When the inbox has already explained your message, the writing must give readers another reason to click.
AI-generated email summaries are becoming part of the inbox. Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook can now present a machine-written gist before a recipient opens the message. For marketers, this changes more than the appearance of the inbox. It changes what an email must do.
If your message says little beyond "Our summer sale starts today, with 20% off selected products", the summary can deliver the useful information in seconds. The recipient understands the offer without seeing your carefully arranged header, product grid or call to action.
The answer is not to outsmart the summariser. It is to write an email whose value cannot be reduced to one grey line.
1. Treat information as the starting point, not the finished email.
Of course, readers still need the facts: what is happening, why it matters and what they should do. State them clearly. Then ask what opening the email adds. A useful test is: if a summary captured every fact, would anything worth experiencing remain? If not, the message needs another layer.
2. Give the message a recognisable point of view.
Generic email copy sounds interchangeable because it is built from familiar claims: exciting news, exceptional quality, limited availability. Replace these with an opinion your business can credibly own. A coffee roaster might explain why it refuses to describe every dark roast as "bold". A financial adviser might challenge the annual rush to make predictions. A clear position creates curiosity because a summary can report the topic, but not fully convey the thinking behind it.
3. Use one specific human detail.
Small observations make emails feel written rather than assembled. Instead of announcing that a restaurant has a new lunch menu, mention the dish the kitchen team kept eating beside the pass during testing. Instead of saying customers requested a feature, quote the oddly precise problem that one customer wanted it to solve. The detail does not need to be dramatic. It needs to be true, relevant and difficult to mistake for a template.
4. Write in a voice that survives translation.
At Karbon Copy, a Hong Kong copywriting agency, we work bilingually across Chinese and English. That makes this lesson especially visible. Brand voice is not a collection of English jokes that disappears in Chinese, or a formal Chinese version that loses the warmth of the original. It is a consistent attitude: practical, playful, candid, exacting or quietly expert. When the attitude is clear, copywriters can recreate the same relationship in both languages without forcing identical phrasing.
5. Design each email to reward the open.
A reader should find something inside that the preview did not already give away. This could be a short founder's note, a useful comparison, a sharp example, a customer question answered honestly or a line that makes them smile. For a sales email, show the reasoning behind the recommendation rather than repeating the offer. For a newsletter, provide interpretation rather than a list of links. The reward can be brief, but it should be deliberate.
6. Measure relationship signals, not only immediate clicks.
Open-rate data is already imperfect, and AI summaries make it less useful as a simple measure of attention. Look at replies, forwards, direct traffic, repeat purchases and the performance of emails over time. Ask customers which messages they remember. A strong email programme builds recognition and expectation, so subscribers choose to open even when they already know the headline.
AI has not made email copy less important. It has removed the advantage of merely delivering information. Deliverability gets your message into the inbox, and a summary may explain it. Neither can make someone enjoy hearing from you.
When the machine provides the gist, your brand must provide the reason to read.
Karbon Copy is a bilingual copywriting and communications agency in Hong Kong. We research before we write, then build emails worth opening. Start a conversation on WhatsApp at +852 9854 1689.