Your Newsletter Has Two Readers Now

You spent the morning putting together your newsletter.

Picked the stories. Worked on the opening. Gave the sponsor a good spot. Rewrote the subject line three times.

Then a machine read it and wrote its own introduction.

That may be the version your subscriber uses to decide whether your newsletter is worth their time.

Back in August, Chad White and I talked about this middleman.

Since then, I’ve wanted a clearer answer to what it means for publishers.

Does AI change whether we reach the inbox?

Does it give readers enough information to skip the click?

And what happens to the sponsor paying to be seen?

So I went through the provider documentation and some of the testing behind the claims.

Three things to take away:

The second reader is here.

We need to understand what it does before rebuilding everything around it.

Most publishers treat the subject line and preview text as a pair.

The subject creates interest. The preview gives readers another reason to open.

But that second part can change.

Apple documents this directly, with an option for users to switch back to the message’s opening lines.

Availability depends on the device, language, region, and settings.

With Copilot’s Prioritize feature enabled, eligible incoming messages receive a priority assessment and a short summary.

Microsoft says messages requiring action tend to receive higher priority.

Its Catch Up feature presents summaries of unread messages in the mobile app, with options to delete or keep them.

It even celebrates how many emails the reader cleared and how quickly.

Your newsletter could become a few lines in a cleanup session.

That makes the accuracy of those few lines worth checking.

Gmail’s changes get talked about as if they’re one feature affecting every reader the same way.

They aren’t.

Its conversation summaries help people catch up on longer threads after opening them.

That documentation doesn’t establish that Gmail rewrites the inbox preview of every standalone newsletter.

Its newer AI Inbox surfaces suggested tasks and topics to catch up on. It’s still in beta, limited to eligible plans, US users, and English.

Google says it draws from messages in Primary, excluding Promotions and Social.

Separately, Gmail’s “most relevant” Promotions sorting considers senders and brands the recipient engages with.

Readers can choose most recent instead.

For a publisher, these are different questions.

You won’t answer all three with an open rate.

And remember that the address on your list doesn’t tell you which app someone uses.

A Gmail subscriber could be reading through Apple Mail.

This is where I’d separate what we know from what sounds convincing.

The documentation shows that these features summarize messages, assess priority, and change presentation.

It doesn’t establish that making your newsletter easier to summarize improves its spam-folder placement.

AI already plays a role in spam filtering. Google says that itself.

But its new reader-facing summaries aren’t a published shortcut to better deliverability.

The same caution applies to declining clicks.

Maybe a summary gave readers what they needed.

Maybe the stories weren’t as compelling.

Maybe your audience changed, your frequency increased, or your bot filtering started removing activity you used to count.

Those explanations lead to different decisions.

“AI did it” isn’t enough information to change your sending strategy.

Before blaming the middleman, look at what it actually showed your reader.

Twilio and Inbox Monster tested different versions of one email to see how Apple summarized it.

In that test, the subject line and live text near the top helped shape the summary.

Text inside images and image alt text didn’t provide the same information.

It’s useful directional evidence, not a rule for every newsletter or inbox.

My takeaway for publishers is to make the issue’s editorial priorities easy to understand.

It should make sense even if your carefully written preview disappears.

Give readers something more useful than housekeeping before you get to the point.

A roundup can cover several stories. Each one should be understandable without relying on an image or a vague teaser.

That includes the main story and the sponsor’s message.

See what survives before deciding what needs changing.

A newsletter that summarizes the news is going to have a different relationship with AI summaries than a newsletter built around original reporting or analysis.

That doesn’t make a useful digest worthless.

Saving someone time is a perfectly good reason to exist.

But it does raise a question:

What does the reader get from you that a shorter recap leaves out?

It could be your judgment about which stories matter.

It could be an original interview, a useful comparison, a strong argument, or the way you explain what happens next.

That’s the value I’d keep investing in.

I wouldn’t respond by making headlines more mysterious or hiding the point farther down the email.

Readers still need a reason to trust you and come back.

For publishers who depend on website traffic, that means giving people a clear reason to continue beyond the summary.

For publishers delivering the full experience inside the email, success may include someone getting value without clicking out.

Your business model should shape what you measure.

There’s another person affected by the machine’s version of your newsletter: the advertiser.

A sponsor can have a prominent position in your layout and still receive little attention in a summary.

Putting the sponsor’s name and message in live text gives that information a chance to be represented.

It doesn’t guarantee inclusion.

That’s something I’d check when reviewing a sponsored issue.

Keep the sponsorship clearly labeled, and look at the reader’s actual experience before making promises about visibility.

I’d also be careful about reporting.

A delivered email, a recorded open, a sponsor click, and a qualified lead tell you different things.

Be clear with advertisers about which outcome you’re reporting.

Google now has an official Gmail MCP server in Developer Preview.

It lets connected AI applications search threads, retrieve messages, manage labels, and create drafts.

I’m already using MCP on the sending side to help build segments.

Now consider an agent working for the person receiving the newsletter.

Here’s my inference: an agent could retrieve a message’s text and use it to answer a question without loading the tracking image.

That retrieval alone wouldn’t produce an open.

Your reporting could miss a useful interaction.

Meanwhile, automated systems that load images or follow links can generate activity without a person reading or clicking.

Omeda documents this problem with non-human interactions and click filtering.

So we have activity that looks like readership but isn’t, and potential readership that doesn’t look like activity.

That’s why I want several signals…

Clicks with bot filtering applied, replies, meaningful website activity, paid subscriptions, renewals, and advertiser outcomes where they’re available.

Use what fits your publication.

Keep looking for evidence that people value what you send.

And don’t turn the possibility of invisible readership into a reason to keep mailing everyone indefinitely.

An unmeasured interaction is possible.

It isn’t proof that a particular subscriber is engaged.

Take your next issue and test it in the inbox experiences your readers are likely to use.

Start with Apple Mail on a supported device with Apple Intelligence and summary previews enabled.

If Microsoft 365 is important to your audience, include an Outlook account with Copilot Prioritize available and enabled.

Screenshot the preview and summary, then read them as someone who has never seen your publication.

If you wouldn’t approve what you see, revise the subject line, opening, or story headings and test again.

Make this part of reviewing an issue, alongside checking the links and layout.

You’ve already put the work into deciding what your readers should know.

It’s worth seeing how much of that makes it through the introduction someone else is writing for you.

See you next week,

Chris Miquel

P.S. If your newsletter is getting summarized accurately but engagement is still sliding, reply if you want a second set of eyes. We can look at the content, sending audience, and inbox performance together before deciding what needs to change.