Gmail Changed the Inbox…Again: What Marketers Need to Know

Foreign. Welcome to Email After Hours by senderscore Powered by Validity we're your hosts. My name is Guy Hanson and I'm Danielle Galant and this is Email After Hours. Gmail is very well known for its relentless innovation in the inbox, and we've talked about many of these new features before. Deal cards, auto annotations, subscriptions manager, relevant sorted promotions, tab AI, generated summaries, the ability to change your email address, etc. But we're also starting to see some potentially unintended consequences, especially with open rates. That's what we're talking about today. Regular listeners will notice Danielle isn't with us today. She's on show duty this week. Instead, we're joined by Laura Christensen, Senior Director of Professional Services, Validity's awesome team of strategic email consultants. They work with some of the most well known email programs all around the world, so very well positioned to provide some expert commentary on what's happening. Laura, welcome to the show. It feels like forever since you last joined us on Email After Hours. It has been a while. Thank you Guy. I'm happy to be here. Wonderful. Well, you know the format, you know, we like to kick off with a quick icebreaker just to get the conversation rolling. But I wanted to ask you, last week you attended the Inbox Expo event in Atlanta, near to home for you. I've already seen a load of great commentary about the event on LinkedIn. What was the single most interesting thing that you learned while you were there? You know your biggest aha moment. There were a lot of great sessions and some consistent themes, but I think one that you'll appreciate, Guy, is the danger of over personalization. You and I have joked that every year for the past 10 years, people have said that this is the year of hyper personalization at scale, but after a decade, it's actually within reach. We've seen advancements in customer data platforms, predictive analytics and generative AI. But Chad White during the conference was warning of brands at risk of losing their voice and their brand identity. Emails essentially being watered down to a selection of product recommendations based on behavior and predictive analytics and the risk of a loss of trust for our channel as we've seen over on the social media side. So this very interesting perspective, that's seriously interesting. You know, we've touched on is Hyper Personalization overhyped or is it going to become the real deal? I love that Laura. So into our conversation today. Since the beginning of the year, we've been seeing reports of Gmail open rate drops of 30% or more. And we've definitely heard corresponding feedback directly from our clients. So what's going on? Well, the most widely discussed explanation is that Gmail has reduced the frequency of their image prefetching, including open tracking pixels that are routed through their proxy servers. And our own validity data showed image loading activity dropped by roughly a third in late November of last year. But we dug a little bit further and found that's actually only part of the story. As you mentioned Guy, Gmail has introduced a whole section series of inbox changes over the past two years. Late 2025 was also when stricter bulk sender requirement enforcement kicked in, where we started to see Gmail actively rejecting non compliant traffic rather than just soft enforcing it. And rejected emails generate zero open. So certainly we're seeing several factors that are converging at once. I agree, and we'll dig into that more as we go through the conversation. But we've spoken before about how open rates have become increasingly unreliable as a performance metric. So do lower opens automatically mean fewer people are actually reading their emails? Not necessarily. And this is really a mindset shift that marketers need to make. Opens have been inflated for years. Apple Mail privacy protection preloads emails through proxy servers triggering false opens regardless of whether a subscriber actually read the message. Gmail has done the same since 2013 and many Gmail subscribers actually access their accounts through Apple Mail. So those false opens are baked into Gmail open rates too. What we may actually be seeing now is just a correction towards something more realistic. The senders that I'm talking with aren't reporting equivalent drops in clicks or in revenue. So that suggests that audiences are still actually engaging. I think you're right. So let's look beyond proxy behavior. What else has Gmail been doing that might also be affecting open rates? What isn't Gmail doing? Biggest change and this has been the introduction of relevant sorted promotion tabs, which means that Gmail now ranks emails by engagement rather than recency. So it means lower engagement senders get buried, essentially creating a vicious cycle where these emails display lower, they get seen less, and therefore they're generating even less engagement. We've also seen auto annotations. So Gmail regularly extracts promotion details, images and discount codes from emails and displays them as previews in the promotions tab. So essentially subscribers can see their offers without even opening their emails and then they can click through directly. And I know Guy, that you talk a lot about