You’re used to fighting for a sliver of the inbox. Gmail’s recent updates have made this fight even more challenging. Two new, powerful features that are driven by large language models (LLMs) are here:

Together, these updates reward quality and penalize noise. And basically, this means that your email content and user experiences need to be on-point. To help you achieve that lofty goal, this guide explains what’s changed in Gmail and offers practical steps to keep your brand at the top of AI‑driven inboxes.

You’ve likely noticed summary cards above each of your emails. These Gemini-powered notes appear when an email contains enough text to warrant its summarization. Unlike Apple Mail’s “pre‑open” summaries that replace your preheader in the inbox, Gmail’s summaries are displayed after the recipient opens the message. 

These summaries highlight key value propositions, offers or events, and continue to update as replies arrive or exchanges are had. 

Gmail’s “Manage Subscriptions” view also ensures their user experience is tip-top, showing every active sender, along with the number of emails they’ve sent recently. If Gmail users don’t find specific senders valuable, they can unsubscribe with a single click, all without digging into individual emails. 

This feature gives disengaged subscribers an easy escape, so high frequency or low relevance messages are likely to see a spike in unsubscribes. While this isn’t quite as new as Gmail’s email summaries, it is a pillar of Google’s current philosophy toward email marketers: Ensure every single message is actually worthwhile.

These updates collectively reward high‑quality writing and thoughtful cadence while penalizing campaigns that rely on flashy design or frequent blasts. Plain‑text or lightly designed emails with clear narratives tend to receive accurate AI summaries, while image‑heavy messages are more likely to be summarized poorly. 

A well‑structured email also gets a perfect AI summary, whereas a messy or vague content will lead to a muddled summary that could deter further reading.

As always, the best brands will rise to this challenge, jumping through Gmail’s hoops and better connecting with their audiences. 

Want to be one of those brands? Of course you do. Here’s how.

Gemini focuses on your opening lines, so put the most important information up front. 

Avoid generic greetings or long introductions. 

Think about writing your email’s opening like a social caption. Make it short, clear and benefit‑driven. 

Place your offer or hook in the first sentences, using bold subheads and short paragraphs so AI (and humans) can scan your content easily.

Use headings, subheadings and bullet points to break up content. 

Bold key lines and calls‑to‑action to signal importance. 

Include alt text for images and avoid large image blocks without supporting copy, as Gemini cannot extract meaning from pictures alone. 

If you use dynamic modules, ensure there’s enough live text for summarization. 

Clean HTML and logical organization help Gmail decide what to summarize.

Gmail’s new subscription view shows how often you send, making high‑frequency brands at risk to be viewed negatively. 

Invest in building re‑engagement flows and gradually ramp up sends to new and engaged subscribers. 

Maintain a single sending domain or consistent from‑address to avoid fragmented brand representation.

AI summarization behaves differently across devices and inbox types, so test your campaigns in personal Gmail accounts, workspace accounts and Apple Mail to see how summaries appear. 

Create plain‑text and HTML versions of your emails. 

Frequently A/B test to find your best combinations of subject line and body copy.

Make peace with unsubscribes and view them as list cleaning rather than a failure. Disengaged users dragging your metrics down is worse than simply letting them go. 

Respect permission‑based marketing and always include an easy one‑click unsubscribe, just in case.

AI email summaries do not spell doom for email marketing. Instead, they offer a filterthat amplifies well‑written, customer‑centric content. Don’t lament a loss of control. Treat these summaries as a creative constraint. Craft email content that delivers value right away, and AI will surface your best points to recipients.

AI summaries and easier unsubscribe access represent a larger shift toward contextual inboxes that use machine learning and user data to intelligently filter, prioritize and deliver emails. For marketers, this shift means:

Quality beats quantity: Deliver value and clarity in every send.

Structure and semantics matter: Make it easy for AI and humans to understand your messages.

Transparency and respect win trust: Let subscribers leave gracefully and focus on those who want to hear from you.

By adopting the practices above, you can ensure your brand remains visible and relevant, no matter how algorithms impact inbox curation. The future of email marketing belongs to marketers who embrace these changes and design excellent email content thattruly connects with each and every subscriber.