As AI becomes part of the inbox itself, Everlytic CEO Zane Green and technologist Musa Kalenga say marketers need to rethink what it takes for an email to earn attention.
Landing an email into somebody’s inbox remains essential. However, the inbox itself is increasingly helping decide what the user sees first and what can wait.
Google is already moving in that direction. In January, the company said 3 billion people rely on Gmail and introduced new Gemini-powered features designed to help users search, summarise, and work through the information in their inboxes. The company positioned this as part of its effort to make a more proactive inbox assistant.
For marketers, that adds another layer to an already crowded channel. Statista estimates that around 424-billion emails will be sent and received each day globally in 2026.
This changing inbox formed the basis of The Inbox Effect, an Everlytic event featuring technologist, marketer, and author of Ladders and Trampolines Musa Kalenga, Group CEO and shareholder of Brave Group and co-founder of Bridge Labs. Following popular demand after the original event, it was replayed as a webinar on 7 October.
Kalenga argues that the person receiving the email may no longer be the only intelligence interpreting it.
Dealing with a more active inbox
Kalenga describes the modern inbox as moving towards a second brain for the user. AI can already help people extract information from long threads and decide where to focus their attention.
That shift is visible in Gmail, where AI Overviews can pull together information from messages in response to a user’s question. Google has also been expanding Gemini features that work across emails and other Workspace content.
The scale of the attention problem also became apparent during the live Inbox Effect session. When attendees were asked to count email alongside the messaging and social channels where they receive direct communication, 51% put themselves in the category of seven or more inboxes.
For Kalenga, that environment changes the standard for marketers.
“Delivery is almost now table stakes. Desirability is what we have to solve for,” he said.
AI is adding another layer between the sender and the person reading the email. Marketers now have to consider what the inbox is making of a message before the recipient even engages with it.
The issue of scale
Kalenga recalls exchanging long letters with a childhood pen pal in Senegal. He would wait for the next one to arrive knowing it had been written specifically for him. That experience feels a long way from an environment where hundreds of billions of messages move every day.
Email gave marketers enormous reach, and automation made that reach easier to manage. It also contributed to the volume customers now have to work through.
Validity’s 2026 Email Deliverability Benchmark reports a global inbox placement rate of 87.2%. Once the message arrives, the marketer still has to earn the recipient’s attention.
“Automation is simply a mechanic in a process,” Kalenga said during the session. He argues that technology should support the relationship rather than become the reason a business communicates in the first place.
A framework for the intelligent inbox
Kalenga’s inbox framework gives marketers a practical way to think through that relationship.
It begins with intent, using behavioural signals to understand why a communication should be sent. Nurture means allowing communication to respond to how people actually engage with the content rather than relying on a fixed response sequence.
Kalenga still puts a lot of weight on how the message sounds. It should feel as though it came from a person, even when the systems behind it are increasingly automated. He also ties consent and clean data back to trust, because customers are quick to notice when a brand goes too far.
His final point is about what happens before the recipient even engages. If the inbox is already interpreting messages on the user’s behalf, marketers need to think about how their email will be understood at that stage too.
Kalenga describes the opportunity as “systemising the relationship”, using what a brand knows about a customer to make the next interaction more useful.
What this changes for brands
Everlytic CEO Zane Green believes marketing teams have a responsibility to use customer data thoughtfully and build communications strategies that justify every send.
“Brands have access to sophisticated platforms and more customer signals than ever before. That raises the standard for judgement. A message should have a clear reason for being in somebody’s inbox,” says Green.
The marketing team needs enough information through the system it is using to communicate to judge whether another message is useful and appropriate.
“When a customer has chosen to hear from a brand, the communication still has to earn its place in their inbox. The platform should help teams understand how people are responding and use that information to make better decisions about what they send,” says Green.
An email can reach the inbox and still disappear into the noise. With more intelligent inboxes, marketers need to pay closer attention to what happens to the message before the recipient even opens it.
