Email Marketing · Strategy
5 Email Marketing Updates You Need to Know (And What to Do About Them)
Google’s May 2026 Core Update is all people are talking about. Here’s what it actually means for your email marketing as a small business owner, explained without the jargon, with five practical things you can do right now.
Google dropped its May 2026 Core Update on May 21st, and if you’ve been anywhere near the marketing world the past two weeks, you’ve probably seen the chaos. Think pieces are piling up. And everybody’s got a hot take.
I’m not here to add to the noise. Most of what’s out there is extremely overwhelming and, quite frankly, doesn’t provide steps on what to do next.
Here’s the philosophy behind these updates: reward value, penalize fluff, prioritize authenticity. That is the exact same strategy that should be driving your email marketing. This isn’t new advice. It’s a reminder.
Let’s talk about five things worth paying attention to when it comes to email, and what you can actually do about each one.
Update 01
Gmail is now writing your email previews for you
Here’s one most people haven’t caught yet.
Gmail has started replacing the traditional email preview text, that short snippet you see under the subject line before you open a message, with AI-generated summaries. Instead of showing the first line of your email or the preview line you worked so hard on, Gmail reads the whole thing and writes its own version of what it thinks your email is about.
That matters because your preview text has always been one of your best tools for getting someone to open. If you’ve been writing a compelling subject line and letting your first sentence do the preview work, Gmail can now override both with its own interpretation. And if your email is generic, templated, or promotional-sounding, that AI summary is going to read like one too.
This is exactly why segmentation matters more now than it ever has. When you send the same email to your entire list, you’re sending a facial promotion to someone who only comes in for laser, or a new client welcome to someone who has been with you for three years. Gmail’s AI reads that mismatch. So does your subscriber. The emails that get opened are the ones that feel like they were written for the specific person reading them, because they were.
When your list is segmented by service interest, where someone is in their journey with you, or how recently they’ve engaged, you’re not just being thoughtful. You’re giving the AI something accurate to summarize. You’re giving your subscriber a reason to open. And you’re protecting your sender reputation at the same time.
Write emails that have something real to say from the very first sentence. Then make sure that email is going to the right people. If your list isn’t segmented yet, start simple: past clients, current clients, and new leads. Even that basic split will change how your emails perform.
Update 02
Image-heavy emails are working against you
A lot of business owners think a beautiful, image-forward email looks professional. And visually, it might. But from a deliverability standpoint, it’s a liability.
Inbox providers like Gmail evaluate emails partly based on the ratio of images to text. Emails that are mostly images, think the kind that look like a graphic design portfolio, are harder for the algorithm to read and more likely to be flagged as promotional or spammy. They also load slowly, and if images are blocked by a subscriber’s settings (which happens more than you’d think), your entire email becomes a blank screen.
This connects to what Google’s own guidelines have been saying about content quality: the algorithm needs something to evaluate. If your email is 80% image and 20% text, there isn’t much there.
If you’re a photographer or hair salon, photos are obviously necessary, but include the photo that matches the story you are telling in your email. The rest you can link out to a portfolio or social media.
Lead with copy. Use images to support your message, not carry it. A well-written paragraph will always outperform a beautifully designed graphic that nobody can read on their phone. Plain text emails, when written with intention, consistently outperform the ones that took three hours to design.
Update 03
Templated, AI-generated content is getting flagged
Let me be clear about something: using AI to help write your emails is not the problem. The problem is sending AI-generated content that has never been touched by a human brain, has no specific point of view, and could have been written by anyone for anyone.
Google’s own position is that it doesn’t penalize AI content as a category. It penalizes unhelpful content. And a lot of AI-generated email happens to be exactly that: thin, generic, and easy to ignore. Gmail’s systems are getting better at recognizing the pattern. So are your subscribers.
We’ve all received it. Someone tells you they started an email newsletter and you’re excited for them. Then you open it and at first glance you just know: the formatting, the divider lines, the bold text in all the right templated places. You start reading and it doesn’t sound anything like the person you know. Trust me, I’m not the only one who can tell.
Use AI as a starting point or a final review, not both. Add your voice. Add your perspective. Add something your reader can’t find anywhere else. Authenticity is not a soft skill right now. It’s a deliverability strategy.
Update 04
Your sender reputation is either working for you or against you
This one comes directly from Google’s Email Sender Guidelines, and the stakes have gotten higher.
