
If you are unsure how your emails are holding up, this is the opportune moment to audit your approach.
