Gmail is changing the rules: how to turn it into an advantage for your campaigns

Since March, a lot of marketers have noticed the same thing: the open and click-through rates of their email campaigns are shifting, without them having changed anything. New template? No. A deliverability problem? Not that either. The culprit is Gmail, or more precisely the artificial intelligence that has moved in.

At Actito, we analysed our clients' data to understand what is going on. Here is what we found, and above all, how to adapt.

Gmail's new rules: relevance takes centre stage

Gmail has made two major changes that redefine the rules of visibility for every sender, whatever sending tool they use.

The Promotions tab is no longer chronological

Gmail has dropped chronological sorting in the Promotions tab in favour of sorting by relevance. The algorithm now assesses the quality of the relationship between each sender and each recipient to decide which emails deserve to be pushed to the top.

This is a major shift in philosophy: it is no longer your send time that determines your visibility, it is the quality of the relationship you maintain with each contact. For brands that invest in engagement, that is a natural competitive advantage.

AI reads your emails before your recipients do

With Gemini now built in, Gmail no longer simply filters spam: it reads, interprets and summarises your emails. The AI analyses the subject line, the preheader, the body copy, image alt text and even attachments. It extracts the meaning and the intent.

What does that mean in practice? A message that is clear, well structured and genuinely valuable will be understood and rewarded by the AI. In other words, Gmail is starting to reward what good marketers already do: write emails that have something to say.

Our analysis at Actito: good practice is already being rewarded

One essential point: these changes have nothing to do with your sending platform. Whichever ESP you use (Actito or another), the impact is the same, because the change sits on Gmail's side. Faced with this, some players in the market are content to say that "Gmail is a black box". At Actito, we chose a different approach: dig deep into our clients' data to identify what really makes the difference. And the results speak for themselves.

Hyper-personalisation makes the difference

Comparing the results of clients using hyper-personalisation with their standard "mass" campaigns, the picture is clear: hyper-personalised campaigns hold up very well as the metrics shift. Gmail rewards sends that deliver individual value, and that is a virtuous dynamic for the whole ecosystem.

Consistency pays

Clients who maintain stable sending volumes are less affected than those who ramp their volumes up sharply. The signal is unambiguous: Gmail rewards consistency and predictability, not opportunistic sending spikes.

The proof that this is about relevance

Our analysis rules out a technical problem. We see no increase in bounces among the clients affected. The strong correlation between falling opens and falling clicks, on the other hand, confirms that the emails really are being seen less, not simply tracked less well. Gmail's relevance-based sorting is what is at work here.

One reassuring note: transactional emails are unaffected, which makes sense given they naturally benefit from high engagement.

A paradigm shift, not a bug

What we are seeing is a genuine paradigm shift. We are moving from a world where sending an email was enough for it to be seen, to one where every email has to prove its value to earn its visibility.

But rather than treating that as a constraint, let's see it as a welcome clean-up. These new rules do not apply to Gmail alone either: they reflect an underlying shift towards email marketing that is more respectful, better targeted and more effective. And the benefits go well beyond a single mailbox provider.

Cleaner lists? Your performance improves everywhere, not just on Gmail. Better personalised content? Your conversion rates rise across every channel. Better structured messages? You gain clarity for all your recipients, whatever inbox they use.

How to turn this to your advantage

These changes reward brands that commit to quality. Here is how to make the shift work for you.

• Invest in personalisation. Our data confirms it: the more the content is tailored to the recipient, the better the results. This is no longer about dropping a first name into the subject line, but about offering content that is genuinely relevant to each profile. It is an investment that pays off well beyond Gmail.
• Keep control of your sending volumes. A consistent, controlled sending strategy sends a signal of trust. Segment your sends, scale up gradually and maintain a healthy engagement-to-volume ratio.
• Write for the AI as much as for the human. Gmail's AI reads text, not images. A clear subject line, an informative preheader, explicit body copy with a value proposition that is identifiable in the first few lines: that is what makes the difference. The good news: an email that is readable by AI is also a better email for your recipients.
• Rethink your KPIs. Open rates are still useful for spotting trends, but complement them with click-through rate, conversion rate and revenue per recipient. You will get a truer, more actionable view of your performance.
• Look after your database. A clean database of engaged contacts sends a positive signal to every mailbox provider. It is the foundation of a sustainable email strategy. Clean your lists regularly, and either re-engage inactive contacts or remove them.

The takeaway

Gmail is not penalising email marketing. It is raising the standard. And that is good news for brands that take their recipients seriously.

At Actito, we see this shift as a confirmation of our approach: betting on personalisation, relevance and the quality of the customer relationship. Our personalisation, segmentation and deliverability management tools are built so you can approach this new context not as a constraint, but as a way to stand out.

Every email deserves its place in the inbox. It is up to you to give it what it needs to earn it.