Email After Hours: Episode 75

Designing Email for Humans, Machines, and Everything In Between with Jay Oram

Future-proofing your strategy though best practices.

Don't waste time chasing AI trends! Get back to the basics!

Don’t waste time chasing AI trends! Get back to the basics!

In this episode of Email After Hours, Guy Hanson and Danielle Gallant sit down with Jay Oram, Head of Development at Action Rocket, to explore why accessibility should be the foundation of every email build. From designing for smartwatches and AI summarization tools to improving deliverability through reply-to strategies and hidden text optimization, Jay shares practical, developer-first tactics to help brands create emails that work for every device, reader, and algorithm.

If you're building emails for humans, machines, and every screen size in between, this episode is your blueprint for staying relevant, compliant, and competitive.

What you’ll learn:

How replacing no-reply addresses with monitored reply-to inboxes can improve deliverability, engagement signals, and sender reputation
How to create accessible, semantically structured templates that remain adaptable for 2–3 years across new devices and platforms
Why accessibility best practices (proper heading hierarchy, live text, alt text, semantic HTML) also optimize emails for AI readers and voice assistants
How to test emails from the user’s perspective–listening via screen readers, previewing on smartwatches, and checking fallback rendering in Outlook and image-blocked environments
What regulatory changes around tracking and explicit opt-in consent may mean for open tracking and measurement in Europe

…and more!

Are you an email marketing expert with bold opinions on the industry? Come chat with Guy and Danielle on a future episode! Drop a comment, ping us on LinkedIn, or simply fill out this guest form.

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS