Email Marketing RulesSynthetic Content Has a Trust Crisis. Your Brand Could Catch It
Posted on November 6, 2026
Consumers have driven record-breaking adoption of AI apps—most recently of Meta’s Muse. At the same time, consumers are increasingly worried about the long-term effects of AI’s growing usage and expanding capabilities.
Indeed, the public relations nightmare for AI seems to be only getting worse. Even so, the core issue for marketers is whether AI usage improves their results. When it comes to AI-generated content, the results aren’t looking good because consumers see it as jeopardizing trust.
Third Quarter 2026 Marketing Benchmark Report
Posted on November 5, 2026
Zeta Global’s latest Marketing Benchmark Report shares aggregated data on SMS click rates and on email sends, open rates, click rates, click-to-open rates, and unsubscribe rates from July 1 through Sept. 30, 2026, including year-over-year changes. The email benchmarks are broken down by industry (e.g., retail; travel, hospitality & entertainment; financial services & insurance; and media) and by email type (e.g., promotional and triggered). And for the first time, the report includes European email benchmarks.
Our third quarter Marketing Benchmark Report also includes:
- Commentary and context from our digital marketing experts so you can understand performance changes
- Tips on how to use benchmarks effectively
- Discussions of the impact of Meta’s Muse on inbox management and Gmail’s retirement of its v1 Postmaster Tool
To get the report via a free, no-form download…
The Last Word on October 2026
Posted on November 4, 2026
A roundup of digital marketing and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…a
Must-read articles, posts & reports
iOS 27 and email: what marketers need to know (ActionRocket)
Get Your Employees Ready to Manage AI Agents (Reworked)
Building a Second-Wave AI Business (Seth Godin)
What’s Dragging Down A.I. Efficiency? The ‘Verification Tax.’ (The New York Times) (gift link)
AI Forces Publishers to Rethink Search-Dependent Revenue Models (EMarketer)
Retail’s AI Reckoning: Why the Next Wave of Commerce May Split Between Platforms and Retailers (EMarketer)
Bravery Is the Most Important KPI (Jono Anderson)
Our Genie Problem (Seth Godin)
Thomas L. Friedman: We Just Set Off the Second Big Bang (The New York Times) (gift link)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
taking lookmaxxing to another level https://t.co/8Iz3EWLiJw
— Keith Kouzmanoff (@emailmp) October 14, 2026
Noteworthy subject lines
Urban Outfitters, 10/6 – Unwrap the BAGGU Holiday Collection ✨
Huckberry, 10/19 – Now Live: 2026 Holiday Gift Guide
Prada, 10/28 – Holiday 2026
Kate Spade New York, 10/31 – Our Holiday Gift Guide has officially arrived✨
West Elm, 10/14 – Drew Scott’s holiday rule book
Olive Garden, 10/22 – Your Halloween feast awaits
Spirit Halloween, 10/28 – 🌙 Reminder: stores open late!
Macy’s, 10/30 – Limited-edition Parade collectibles for gifting or treating yourself
Goldbelly, 10/22 – 🥧🍰 The PieCaken Is BACK for Thanksgiving!
Olive Garden, 10/26 – It’s National Pumpkin Day! 🎃
Huckberry, 10/22 – The Best of the Waxed Outpost, According to Our Design Director
TIDAL, 10/1 – September in review: see what you listened to 📻
Eddie Bauer, 10/15 – Most Loved For Sweater Weather
American Eagle, 10/31 – PSA: the perfect sweater makes your coffee taste better
Gap, 10/15 – Happy Gap Hoodie Day
Urban Outfitters, 10/31 – Going out tops worth making plans for
Dior Couture, 10/26 – The Cruise 2027 collection
Quiksilver, 10/21 – Young Guns: Big City
Bass Pro Shops, 10/29 – Congratulations to the Missouri Thunder. 2026 PBR Season Champions
adidas, 10/27 – adidas Originals x Metallica ‘Life Burns Faster’ Collection
Banana Republic, 10/15 – The La Ligne collab you’ve waited for
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Zeta Live 2026: Every Session Now Available On-Demand
Zeta Live 2026: Every Session Now Available On-Demand
Posted on October 21, 2026
Zeta Live 2026 took over Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on Oct. 8 for a packed day of sessions with the brightest minds in AI, marketing, and advertising. A few of my favorite highlights from the best Zeta Live yet:
- Zeta CEO David A. Steinberg kicked it off with 4 major announcements.
- We shared our product vision.
- Lindsey Vonn taught us about resilience.
- Kevin Hart encouraged us to bet on ourselves and ask the dumb question.
- We explored Personalization Reimagined with Tractor Supply, Carter’s, Synchrony, and Talbots.
- We examined Loyalty Reimagined with Pizza Hut and Nothing Bundt Cakes.
AI’s Core Strength & Weakness: ‘It Scales What You Give It’
Posted on October 9, 2026
During her opening keynote on the state of AI in email marketing at the ANA’s Email Excellence Center Committee Meeting in August, Forrester Research’s Shar VanBoskirk said, “AI scales what you give it.”
So, if you give it bad data, it scales that. And if you give it bad strategy, it scales that, too.
This isn’t a new concept, of course. AI has functioned this way since the early days of machine learning. Garbage in, garbage out. But with the proliferation of AI agents, this issue has risen to the surface again as more brands discover that their agents have gone off the rails and quickly produced significant unintended consequences.
Let’s break down these two major points of failure so it’s easier to recognize them before things go wrong.
