Apple Intelligence and Gmail Gemini are rewriting email marketing rules. The EMAS 2026 summit addresses how marketers can compete when AI, not brands, controls inbox visibility.
The biggest competitor in your subscribers' inboxes in 2026 is no longer another brand. It is your customer's own AI assistant. That premise sits at the center of this year's DDMA Email Marketing Automation Summit (EMAS), taking place on June 11 at Circa Amsterdam, and it is reshaping how serious email marketers think about strategy, content, and deliverability.
The 2026 edition of the EMAS, organised by the Data Driven Marketing Association (DDMA), will be held at Circa Amsterdam on June 11 and runs as a one-day event. It brings together Europe's leading minds in email, CRM, and marketing automation for one focused day of insights, inspiration, and connection. This year, the conference takes on added urgency: the inbox environment that marketers navigated just 18 months ago looks nothing like today's.
AI Is Now Reading Your Emails First
Apple Mail uses pre-open summaries, automatically written by Apple Intelligence and displayed in place of your preheader text directly in the inbox. Gmail, on the other hand, provides post-open summaries using its Gemini AI, only after the email has been opened. This difference changes everything, from how open rates are influenced to how marketers should write and structure emails.
In January 2026, Google rolled out a major upgrade to Gmail powered by Gemini 3, its most advanced AI model, introducing AI-generated email summaries, smart inbox prioritization, context-aware replies, and an entirely new way of reading and sorting messages. Gmail now has over 3 billion users, accounting for 25 to 32% of all email opens, which means most of your audience is now reading marketing emails inside an AI-mediated inbox.
The data impact is already measurable. Open rates have climbed to 45.6%, but click-through rates dropped from 4.35% to 3.93% after AI summaries launched, with users reading AI-generated snippets instead of clicking through to full content. Open rates may also be misleading: because Gmail auto-opens emails to generate summaries, some platforms are recording opens that do not reflect a human actively reading the message, which means benchmarks from six months ago may need to be recalibrated.
Apple Intelligence and Gmail Gemini are rewriting email marketing rules. The EMAS 2026 summit addresses how marketers can compete when AI, not brands, controls inbox visibility.
The biggest competitor in your subscribers' inboxes in 2026 is no longer another brand. It is your customer's own AI assistant. That premise sits at the center of this year's DDMA Email Marketing Automation Summit (EMAS), taking place on June 11 at Circa Amsterdam, and it is reshaping how serious email marketers think about strategy, content, and deliverability.
The 2026 edition of the EMAS, organised by the Data Driven Marketing Association (DDMA), will be held at Circa Amsterdam on June 11 and runs as a one-day event. It brings together Europe's leading minds in email, CRM, and marketing automation for one focused day of insights, inspiration, and connection. This year, the conference takes on added urgency: the inbox environment that marketers navigated just 18 months ago looks nothing like today's.
AI Is Now Reading Your Emails First
Apple Mail uses pre-open summaries, automatically written by Apple Intelligence and displayed in place of your preheader text directly in the inbox. Gmail, on the other hand, provides post-open summaries using its Gemini AI, only after the email has been opened. This difference changes everything, from how open rates are influenced to how marketers should write and structure emails.
In January 2026, Google rolled out a major upgrade to Gmail powered by Gemini 3, its most advanced AI model, introducing AI-generated email summaries, smart inbox prioritization, context-aware replies, and an entirely new way of reading and sorting messages. Gmail now has over 3 billion users, accounting for 25 to 32% of all email opens, which means most of your audience is now reading marketing emails inside an AI-mediated inbox.
The data impact is already measurable. Open rates have climbed to 45.6%, but click-through rates dropped from 4.35% to 3.93% after AI summaries launched, with users reading AI-generated snippets instead of clicking through to full content. Open rates may also be misleading: because Gmail auto-opens emails to generate summaries, some platforms are recording opens that do not reflect a human actively reading the message, which means benchmarks from six months ago may need to be recalibrated.
On the Apple side, pre-open AI summaries in Apple Mail, on by default, replace your emails' preview text with a two-line generative AI-powered summary based on the HTML text in your message, with accuracy and quality described as mixed, especially for emails that are mostly images. With Gemini coming to Gmail and AI summaries arriving on eligible devices, Google is inserting itself more directly between brands and customers. For the first time, the platform is actively deciding which messages deserve attention, a shift Apple set in motion with iOS 18.
The Conference Agenda Reflects the Shift
Topics on the EMAS agenda include the future of automation and CRM, generative AI, deliverability, data privacy, creative execution, analytics, legal compliance, and the evolving role of email within the broader marketing landscape. Julia Janßen-Holldiek, Director of the Certified Senders Alliance, will speak on strategies for email deliverability in the future, in a session titled "Unlocking the Inbox."