Think of your sender reputation like a credit score for your email account. Gmail is tracking whether people open your emails, click your links, mark them as spam, or ignore them completely. That history follows your domain and affects whether future emails land in the inbox or disappear into junk.
Google and Yahoo require that spam complaint rates stay below 0.3%, ideally under 0.1%. If you’re regularly sending to people who aren’t interested in your content, those numbers creep up. And if they creep up too far, your emails stop landing at all.
Two things that directly protect your reputation: make your unsubscribe link easy to find (hidden links lead people to hit “mark as spam” instead, which is much worse), and keep your list clean by removing subscribers who haven’t engaged in 90 days or more. You can monitor your standing with Gmail using Google Postmaster Tools, it’s free and worth checking quarterly.
Read my blog post on cleaning your list. It walks you through exactly how to do this without second-guessing yourself the whole time.
Stop protecting your list size and start protecting your list quality. A clean list of people who actually want to hear from you will always outperform a bloated list of people who don’t. That’s not a consolation prize. That’s the strategy.
Update 05
Your email and your website need to sound like the same business
This is the one I spend the most time talking about, because it’s the connection most service businesses aren’t making.
Every Google core update in 2026 has pushed in the same direction: reward content that has genuine depth, consistent authority, and original value. That applies to your website. It also applies to your emails. And increasingly, Google is evaluating both.
This is one of the reasons I created the Strategic Growth Blueprint. I kept seeing the same pattern: small businesses contracting out the website to one person, social to another, email to another. But if you don’t have one person managing it all, or a documented strategy shared with every party before anyone starts, this is what happens: a polished, professional website and emails that read like a different company wrote them. Your clients feel that disconnect. And when your email list, social media, and your website are saying different things about who you are and what you do, none of them are doing their full job.
Email isn’t a separate channel you manage in isolation. It’s the connector. Social brings people in. Your website shows them what you do. Email is what takes them on the customer journey you want them to follow.
Pull up your homepage, your social, and your last three emails side by side. Do they sound like the same person? Do they say the same thing about who you help and how? If there’s a gap, that’s where the work is. Clarity first. Strategy second. Then we build.
The bottom line
If you strip away all the algorithm language, what Google’s May 2026 update is really saying is the same thing good email marketing has always required: show up for the people you actually serve, with content that’s worth their time.
Send emails with something real to say. Write for your client, not for the inbox filter. Keep your list clean. And make sure your email strategy, social strategy, and your website are telling the same story.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Ready to make your email marketing actually work, not just go out the door, but work?
Let’s talk about what that looks likeFrequently asked questions
Does the Google May 2026 Core Update directly affect email marketing?
Not directly. Google’s core updates target search rankings, not email inboxes. But the philosophy driving them, reward genuine value and penalize low-quality mass-produced content, is the same standard inbox providers like Gmail are applying to email. If your emails are thin, generic, or templated, they’re running into the same headwinds.
Will Gmail’s AI preview summaries hurt my open rates?
They can, if your email content is generic or promotional-sounding. Gmail’s AI reads the whole email and generates its own summary. If the email has a clear, specific message, that summary works in your favor. The fix is writing emails that have something real to say from the first sentence and sending them to the right segment of your list.
Why does email list segmentation matter for deliverability?
When you send the same email to everyone, a portion of your list will always find it irrelevant. They ignore it, and Gmail tracks that. Over time, low engagement damages your sender reputation, which affects whether your emails reach the inbox at all. Segmentation keeps your emails relevant to the person reading them, which keeps your engagement rates healthy and your deliverability strong.
What is a sender reputation and how do I protect it?
Your sender reputation is how inbox providers like Gmail score your email account based on engagement history. High open and click rates improve it. Spam complaints and ignored emails hurt it. You protect it by keeping your list clean, making your unsubscribe link easy to find, and only sending to people who have shown recent interest in your content. Google Postmaster Tools lets you monitor your Gmail-specific reputation for free.
How should my email strategy and SEO strategy work together?
They should be telling the same story. The language you use to describe your services on your website, the value you lead with in your emails, and the content you create across channels should all reinforce the same message. Google is increasingly evaluating content authority across the full web presence of a business. Consistency across your website and email builds trust with both your audience and the algorithm.
Do I need to stop using AI to write my emails?
No. The problem isn’t AI. It’s unedited, generic AI content that has no voice, no perspective, and nothing specific to offer the reader. Use AI to draft or to do a final review, then make sure your own language and point of view are in there. That’s what converts.