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- Treat the inbox like a social feed.
Welcome back to Marketing Qualified! Here’s what we’re talking about this week:
Treat the inbox like a social feed. Today, email is more like TikTok than a corporate blog.
How to not sound like AI. You must add “human fingerprints.”
This image hits the nail on the head.
There is a big shift happening in how people consume email. The old newsletter style that mirrors corporate blogs is dying a fast death.
Email has shifted from a broadcast channel to a form of personal media.
People scroll through their inbox like their TikTok or Instagram feed:
Fast. Pattern-aware. Hunting for emotion or energy or novelty.
Each email (and really each section of an email) needs to connect, entertain, or provoke.
📰 In the news this week.
📱 WSJ predicts Reels will surpass YouTube and TikTok this year.
👋 How to engage customers on social in 2026.
😵 AI is killing aesthetic feeds.
📈 LinkedIn shares data on rising job roles.
🗣 How to not sound like AI.
It’s obvious that AI-generated content blew up last year. We all saw it take over our feeds. It was everywhere.
People started pointing out dead giveaways: the em dash epidemic, overuse of emojis, “It’s not about X, it’s about Y” sentence structure, using lists of three for everything, starting off with “In today’s fast paced world…”, etc.
We are big advocates for using AI where it makes sense. But as marketers, we DO need to be careful to keep the humanity in the content we create.
At the end of the day, marketing is about understanding how people think and what motivates them. AI still isn’t great at writing for this outcome.
Don’t be scared to use AI to help you write, but add in what we call “human fingerprints.” These are personal touches that AI isn’t able to accomplish (at least not yet).
Here are a few ways to do this:
1) Break grammar rules.
When humans speak out loud, they break grammar rules all the time.
We do this because verbal communication is about making the person you're talking to absorb what you’re saying with low mental load. We optimize for being easy to understand.
Your writing should be the same way. When writing, optimize for readability.
When you actually write how you talk, no one thinks it’s AI speaking.
2) Tell stories
AI can’t tell real stories. You can.
Insert anecdotes from your life, personal opinions, and first-party data. It will immediately increase how “human” something feels to a reader.
3) Push the envelope
This one isn’t for everyone; however, in the right circumstances, it’s a powerful and fun way to connect with people.
Using humor is the most common method. But sharing a contrarian take or a strong POV can work too.
No one is accusing these ads of being written by AI:
😂 Marketing meme of the week.
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