AI Can Build Emails Now. Sort Of.

Happy Sunday.

The Test

I've been testing Google Stitch this week.

If you haven't seen it, it's Google's new AI design tool. Built for websites and UI, but I wanted to see how far it could stretch for email.

I wanted to see if we're at the point where you can just talk to a tool and get a campaign out the other end.

We're not there yet.

The Problem

The output looks like something. It's not nothing.

But it's not something you'd send to a client.

The spacing is off, the hierarchy is wrong, the creative feels like it was designed by someone who read a blog post about email design but never actually opened a Klaviyo account.

You end up refining and adjusting and re-prompting so many times that you could've just had your designer build it from scratch in less time.

Every AI tool I've tested for email creation has the same problem. They can generate something. They can't generate the right thing on the first try.

And in a production environment where you're building for a brand with specific taste, specific guidelines, specific ways they want their product to feel, "close enough" doesn't work.

Close enough means three rounds of revisions. A designer who knows the brand does it in one.

The Moat

I think AI will get there. I genuinely do. Voice-to-design, voice-to-code, all of it.

And when it does, the build itself stops being the valuable part.

The valuable part is taste.

Knowing that a particular client wants their product shots to feel editorial, not commercial.

Knowing that their audience responds to muted tones over saturated ones.

Knowing that this brand's post-purchase sequence should feel warm and the other brand's should feel premium and distant.

You don't describe that in a prompt. You learn it over months of working with a brand, absorbing their feedback, watching what converts and what falls flat.

The Shift

I think we'll lose 10 to 12 percent of the agency market to AI tools over the next few years. The shops that were purely execution, purely "send me the brief and I'll build the thing."

That work is going to get absorbed by the tools themselves, or by clients who realize they can do it in-house with a good AI workflow.

But the brands I talk to, especially in DTC, they care deeply about the creative element. They want emails that feel like their brand, not like a template.

And right now, the only way to get that consistently is a human who has developed taste for that specific brand over time.

So the question isn't whether AI is coming for email. It is.

The question is whether you're positioned for the work it can't do yet.

If you're thinking about this for your brand, reply to this email. I'm genuinely curious how other founders are navigating it.

Have a good Sunday.

- Raymond