AI in the inbox, so how would you say AI is also having an impact? Oh man, you're putting me in the hot seat, Laura. Thanks. I think the short answer to that question is yes, absolutely. I think a big part of what we're talking about today is definitely related to AR generated summaries. They started rolling out in January of this year and anyone that's seen them will know they provide sort of one to two sentence recaps that automatically surface the most important details in the email. So it kind of makes sense that if subscribers are now getting everything they need from the summary, there's far less reason for them to open their emails. That's got to be a given. And I think now we've also got Gemini as part of Gmail, and this almost takes it one step further because it lets subscribers search by asking natural language questions like what discount codes do I have for sportswear in my inbox? And get answers compiled across multiple emails, again without needing to open any of them. So I guess we should caveat that some of this functionality is only available in Gmail's paid users at this stage, and also that some of this AI functionality is disabled by default in major markets like the European Union. But this change subscriber behavior is already happening and it's only going to become more prevalent. Laura, my next question for you. We also know that Gmail's made it much easier for subscribers to opt out. Do you think this is also going to be having an impact on open roads? Oh for sure. We're already seeing it, especially since the introduction of subscription manager in mid-2025. It's given users a single dashboard to unsubscribe from any sender in just one click without even opening an email. We see lists shrink and therefore opens drop, especially with the automatic pixel fires. And I'll also make a sidebar comment about message clipping. It's not a new topic, but relevant to this conversation because Gmail clips when HTML size exceeds 102 kilobytes. So if your tracking pixel is at the top of the email, the truncation means that it's not going to fire. And then lastly, we should also talk about Gmail's new functionality to change addresses when this happens. Marketing emails sent to the old address land in a dead inbox. No opens. Probably don't expect them from the new address either. Absolutely right. Some really great points there. So I wonder, is any of this actually bad news for email marketers? Or are most of these changes actually nudging them towards better practices that are going to deliver more responsiveness from their programs? Honestly, it's not entirely bad news. The senders who are panicking are the ones who probably have been papering over weak engagement with inflated metrics. But Gmail's changes, from what I'm seeing, are really pushing senders towards what good email marketing looks like anyway. Relevant content to engaged audiences. So if your clicks and revenue haven't dropped proportionately to your opens, there's a sign that your real audience is still there. You're losing phantom opens but not real readers 100%. I couldn't agree more. So for those panicking senders that you alluded to, or maybe even good senders who know there's still an opportunity for improvement, how should they be responding to all of this? Where do we start? There are a few concrete areas and senders can start by reviewing their compliance. Non compliance is now an active rejection risk. It's no longer a best practice issue. So it means reviewing your authentication, especially because of the new DMARC updates, reviewing your complaint rates, your unsubscribe, handling your bounce monitoring using Google Postmaster Tools v2 to monitor for rejection specific error codes. You also want to separate your sending streams. This means using distinct from addresses, subdomains, and even having content structures for transactional versus promotional messages just to help keep your routing clean. You want to protect subscriber trust. You also want to suppress inactive Gmail segments more aggressively than ever. The relevant Sorting Promotions tab means that those inactive subscribers are actively dragging down your visibility. So defining tighter engagement thresholds, especially at Gmail, is critical. And I know guy that you and Raphael actually ran a really great webinar last month that was all about optimizing for AI summaries. So I'm going to turn it back to you. What are some of the great takeaways that you would share from that, especially for Gmail? I've got to say you're right. We touched a lot on Gmail in that webinar and I strongly recommend watching the recording listeners if you haven't already. But three specific tactics come to mind immediately. I think the first is make sure you're front loading your content because AI summaries use the earliest readable text that they can find in the message. So your key content, your call to action. They need to be near the top of the email, not buried after a HERO image or buried in a HERO image for that matter. You know they need to be right up at the top where they're going to be found straight away. Definitely check your email file sizes. I think that was a great point you raised a little bit earlier on as you said, you know, Gmail's audit typically clips at about 102k, and the consideration there is that a lot of senders have their