Email Marketing RulesThe AI Standing Between You and Your Subscribers
Posted on July 31, 2026
The rate of change among inbox providers has never been faster or more impactful. That creates lots of challenges for marketers, particular for publishers. I join Chris Miquel, the host of the Audience Bridge Insights podcast, to talk about all of the biggest changes, as well as some that are less threatening than you might think.
During the 63-minute show, we talk about:
1:53 – Whether this is the most disruptive time in the history of inbox providers
4:05 – The need to serve both mobile and desktop users
5:44 – Where brands are still failing with mobile email experiences
8:18 – Who got hurt and who benefitted from the new inbox provider deliverability requirements
12:24 – The two kinds of AI summaries
16:05 – The recent change in Yahoo Mail’s AI summaries
17:00 – The second kind of AI summary
19:45 – How can email marketers influence AI summaries
20:56 – The email copy that creates the biggest risks around AI summaries
21:46 – “The unfair engagement loop”
26:00 – The likelihood of AI summaries being regulated in some way
31:30 – How I hope AI summaries will play out
33:22 – Whether inbox providers would ever automatically unsubscribe their users from emails
34:33 – How marketers should adapt their subject line writing strategies
36:50 – Are open rates dead?
37:26 – The new CNIL regulations in France that now govern open pixel tracking data
39:24 – The unintended benefit of Apple’s auto opens
42:16 – The dangers of a potential Newsletters tab
48:28 – Whether deliverability guidance hurts high-frequency senders
55:40 – How do AI summaries handle advertising and sponsored content
58:08 – In 5 years, will our emails just be negotiating for AI filters for attention?
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or …
What You Need to Know: The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing
Posted on July 6, 2026
As brands accelerate into an AI-driven future where customer data is centralized, customer-centric analytics power tactics and strategies that produce meaningful growth, and interactions are orchestrated across numerous channels in real time, messaging governance is becoming foundational.
Simply put: Consumers are interacting with your brand too quickly and across too many channels for you to respond coherently across those channels without rock solid controls in place.
The question then becomes: How can brands put effective governance in place to apply real-time intelligence in a disciplined way?
The answer? It should be managed by your customer data platform (CDP). “The CDP already occupies the one layer in the stack expected to maintain customer context consistently and make it usable across systems,” the CDA and CDP Institute asserts in The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing, a report commissioned by Zeta Global. So, “the modern CDP is ideally suited to give the enterprise an accelerated path from customer data to governed action.”
They go on to say, “A CDP should not merely expose data to AI tools; it should help determine what those tools are permitted to consider, how decisions move into execution, and how the business learns from what happened. In that role, the CDP makes AI-driven engagement more usable, governed, and accountable where customer experience is actually decided.”
Why Your Marketing Benchmarks Don’t Mean What You Think
Posted on July 2, 2026
A collection of industry averages, benchmarks can help you evaluate your campaign performance, highlighting where you excel and where improvement is needed. This third-party validation is often used to demonstrate success to internal stakeholders and inform the setting of performance goals.
However, while benchmarks can strengthen your marketing strategy, you should be aware of their many, many limitations so you can avoid using them appropriately, because giving benchmarks meaning they don’t have could cause you to make huge strategic mistakes.
The Last Word on June 2026
Posted on July 1, 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
Siri Reads Your Email Now: What WWDC 2026 Actually Means for Senders (EmailExpert)
AI Is Not the Skill Email Marketers Need Most (MarTech)
AI in Marketing Job Descriptions: What 1,750 Job Posts Reveal (CXL)
The Human-Centred Approach to AI Adoption (ActionRocket)
Blogs, Traffic, and Google (Seth’s Blog)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
you had me @ email pic.twitter.com/rJq0huR0hm
— Keith Kouzmanoff (@emailmp) June 2, 2026
Noteworthy subject lines
Spirit Halloween, 6/11 – The Flagship Grand Opening is BACK! 🎃🎉
Abercrombie & Fitch, 6/5 – Our SoHo store opens tomorrow →
RH, 6/30 – All Outdoor on Sale. 4th of July Event. Members Save an Extra 30%.
Olive Garden, 6/4 – We LOVE cheese
IKEA Family, 6/12 – Host every match like it’s the final match
Olive Garden, 6/11 – Match day never tasted so good
Pacsun, 6/18 – Extra 30% Off Summer Solstice Sale 🌞
Fendi, 6/16 – Out of Office: The Summer Styling Series
Quiksilver, 6/29 – Summer’s Best
Williams Sonoma, 6/21 – Refrigerator goals starts with these essentials
West Elm, 6/9 – Introducing Pottery Barn Dorm 🎓✨
Nintendo, 6/2 – Crocs x Super Mario Collection Coming 7/15
Dior Couture, 6/9 – Expressions of thanks for Father’s Day
Uncommon Goods, 6/18 – Last-minute Father’s Day gifts that ship quick
Quiksilver, 6/21 – It’s Not too Late to Spoil Dad
Fendi, 6/9 – Beachwear: The Summer Styling Series
Macy’s Friends & Family, 6/9 – Get 15% off new summer beauty icons 💄✨
Macy’s, 6/1 – Your summer wedding style guide 👗👔
Clinique Online, 6/10 – Wedding makeup for sensitive eyes 💍🤍
OMEGA Watches, 6/20 – Evolution of the Dark Side
Magic: The Gathering, 6/30 – Assembling is the Game
Eddie Bauer, 6/29 – What’s Trending At Eddie Bauer
Urban Outfitters, 6/21 – Peanut + Monchhichi: Sleepover Party
YPB By Abercrombie, 6/11 – Active designed with TJ Watt.
