How AI is Changing Email | Bathroom Break #124

How AI is Changing Email | Bathroom Break #124

From The Marketing Millennials by Daniel Murray

September 7, 2026 · 11 min

About this episode

The episode discusses how AI is transforming email marketing, particularly through the use of live text and AI-generated preheaders.

AI is already reading your emails before your subscribers do, and if you're not writing for it, your message might not make it to the inbox at all. Jay breaks down "live text," the actual HTML text in your email that AI tools like Gmail summaries and Microsoft Copilot scan to build inbox previews and rewrite preheaders. Copilot alone just hit 30 million paid users, up 10 million in a single month, so this isn't a niche problem. Jay's rule: the first 150 characters of your email need to carry your most important, most specific information (webinar details, offer terms, whatever the ask is) because that's the window AI summaries pull from. Images and JPEGs don't count, and alt text doesn't count as live text either, no matter what you've been told. He predicts that within six months, half of all preheaders will be AI generated instead of whatever Marketers actually wrote. Daniel adds that the preheader isn't dead, it's just unreliable now. His fix: write your opening body copy so it echoes what you'd want the preheader to say, so if AI does pull from it, the message still lands the way you intended. He also flags that this isn't just an email problem. The same summarization…

People in this episode

Host: Daniel Murray

Guest: Jay

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Gmail, Microsoft Copilot

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