Why i believe 2026 might be an amazing year for email…

I am an email marketer by trade – and therefore carry a certain bias – so take this email with a grain of salt.

With that said:

I read quite an interesting stat in the Wall Street Journal three days ago…

66% – that’s how many Midtown Manhattan big-shot CEOs plan to either fire or maintain their current size.

(It was the “Companies Are Outlining Plans for 2026, Hiring Isn’t One of Them” article.)

Now what this tells me…

Is how ‘The Street’ is slowly starting to become scared of a possible downturn…

The AI trade which has been almost singlehandedly propping up the stock market in the last 2 years…

…is on its last legs.

(I know the stock market doesn’t make up the economy – however, all the hundreds of billions on AI spend certainly don’t harm the GDP. In fact: the AI trade contributed to a whopping 1.1% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025. I’m only curious to see what the full year number will be…)

Venture capital, private equity, and the big banks – all of whom threw money like there’s no tomorrow at any company containing the word “AI” in the past 2-3 years – will want to finally start seeing some actual returns for all the money…

Because after what? Almost a trillion dollars in CapEx spend by the big AI players…

SOME returns on that money are expected no?

How much patience do the big banks, VC and private equity have before they start demanding to see some ROI?

And I think 2026 is that year.

It’s been well over 3 years since ChatGipity came out…

And after AI companies have already burned more money than was ever burned in the dot-com bubble from the 2000s…

… they still have very little to show for it.

Where are these giant 10GW data centres?

Where are all the workers who were supposed to be fired because AI would do their job not only for cheaper… but better.

And just in general…

Who in the fuck – of all these AI companies – ACTUALLY makes any money aside from NVIDIA?

(And NVIDIA only supplies the hardware side of AI – i.e. they’re selling pickaxes during a gold rush. Honestly, Jensen Huang might be one of the best salesmen in existence lol.)

The bottom line of all this:

I believe the AI bubble will burst in 2026.

(And before anyone comes at me and says how it isn’t a bubble… even the media’s AI “godfather” – Sam Altman – said how AI is indeed in a bubble…)

And when it does?

It very possibly might bring down this fake AI-propped up economy down with it.

So with all that said…

Why do I think this will be an amazing year for email then?

Very simple:

Because everyone will do what they always do when bad times come around…

Pull back.

Most will cut back on even the things they deem much more important than email (a sin, but I’ll forgive them nevertheless since I believe in forgiveness):

• They’ll cut back on Ad spend/marketing…
• They’ll offer steeper discounts and erode their margins…
• They’ll email even less frequently than they already do!

But you see the thing is…

That’s EXACTLY the right kind of time to ramp everything up!

It’s a pattern I’ve noticed all the big players make during downturns:

* Amazon opened MORE distribution centres while competitors either maintained or downsized in 2008.

* Apple didn’t cut down, but ramped up R&D spend to get out new and improved iPhone versions.

(God I miss when they had a home button…)

* During the dot-com crash, a lot of engineers were getting “let go” left right and centre…

Gotta ‘tigthen the belt’ right?

Luckily for Microsoft, someone in there was rational enough to see how they could get some of the best engineers in the field for pennies on the dollar.

(Which they did, and it’s probably now the reason why Office has become so standardized.)

The point I’m trying to drill down is how…

History just repeats itself.

So if this happens?

DO NOT pull back on anything – ESPECIALLY emails!

Because your subscriber’s inbox will be like a Silent Hill town.

(i.e. empty & abandoned.)

It’s twice as easy to stand out in the inbox – to pick up some email market share…

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

And it’s especially easy if you do it the “Email Storyselling” way.

(Which works like gangbusters at scooping up the inbox share even when times are good… so it works even better when barely anyone is emailing.)

So if this fugazi so-called generative AI trade economy finally pops and we end up having a recession?

I believe that will be an amazing opportunity for cleaning up in the inbox.

To quote Warren Buffett – who officially retired not even 24 hours ago:

“Opportunities like that come infrequently. So when it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”