To improve deliverability, brands are embedding reply-driven calls-to-action (e.g., "reply 'guide' for our guide"). This tactic works because major email providers now weigh reply rate as the most important engagement signal, leading to significant improvements in primary inbox placement for B2B and B2C brands.

Counterintuitively, highly formatted and image-heavy emails can feel corporate and impersonal, decreasing engagement. Shifting to a simpler, plain-text style mimics a personal message from a friend, which increases perceived authenticity and encourages more replies and genuine connection.

AI-powered email summaries in Gmail and Apple Mail search for "signal phrases" to identify key content. Using terms like "what's included:", "offer ends:", and "action required:" at the top of your email helps the AI feature the most important information, leading to higher open rates.

Don't fear that AI summaries in Gmail and Apple Mail will kill your open rates. If your content is genuinely valuable, people will still open it to get the full experience, just as they'd watch a favorite show instead of reading a synopsis. AI simply helps users filter out the noise.

Move beyond generating plain text by prompting AI to build complete, individual HTML artifacts for email campaigns. By specifying brand styles, you can get production-ready code that can be directly imported into an email service provider, significantly reducing manual design and coding work for marketing teams.

AI tools now summarize emails in the inbox. To earn an open, your email's core value must be immediately apparent in that summary, as generic content will be dismissed without a click. This fundamentally changes email copywriting.

Marketers often judge an email's quality on visuals alone, ignoring the user action that triggered it or technical constraints like image blocking in certain clients (e.g., Outlook), which can render a beautifully designed email blank.

AI tools increasingly summarize emails directly in the inbox, heavily influencing the decision to open. To ensure the summary is compelling, place the key takeaway, offer, or value proposition at the beginning of your email, rather than burying it after a long introduction.

Many marketers mistakenly reveal the entire value of an email in the subject line, killing any reason to open it. To maximize opens, provide a compelling hint or create a curiosity gap rather than giving away the full story.