tracking pixels right down at the end of the email. So anytime there's Gmail truncation happening, it's probably clipping out that tracking pixel, which is going to dampen your open rates too. And then I think the third thing is implement Gmail's annotations. They made this available as a tool for email marketers. I think Gmail's been a little bit disappointed with the uptake and so they're doing it automatically quite often and sometimes the results are pretty good and sometimes they are less than good. So rather than letting Gmail auto extract your offer, take control of what gets surfaced in the promotions preview and as a sidebar comment, also build in CTAs that actually need a click. Don't just hand over a promo code in the preview that doesn't need any further action. So those were some of the key points from the webinar. Laura we also touched on this new challenge created by the ability of Gmail subscribers to change their addresses. So for many marketing programs, email address is almost their primary customer identifier. So does this need to change? Marketers definitely need to start thinking beyond the email address. Loyalty programs, first party identity resolution and progressive profiling all reduce your dependency on that same single address that could either change or go dormant. So absolutely, I feel like we're giving our listeners a lot of homework today. Where does this all go from here? Should marketers be emotionally detaching from open rates? At least partially open still matter directionally. If you see a sudden drop, it could still point to a potential problem, but they can't can no longer be treated as a precise KPI almost. You need to think of them more like a health signal than a real performance metric. If your opens are low, but you're still seeing clicks in revenue holding steady, then that's very different to everything declining in tandem. The goal now is really to optimize for usefulness and genuine engagement, not just visibility and vanity metrics. At the end of the day, Gmail is not broken, it is evolving. And mailbox providers are going to keep prioritizing relevance and trust and user intent over sender volume. AI is still really meaning that inboxes are becoming interpreters of email content, not just containers for it. And senders who treat these changes as really an opportunity to sharpen strategy rather than a bug to wait out are going to come out ahead in the long run. That's absolutely right. I've got to say this has been such a great conversation with you, Laura. Um, we're going to need to start wrapping it up now. But for all the listeners out there that want to learn more about what we've been talking about today, where can we point them? We've got a wealth of great content on Validity's blog, including Guy's article on the topic, which our customers have been clamoring for. And we also have touched on the new Dean park updates. I know we have a brand new post on that topic, so be sure to grab that one too. That's right. And we did also mention our recent State of Email webinar about optimizing for AI summaries. You can listen to the recording@ validity.com webinars we started out with a quick fire question. We're going to finish off with one as well. I think one clear takeaway from our conversation today is the new the need for new email metrics. Is there a new KPI you've come across recently, Laura, that you're a big fan of and encouraging your clients to adopt? Well, Guy, I don't know if this, it's. This isn't new. I don't know if this is controversial or just boring, but for me, the most powerful and telling metric is your deliverability rate. Not your delivered rate, but know your deliverability rate. How many of your messages are actually making it to the inbox? Because it is the one metric that paints the most clear picture of how mailbox providers view you as a sender and how your subscribers view you as a sender as well. All of those things that we talked about are really reflected in your deliverability rate. You know I'm a huge fan for that metric, so how can I disagree? We'll just settle for controversially boring then. Laura, it's been so great having you in the hot seat as our email after hours guest today. And thanks so much for wealth of insights that we've shared with our listeners today. If they'd like to connect with you directly, what's the best way to reach out? Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Wonderful final word to our listeners. Make sure you tune in again in two weeks time. You can hit subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And of course be sure to visit senderscore.org where you'll find even more resources to help you become even stronger senders. And if you want to follow in Laura's footsteps and join us as a future guest at some stage. Drop us a comment, ping us on LinkedIn, fill out the guest form link to the show notes. That's it for today. It's been such fun. Thanks for listening and join us again in a four night's time. We'll see you again then. Be sure to tune in next time and hit subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And don't Forget to visit senderscore.com for loads more great resources to help you become a stronger sender to all you sleep this senders out there. Thank you for joining us after hours and see you next time. Email after hours.