In Gmail, who you email matters more than how you format it.
Gmail now shows a Gemini summary of an email above the email itself, and a Manage Subscriptions page that lists senders by how often they write. Put the offer in the first sentence and drop mystery subject lines. Then send fewer emails, chosen per person, because one tap now removes you.
- Gemini summaries: one or two sentences, read before your design
- Manage Subscriptions: senders listed by volume, one tap to leave
- The fix that lasts is choosing who gets which email
Gmail put an AI between your brand and your customer. Gemini reads the email and writes a one or two sentence summary that sits above it. Many readers decide from that summary and never reach your header image. Next to it, Manage Subscriptions lists every sender with how often they email, and unsubscribing takes one tap.
The formatting response is simple and worth doing: lead with the offer, state dates and products plainly, repeat the key message in subject, preheader and first line, and stop relying on curiosity gaps. Then test it, because you cannot see the summary Gemini writes.
Formatting is table stakes. The harder question is who should get which email at all. A list that receives the same calendar every day is now visible as noise and easy to leave. The stores that come out ahead send fewer emails, picked per person by what that customer is worth and likely to buy next. None of this works if the email does not arrive: email deliverability covers the sender rules.
How Gemini reads your email
Gmail's summary card appears when Gemini decides an email needs one. It reads the whole message and writes one or two sentences about what it found to be the point. The reader sees that before your creative work.
A summary that short keeps what is concrete: an offer, a deadline, an action, a product name. Brand storytelling, wordplay and a mood do not survive the cut. If your 30% discount sits in the fourth paragraph, the summary may describe the email as a product announcement and leave the discount out.
Read the right way, the summary is a free headline. A clear email earns a clear summary, and someone who would have skipped your subject line may open because the summary told them what was in it.
Your send frequency is now public
Manage Subscriptions shows a reader every brand that emails them and how often. The heaviest senders are the most visible, and leaving takes one tap. For a store that worked on the idea that more sends mean more revenue, that list is the bill arriving.
Volume-led email was already weak. Gmail did not create the problem; it showed it to the people it annoyed. Expect more unsubscribes at first as readers see how much some brands send, and with them some pressure on sender reputation. What is left afterwards is a list of people who want to hear from you.
Readers who stay and ignore you cost something too. Sending to people who never open wears down your sender reputation, and that hurts placement for the readers who do care. For click, open and unsubscribe rates from stores' own sending, see our email benchmark report and email statistics.
Five changes to how you write and send
1. Lead with the value
Your first 100 to 150 characters now work as ad copy. Every word of warm-up, such as "Hope you're having a great week", pushes the offer further from the summary. Open with the offer itself: "Your 25% discount ends Friday at midnight." Put the percentage, the deadline and the product name in that sentence, and check whether it could stand alone as an ad.
2. Repeat the message, do not tease it
Email craft used to set the subject against the preheader: one asks, the other hints. For the summary, repetition works better. Subject "30% off the fall collection, 3 days only", preheader "30% off our bestselling fall styles", first line "Take 30% off the fall collection through Friday". Which approach wins depends on your audience: if most of it reads mail without AI summaries, the creative pairing may still do better. Test it.
3. Structure the content so a machine can parse it
Offers buried in flowing prose get missed. "Our spring collection launches next Tuesday and we're offering free shipping for the first 48 hours" reads better to a parser as "Launch: Tuesday 18 March. Offer: free shipping for 48 hours." Use headers that state the content rather than tease it, label dates and offers, bold what matters, and never send an image-only header with no text around it.
4. Drop the curiosity gap
"You won't believe what's inside" worked when you controlled the reveal. Now the summary reveals it first. Replace "Something special is coming" with "25% off starts tomorrow", move the reveal from the third paragraph to the first, and design every email to work whether the reader sees the summary or the whole thing. If an email only works when people do not know what is in it, do not send it.
5. Decide who stops getting campaigns
"Has not opened in 30 days" was enough when leaving took effort. Find your own threshold: the number of unopened emails after which a subscriber almost never buys again, measured in your store's orders. Past it, send one last email with your best creative, then take them off regular campaigns. Weigh value as well as behaviour: a high-value customer who has gone quiet deserves a careful win-back, a low-value one with the same history can be sunset quietly.
How to measure what you cannot see
You never see the summary Gemini wrote for your email. You can see what it did. When the summary carries your offer, readers who open go on to click; when it misrepresents the email, opens and clicks drift apart.
So test structure, not only subject lines. Run the same offer as prose and as labelled, front-loaded copy. Compare repetition against variety across subject, preheader and first line. Split the results by mail client, Gmail against Apple Mail and others, because only part of your list sees a summary at all. If clicks rise while opens stay flat, better summaries are the likely reason.
Judge the result in orders, not in opens. A holdout group that does not receive the change shows whether it added sales or only moved a metric (holdout group).
Beyond formatting: knowing who to email
Everything above makes an email read well to Gemini. None of it answers the harder question: who should get which email, and how often.
Most stores do not know which customers are valuable. They send one promotional calendar to everyone and hope the totals work. Gmail now makes that visible as volume and cheap to leave.
Predict instead of guess. Estimate each customer's value over the next year (predicted customer lifetime value), how likely they are to drift away, and what they are likely to buy next (next basket prediction). Then the frequency follows the person: high-potential customers get considered, personal messages, unlikely buyers get little, and a valuable customer who is drifting gets attention before they stop opening, not after.
Deliverability improves as a side effect, because you mostly email people who read. And when Gemini summarizes an email, there is something in it worth summarizing for that reader. Fewer, better emails, to the people who want them: that is the strategy Gmail now rewards.
Fewer emails, each one chosen for one person
Messages chosen per customer, or not sent
The agent picks the products, message, channel and moment for each customer from one memory of them, within your caps and consent rules. When nothing is worth sending, it sends nothing.
How retention works →One score: what an email adds to a customer's value
Each action is scored by how much it is predicted to add to the customer's future value, and the lift is read against a holdout group in your own orders.
See how it decides →Questions about Gmail, Gemini and email marketing
What are Gmail's Gemini email summaries?
A one or two sentence summary that Gemini writes for an email and shows above it. Many readers see the summary before your design, so it decides whether they read on.
How do I write emails that Gemini summarizes well?
Put the offer in the first sentence with the percentage, the deadline and the product. Repeat the message in the subject, preheader and first line, label dates and offers, and avoid image-only headers and curiosity-gap subject lines.
What is Gmail's Manage Subscriptions?
A page in Gmail that lists the brands emailing a reader and how often they send, with a one-tap unsubscribe. Heavy senders are the most visible, so frequency now costs subscribers directly.
Should I email less because of it?
Email less to people who do not read, and choose per person. Find the point after which unopened subscribers almost never buy, sunset them after a last attempt, and keep careful win-backs for high-value customers who have gone quiet.
How does the agent decide who gets an email?
It predicts each customer's next purchase and value over the next year, scores each possible message by what it adds to that value, and sends nothing when nothing is worth sending, within your caps and consent rules. The lift is read against a holdout group in your own orders.
See which of last week's visitors you missed
One call, with your store and ad accounts open. Then 30 days free. A holdout group decides: if the agent doesn't add orders in 30 days, you don't pay.
See it on your store
You'll talk to one of us.