AI is already reading your emails before your subscribers do, and if you’re not writing for it, your message might not make it to the inbox at all.
Jay breaks down “live text,” the actual HTML text in your email that AI tools like Gmail summaries and Microsoft Copilot scan to build inbox previews and rewrite preheaders. Copilot alone just hit 30 million paid users, up 10 million in a single month, so this isn’t a niche problem. Jay’s rule: the first 150 characters of your email need to carry your most important, most specific information (webinar details, offer terms, whatever the ask is) because that’s the window AI summaries pull from. Images and JPEGs don’t count, and alt text doesn’t count as live text either, no matter what you’ve been told. He predicts that within six months, half of all preheaders will be AI generated instead of whatever Marketers actually wrote.
Daniel adds that the preheader isn’t dead, it’s just unreliable now. His fix: write your opening body copy so it echoes what you’d want the preheader to say, so if AI does pull from it, the message still lands the way you intended. He also flags that this isn’t just an email problem. The same summarization behavior is starting to show up in text messages, and Marketers need to start thinking about how their SMS gets condensed too.
The bigger idea: the prettiest, most designed email templates are losing right now. If AI can’t read the words inside your design, it doesn’t matter how good it looks. Email Marketing is quietly reverting to a text-first format, closer to how it worked 10 to 15 years ago.
If you want your emails to survive the next wave of inbox AI, this is the episode for you.
Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That
Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:
https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit:
https://workweek.com/