Judith Oude Sogtoen, Director of DDMA, noted that "the number and quality of submissions show that email marketing still holds a unique position within the marketing mix and continues to evolve." This year's EMAS Awards will be presented in two categories: Email Marketing Automation Excellence and Young Talent of the Year, alongside the creative agency competition Battle of the Agencies.
What This Means for Your Email Strategy
The strategic implication is clear: volume-based sending is losing ground fast. Brands with strong engagement, proper authentication, and highly relevant content are more likely to stay visible, while volume-based strategies with generic messaging will lose reach even if they technically avoid spam filters.
The first 100 to 200 characters of your email body are now inbox-critical content, since Gmail's Gemini AI focuses heavily on opening sentences when generating summaries. Place your primary benefit, offer, or key message in the first one to two sentences of your email body.
Gmail's Manage Subscriptions feature shows users exactly how often you email them with one-click removal options, and brands that send too many emails are prominently displayed in users' subscription management interface. For marketers still running frequency-first programs, this is a direct threat to list health.
Authentication remains non-negotiable. Google and Yahoo's DMARC authentication requirements, fully enforced since Q1 2024, have permanently altered the deliverability landscape. Senders without proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records see inbox placement rates drop to 44%, compared to 89% for fully authenticated domains.
Segmentation is the most reliable counter-strategy. Segmented email campaigns generate 760% more revenue than non-segmented broadcasts, and campaigns powered by AI personalization are driving roughly 41% higher revenue than traditional approaches.
The Larger Industry Signal
EMAS frames the central question for 2026 this way: what if the future of email marketing is not about sending more emails, but about sending fewer, better ones? In a world of cluttered inboxes, the real challenge is no longer just getting your email opened; it is getting it noticed at all.
The brands winning in 2026 send fewer, better-timed, more relevant messages to smaller segments, according to SMTP2GO's 2026 strategy analysis. Email remains the highest-ROI channel, but execution quality will increasingly determine outcomes.
For marketers attending EMAS or simply trying to keep pace with these platform changes, the takeaway is the same: design every email as if an AI will read it before your subscriber does, because increasingly, one will.
On the Apple side, pre-open AI summaries in Apple Mail, on by default, replace your emails' preview text with a two-line generative AI-powered summary based on the HTML text in your message, with accuracy and quality described as mixed, especially for emails that are mostly images. With Gemini coming to Gmail and AI summaries arriving on eligible devices, Google is inserting itself more directly between brands and customers. For the first time, the platform is actively deciding which messages deserve attention, a shift Apple set in motion with iOS 18.
The Conference Agenda Reflects the Shift
Topics on the EMAS agenda include the future of automation and CRM, generative AI, deliverability, data privacy, creative execution, analytics, legal compliance, and the evolving role of email within the broader marketing landscape. Julia Janßen-Holldiek, Director of the Certified Senders Alliance, will speak on strategies for email deliverability in the future, in a session titled "Unlocking the Inbox."
Judith Oude Sogtoen, Director of DDMA, noted that "the number and quality of submissions show that email marketing still holds a unique position within the marketing mix and continues to evolve." This year's EMAS Awards will be presented in two categories: Email Marketing Automation Excellence and Young Talent of the Year, alongside the creative agency competition Battle of the Agencies.
What This Means for Your Email Strategy
The strategic implication is clear: volume-based sending is losing ground fast. Brands with strong engagement, proper authentication, and highly relevant content are more likely to stay visible, while volume-based strategies with generic messaging will lose reach even if they technically avoid spam filters.
The first 100 to 200 characters of your email body are now inbox-critical content, since Gmail's Gemini AI focuses heavily on opening sentences when generating summaries. Place your primary benefit, offer, or key message in the first one to two sentences of your email body.
Gmail's Manage Subscriptions feature shows users exactly how often you email them with one-click removal options, and brands that send too many emails are prominently displayed in users' subscription management interface. For marketers still running frequency-first programs, this is a direct threat to list health.
Authentication remains non-negotiable. Google and Yahoo's DMARC authentication requirements, fully enforced since Q1 2024, have permanently altered the deliverability landscape. Senders without proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records see inbox placement rates drop to 44%, compared to 89% for fully authenticated domains.
Segmentation is the most reliable counter-strategy. Segmented email campaigns generate 760% more revenue than non-segmented broadcasts, and campaigns powered by AI personalization are driving roughly 41% higher revenue than traditional approaches.
The Larger Industry Signal
EMAS frames the central question for 2026 this way: what if the future of email marketing is not about sending more emails, but about sending fewer, better ones? In a world of cluttered inboxes, the real challenge is no longer just getting your email opened; it is getting it noticed at all.
The brands winning in 2026 send fewer, better-timed, more relevant messages to smaller segments, according to SMTP2GO's 2026 strategy analysis. Email remains the highest-ROI channel, but execution quality will increasingly determine outcomes.
For marketers attending EMAS or simply trying to keep pace with these platform changes, the takeaway is the same: design every email as if an AI will read it before your subscriber does, because increasingly, one will.
