→ Does AI-generated email hurt your deliverability?
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→ Scrap the re-engagement campaign (scroll to end)
Howdy 🤠
I am about to go on my holiday, and I cannnnnnnot wait
How is it July? Why is it so busy? Why can't we all just not work and live our best lives!?
I'm tired - can you tell?
I'll be skipping next week, so bringing double the goodness this week (this email will be clipped - sorry!) 👇
Does AI-generated email hurt your deliverability?
Yes, but indirectly
There's no switch that says "a robot wrote this → spam."
Spam filters do what they've always done: create a view of you based on user engagement and other factors
AI doesn't trigger filters,BUT the generic, forgettable, sounds-like-every-other-brand copy, AI crap that most teams produce with it does exactly what low-relevance email always does: clicks slide, replies dry up, engagement signals weaken.
And across the audits I've done, the pattern is consistent, programmes that shifted heavily to AI copy and generation are seeing engagement and inbox placement reduce over time.
A few things making it worse right now:
Everyone sounds the same. Same tools, same prompts, same copy - which erodes the distinct "this sounds like you" familiarity that earns a fair read
The whole inbox got stricter. Over half of 2026's spam is AI-generated, so providers tightened filters for everyone. You're paying a tax on other people's robots
Gemini is the real story. Gmail now sorts by relevance, not time and up to 40% of "delivered" emails are deprioritised
Opens are now fiction. Gemini auto-opens emails to summarise them, inflating opens to ~45%. Trigger flows off that, and you're working from well...a load of rubbish
Used well, AI should make your email more relevant and more distinctly yours
Used as a shortcut past the thinking, it makes you blander at scale, right when the inbox has got very good at spotting bland
That segment of your least engaged people are your highest risk to email deliverability (read the full breakdown - so much you NEED to know on this one)
So here's what I'd do instead:
Audit for meaningful actions first - website visits, replies, downloads, purchases. Anyone still showing signals comes out of the pile of disengaged. They were never disengaged, you were just measuring them wrong
Swap the campaign for a suppression flow. No meaningful action in 6–9 months for example, cut their frequency. 9–12, your best sends only. 12+, suppress them
Put that energy into acquisition instead. Every list leaks 20–25% a year - that's just physics. You'll never out-pump a leaking bucket, so stop trying to win back the people who already left and go find the ones who haven't arrived yet.
Sayyour email, start to finish, like you're reading it to someone
Your eyes forgive all sorts of things your mouth won't
Here's what to listen for:
You trip over a sentence? It's too long or too clever - TWEAK
You run out of breath? Same problem - break it up.
You have to re-read a line to make it land? Your reader won't bother. Rewrite it so it lands first time.
Doesn't sound right? Change it
The mouth catches what the eye skims. If it doesn't sound like a human when you say it, it won't read like one in the inbox and "sounds like a human, sounds like you" is exactly what earns the open next time.
Plug of the week
I am going on holiYAY 🌴🏖️🌞
If you need email help, please get in touch below. But otherwise, over & out, I've got a cocktail, a beach and 30 degree sun calling my name!