📧 My Summer of Email

I haven’t posted much this summer. Partly because I’ve been busy servicing clients, but also because I’ve been collecting my thoughts. AI is moving quickly, inboxes are changing, and there’s no shortage of people predicting what the future of email marketing will look like. Rather than add to the noise, I’ve spent the last few months doing what I’ve always preferred to do: working, experimenting, and paying attention to what people actually respond to.

And somewhere in all of that, I’ve become even more convinced that the future of email might actually look a lot more human. I’ve been experimenting with conversationality, simplicity, shorter messages, different ways of creating dialogue and, perhaps most importantly, giving people a reason to want the next email.

AI can make us faster, smarter, and much better at personalization, and I think that can make the email experience considerably better. But sending more emails or adding more automation simply because the technology makes it possible? I’m not convinced that makes the experience any better.

If anything, my summer of email has reaffirmed the operating principle I keep coming back to: respect the inbox. Send something worth opening. Don’t waste people’s time. And maybe don’t send an email just because you can.

The technology around email will continue to change, probably dramatically. I’m increasingly convinced the fundamentals shouldn’t.