Bed Bath & Beyond, 6/30 – Your app-exclusive savings are still here ✨
Allrecipes The Scoop, 6/18 – Stop Storing Butter This Way
Williams Sonoma, 6/18 – Bring Japanese craftsmanship into your kitchen
Zara, 6/9 – ZARA PRE-OWNED
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing
Why Loyalty Data Stays Underutilized
France’s CNIL Rules Push Marketers to Use Opens Even Less
Owned Audiences and the Inbox as a Search Platform
Adapting to the Most Active Inbox Provider Environment Ever
The CDP’s New Role in AI-Driven Marketing
Posted on June 29, 2026
The enterprise marketing stack is smarter than ever, but it’s also becoming more fragmented. Predictive models influence targeting, generative systems create content, and agentic workflows are beginning to make autonomous decisions. But as AI moves closer to customer-facing action, the result is often inconsistency at scale.
This whitepaper, produced by the Customer Data Alliance and CDP Institute in partnership with Zeta Global, makes the case for expanding the role of the modern CDP from a data unification and activation platform into a customer-intelligence control plane for the enterprise.
Why Loyalty Data Stays Underutilized
Posted on June 24, 2026
Georgia Gkolfinopoulou and I join Loyalty TV to discuss new research from Forrester (commissioned by Zeta Global) that explains why marketers are underusing loyalty data and how brands can overcome those barriers. With host Bridget Blaise-Shamai, we talk about:
- The major findings of the survey of more than 300 loyalty professionals
- The execution gap that exists with loyalty data
- How brands are measuring loyalty success
- How to unlock the full value of loyalty data across channels
- What loyalty marketing looks like a year from now
Or listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
France’s CNIL Rules Push Marketers to Use Opens Even Less
Posted on June 22, 2026
New privacy rules in Europe are placing fresh limits on the use of tracking pixel data, which has already seen its usefulness decline dramatically in the wake of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. In the latest move, the French data protection authority CNIL has published its final recommendations on the use of email tracking pixels, which extends the consent requirements of the ePrivacy Directive of 2003 to also cover pixels in emails. Going into effect in mid July 2026, the rules require senders to get explicit permission from subscribers in France for some tracking pixel use cases. The same rules will apply to subscribers in Italy in October.
In general, it’s not the collection of open data that runs afoul of these rules, but rather the use of tracking pixel-derived information for particular uses without permission from the subscriber.
Owned Audiences and the Inbox as a Search Platform
Posted on June 16, 2026
Google has become the world’s largest publisher—and for brands that relied on organic search, that’s a crisis. In this episode of the Beyond the Search Bar podcast, I chat with host Russ Macumber about how search is changing and the role that email marketing can play as the Google Search monolith crumbles.
Here’s a breakdown of our conversation:
2:47 – My hot take on search marketing today
3:36 – The five ways brands can be more visible
6:50 – How I got into email and digital marketing
10:20 – Tech changes in the email industry on two fronts
12:42 – How search has fractured into an environment that looks like the inbox environment
15:03 – Why it’s dangerous to replicate your email strategy across mobile channels
17:57 – How consumers expect brands to recognize their cross-channel activity
19:23 – How owned channels support SEO (and why I don’t like to refer to email marketing as “owned media”)
20:20 – Optimizing your email messages for inbox search, and for AI summaries
20:53 – How Google and Microsoft are big email inbox providers and big AI players
24:35 – What Google is doing in the AI commerce space related to email
26:54 – Why Google’s Personal Intelligence program is super smart
33:00 – Marketing to machines who act on behalf of your customers
34:40 – My preferred term for optimizing for search done by AI engines
37:01 – What I think is the most underrating marketing tactic right now
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or …
Adapting to the Most Active Inbox Provider Environment Ever
Posted on June 5, 2026
The launch of Mail Privacy Protection by Apple in 2021 kicked off the largest wave of inbox changes in more than a decade. Hide My Email, Link Tracking Protection, Deal Annotations, Deal Cards, AI Summaries, Brand Message Groupings, Branded Mail … It’s a wave of innovation that continues strong to this day. However, much of this innovation has created serious challenges for marketers.
Join us as we break down the biggest and latest changes made by inbox providers and share concrete to-dos for how to adjust. We’ll also steer you away from actions that might seem wise, but will actually make things worse for you.
Which Email Marketing Trends Are Truly Worth It?
Posted on June 4, 2026
Is the juice worth the squeeze? That was the central question in the session by Scott Cohen and Ryan Phelan at the ANA’s The Next Chapter of Email Evolution event in Chicago last month. The duo asked the audience to give a variety of trends a thumbs up or thumbs down, and then called on people to defend their views.
Of course, the majority of the trends they asked about fall in between a simple yay or nay—because there are circumstances when they’re not worthwhile, developments that are undermining their effectiveness, or other caveats.
Let’s dive into some of them. I’ll share some pros and cons, plus my verdict.
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