The Last Word on September 2026
Posted on October 2, 2026
A roundup of digital marketing and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Why Curiosity May Be the Most Important Leadership Skill of Our Time (Reworked)
Peak Screens: Why Marketers Say Real Life Is Winning Back Gen Z (EMarketer)
Disclosure Day: Do AI-generated Emails Need a Disclaimer? (Really Good Emails)
Consumers Say Personalized Marketing Knows Too Much and Understands Too Little (Site Impact)
AI Trust, Reactive Marketing, Effectiveness Failings: 5 Interesting Stats to Start Your Week (MarketingWeek)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
Noteworthy subject lines
FIGS, 9/24 – Fight Like an Awesome Human
Prada, 9/9 – Fall/Winter 2026
J.Crew New Arrivals, 9/9 – Just in: 300+ fall new arrivals
Fanatics, 9/29 – Your Fall Lineup: Champion NFL Gear
kate spade, 9/24 – Because it’s tailgate season 🏟️
Bed Bath & Beyond, 9/7 – Your Labor Day app perk: 25% off* ✨
William Sonoma, 9/24 – Your one-stop shop for Thanksgiving 🦃
Macy’s, 9/8 – Exclusive: 6 iconic designers celebrate American fashion
Camping World, 9/18 – Save up to 60% on Fire Pits, Grills, Chairs & More
Everlane, 9/4 – Way-High Denim Now Way Lower Price
Abercrombie & Fitch, 9/8 – Big update for your workout.
Gap, 9/8 – Introducing GapBag
Olive Garden, 9/13 – The upgrade is worth it
Olive Garden, 9/17 – 120 ways to pasta
Michaels, 9/9 – New 🪡 sewing 🪡 supplies! 🪡
Everlane, 9/29 – Back to Alpaca
J.Crew, 9/15 – JUST DROPPED: Eckhaus Latta X J.Crew
Levi’s®, 9/29 – Levi’s® x sacai
Urban Outfitters, 9/4 – UO Exclusive: ADÉLA PRIMA Vinyl 🎵
Macy’s, 9/8 – Today: $20 off $100 (or $30 off with a Macy’s Card️) only in the app 🎉
DSW, 9/18 – $15 off in the app starts…NOW!
Bed Bath & Beyond, 9/1 – 25% off * is calling 📲
MoMA Design Store, 9/27 – Tell us what you’re looking for, we’re listening.
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
An Email Newsletter Can Be Almost Anything. That’s a Good Thing.
Mitigating the Risks of Inbox AI Summaries
Is Email Marketing’s ROI Sky-High or Irrelevant?
Vibe Coding Reignites the ‘Build vs. Buy’ Debate
An Email Newsletter Can Be Almost Anything. That’s a Good Thing.
Posted on September 28, 2026
What is an email newsletter? That’s a serious question. Think about it for a minute. What is an email newsletter?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and here’s what I came up with:
An email newsletter is a message format that mostly contains non-promotional content that’s of interest to a particular audience.
That’s as specific as I could get—and I fully acknowledge there’s a mostly in there. That’s because newsletters generally do include overtly promotional content (such as ads) at least occasionally, if not regularly. That’s fine, but the defining characteristic of a newsletter is that a strong majority of the content isn’t overtly selling.
Since that’s the defining characteristic, let’s talk first about what that content is doing.
Mitigating the Risks of Inbox AI Summaries
Posted on September 18, 2026
Whether provided by inbox providers or via agents, inbox AI summaries of promotional emails are inherently reductive, introduce errors, overwrite brand voice, and deprive marketers of a significant amount of their “first impression” real estate. That has created a host of new risks for marketers, including lower campaign performance and sender reputation damage.
To help you mitigate those risks, Zeta’s Creative and Strategy Teams have developed three potential postures you can take in response to inbox AI summaries:
- Lean Forward, a posture that seeks to actively optimize for inbox AI summaries
- Neutral Stance, a posture that seeks to reduce the likelihood of AI summaries being wrong
- Lean Away, a posture that seeks to train subscribers to ignore AI summaries
For a full discussion of each of those approaches or to watch the on-demand webinar …
Is Email Marketing’s ROI Sky-High or Irrelevant?
Posted on September 14, 2026
For the better part of the past two decades, email marketing’s return on investment (ROI) has hovered around 36:1, according to a variety of sources. That means the average brand can expect to earn $36 for every $1 they spend on their email marketing efforts.
Compared with other channels, email marketing’s ROI is typically near the top of the spectrum, up there with brands’ investments in their website and organic SEO. Email marketing outperforms SMS and push marketing, as well as search, social, and other digital advertising. And it blows away the returns seen with traditional media channels like direct mail, TV, and radio.
This ROI hierarchy has been in place for a long time. Given that, you might expect brands to be perpetually eager to invest more in their email marketing programs, especially as they gain more AI capabilities. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Instead, brands are deprioritizing marketing and shifting budget from higher-ROI owned channels to lower-ROI paid channels, according to Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey. That seems like a poor strategy, both short-term and long-term, so why are brands doing this?
Let’s explore possible reasons why brands aren’t more drawn to email marketing’s high ROI.
Vibe Coding Reignites the ‘Build vs. Buy’ Debate
Posted on September 9, 2026
Thanks to vibe coding, the build vs. buy debate has rekindled over the past year, with numerous headlines pronouncing “SAAS is dead.” The argument is:
AI makes coding software so easy, why wouldn’t companies build what they need instead of paying a vendor for it?
The last time this debate was had was in the 2000s. Then, plenty of companies had legacy homegrown software. Plus, anytime you hired someone from Amazon, they wanted to build everything from scratch—whether it was email service provider functionality or a content management system or a personalization engine. It was a bit of a running joke.
What wasn’t funny was how horrible virtually all homegrown software was. Everyone complained about it—how it was clunky, outdated, and literally unfixable. And they always cheered when it was finally replaced by packaged software.
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
GVP of CRM Strategy
Zeta Global
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
