Gmail Is Reading Your Emails First
Your subscribers might see a summary of your email before they see the email itself. That means your first two sentences now do the job of the whole thing.
If that sounds dramatic, stay with me. I'm not saying email is dying. My own list opens at 38%, and email is still the channel I trust most. But how people experience their inbox is changing, and the way most of us were taught to write emails is quietly working against us.
What changed in the inbox
Gmail (powered by Google's Gemini) and Apple Mail (powered by Apple Intelligence) now write short AI summaries of emails. Those summaries can show up in the inbox preview line, in lock screen notifications, and above the email when someone opens it. In a lot of cases, the preview text you carefully wrote never gets seen. The AI's version does.
Then in May, at Google I/O, Google announced something bigger: an AI Inbox view. Instead of showing your emails in the order they arrived, it surfaces what Gemini thinks is a priority, pulling out to-dos and highlights. It started with Google's top paid AI subscribers and is expanding from there.
So there's now a layer between your email and your reader. Before a human decides whether to open, an AI has already decided what your email is about.
And it's showing up in the numbers. One industry analysis found that after Gmail's summaries launched, opens went up while clicks went down, from about 4.35% to 3.93%. People are getting the gist from the summary and not clicking through. (Folderly)
What I saw in my own numbers
I started sending myself a monthly report on my own marketing, the same kind I make for clients. September's was humbling.
My list opened at 38%. That's strong, and I'm proud of it.
But my click rate was 0.8%. People were reading. They just weren't going anywhere.
Some of that was on me. A few of my emails didn't give anyone a next step, so of course nobody clicked. But when I looked closer at how those emails opened, I noticed something else. Most of them started with a warm-up.
Why the warm-up opening backfires now
Most of us learned to write emails like a conversation. Say hi, share a little story, set the scene, then get to the point.
That still works for the people who read all the way through. I'm a storyteller, and I'm not giving that up.
The problem is what the AI does with it. These summaries tend to pull from your first sentence or two. If those sentences are "Happy Tuesday! I've been thinking a lot lately about...", then that's what your summary is built from. Your actual point, the thing you wanted people to know, is buried in paragraph four, where the summary never looks.
So a reader skims the summary, sees nothing worth opening for, and moves on. Not because your email was bad. Because the first two lines didn't say what it was for.
What to do instead
Here's what I'm changing in my own emails, and what I'd suggest for yours.
Say the point first. In your first two lines, tell people what this email is about and why it matters to them. The story can come right after. Think of it like a headline, not a hello.
One email, one purpose. When an email covers a sale, a podcast episode, and a reminder about your event, the summary has to squeeze three things into one line. It usually does none of them justice. Pick the one thing and let it lead.
Do the two-sentence test. Before you hit send, read only your first two sentences. Pretend that's all someone sees. Would they know what you're offering or asking? If not, rewrite them.
Give people somewhere to go. A clear, specific next step still matters, maybe more than ever. If the summary does its job and the reader opens, make it easy for them to act.
A quick before and after
Before: "Hi friend! It's been such a busy few weeks around here, and I've been thinking a lot about the holidays and how fast they sneak up on us."
After: "If you run a service business, the next six weeks decide how your holiday season goes. Here are the three things I'd plan now, before it gets busy."
Same writer, same warmth. The second one just tells the reader, and the AI, exactly what they're getting.
What doesn't change
None of this means your emails should sound like a robot wrote them. If anything, the opposite. As more inboxes fill up with AI-written content, the emails that sound like a real person are the ones people keep opening.
Your stories, your voice, your personality all still belong in your emails. They just come second now. Lead with the point, then be yourself.
You might have noticed I did that here. If you only read the first two lines of this post, you already got the main idea.
If you'd like a second set of eyes on your emails, I keep a few 15-minute calls open each week. Bring your last email and we'll look at the opening together. Grab a time here.
Ready to stop guessing and start growing? The Sprout Creative group marketing program was built for small business owners who are doing their own marketing and want a clear path forward.
This blog was written by Kristina Kury, Founder & CEO of Sprout Creative
They work with small business owners and entrepreneurs who are busy running their businesses, overwhelmed with marketing, and whose growth has plateaued to turn their marketing into a more manageable, automated marketing machine.
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