Your inbox is one of the most consequential places in your tech stack. It’s where you coordinate work, verify your identity, manage your finances, and (sometimes) reply to your family’s email forwards. 

But your inbox is more crowded and chaotic than ever before. And as new email tools flood the market promising time savings, many people are finding the opposite. There are more decisions, more dashboards, and more mental load. 

We created the Email Intelligence Report 2026 to understand what’s really happening inside your inbox — including why productivity gains so often fail to materialize. In our report, you’ll learn:

• The most popular email tools, ranked
• How people are using AI in their inboxes
• Insights from our expert panel

Here are four key takeaways from the report — and you can dig into the full findings here. 

1. AI Has Raised The Stakes in Email

Email isn’t a passive communication tool, it’s either your competitive advantage or a liability…depending on how it’s configured. Email volume has ramped up, and whether you sink or swim depends on your toolkit. Some people are leveraging AI tools to shave significant amounts of time off their day. Others are drowning in email as the AI influx of messages — including AI-powered marketing, phishing, and scams — rises higher. 

2. Your Inbox Is the Front Line of the Attention Economy

The number of low-value emails competing for your attention has never been higher, and the market’s response has been predictable: More add-ons! New plugins! And another workflow to add to your already excessive to-do list. In our report, we see a shift away from fragmentation, toward systems that reduce noise by default — rather than asking users to do the manual work. 

3. Privacy Is a Baseline Expectation

Your inbox holds the keys to your financial records, healthcare logins, legal documents, and more. That’s why our tolerance for ads, tracking, and opaque data usage is collapsing. Regulatory pressure accelerated the change, but users are voting with their feet and increasingly choosing not to trade security for convenience. They expect both, and they’re willing to switch when they don’t get it.  

4. Security Vs. AI: The New Email Battlefront

You already know that Google has thrown down in the AI email race, with its recent announcement of Gemini-powered Gmail features. What you might not know is that some tech experts are warning that Google could be using sensitive email data to train its AI. The tension between unleashing AI on our inboxes, and retaining control of our email, is forcing email tools to raise their game to meet sky-high user expectations.

Download the full Email Intelligence Report 2026 report now 

We analyzed user trends, tool adoption, and expert predictions to break down what’s changing in the world of email — and why it matters.

If you want to nurture leads and close deals, your timing and responsiveness need to be on point. Lose control of your Inbox, and you’ll fall behind the competition. 

Think about it: If emails from your clients get buried, or you forget to follow up, then you lose their interest and their trust. No one closes multimillion-dollar deals without trust, and that trust is built one interaction at a time.

That’s why we take our email game seriously at SERHANT. To serve our elite clientele, we need elite Inbox skills. Here are the email tactics our team uses—and our favorite tool for Inbox mastery.

1. Use SaneBox To Instantly Organize Your Emails

In real estate, your Inbox is always under siege. Just ask our founder and CEO Ryan Serhant. 

“In real estate, the stakes are high and the pace is incredibly fast,” says Ryan. “On a low day I’ll have 800 emails come through. On a normal day, it’s about 2,000.”

Hidden somewhere in those thousands of emails are promising leads and high-stakes conversations. You can’t let those email chains lose momentum—but when your Inbox is overloaded, it’s like panning for gold. Sifting through promotions and dead-end threads  would take an entire day. 

That’s why Ryan uses SaneBox for email. SaneBox’s AI identifies important emails and files less urgent messages away for later. This keeps your top priorities right in front of you, and reduces email overwhelm.

“With SaneBox I’m not nervous to open up my Inbox any more,” says Ryan. “SaneBox is doing half the work.”

Pro Tip: With SaneBox, VIPs go straight to your Inbox and non-urgent messages are automatically filed in your SaneLater folder. You can train SaneBox to file emails right where you need them.    

2. Keep Track of Vital Conversations With SaneNoReply

Following up on emails is an art form. It’s the difference between sealing a deal or losing out on millions of dollars—and incredibly, almost half of salespeople don’t send follow-ups. 

But how do you keep track of your unanswered messages when you’re juggling dozens of clients and hundreds of leads? Ryan Serhant uses SaneNoReply, a SaneBox feature that gives you an instant overview of sent emails that haven’t yet received a reply. 

“I met a client in 2015 and showed him a bunch of properties, and he stopped following up with me,” Ryan recalls. “My NoReply folder would show me every time I would email him and he wouldn’t email me back. Every couple of weeks I would go into that NoReply folder and I would follow up with him.”

Ryan’s consistency paid off, big time. By the time the client was ready to buy, Ryan was right at the top of his Inbox. 

“Three years later, with him not replying and me going into my SaneBox NoReply folder, he finally follows up with me and says ‘thanks so much for all the emails, sorry I’ve been a little bit busy’…and the next week I sold him a place for $16 million. And I really credit that to SaneNoReply.”

Pro Tip: Set a reminder to scan your SaneNoReply folder once or twice a week, to make sure you don’t let a single opportunity pass you by. 

3. Set Reminders To Stay Focused 

Real estate agents have dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different priorities—and the timing is make or break. This is where SaneBox’s SaneReminders feature comes in. It’s an easy way to set customized reminders, without leaving your Inbox or using a different tool.  

“What I love about SaneBox is that you can customize any time you want to be reminded,” explains Talia McKinney, who leads a premier residential real estate team at SERHANT. 

You can schedule reminders from your Inbox by BCCing a reminder address like 3days@sanebox.com. Whether you are deferring a task until later, or want to send a perfectly-timed check-in, the reminder will go straight to your Inbox on the time or day you specified. 

“That is what real estate is all about,” says Talia. “Following up, and making sure that you meet the expectations of your clients.” 

Pro Tip: People blast through the most emails on Tuesdays. Send your follow-ups on Tuesday AM to maximize your chance of a reply that gets you one more step toward closing that deal.

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Want to raise your email game and win more deals? Sign up for SaneBox and get 1 month free!

Getting an email used to feel exciting. Today it’s more likely to be a pitch you never asked for, a newsletter you don’t remember signing up for, or a scam designed to trick you into clicking the wrong link.  

You aren’t imagining it, the volume of emails we receive is exploding. AI is the reason why, and you can fight back. 

The Hidden Economics of Inbox Overload 

Once upon a time, writing and sending emails took work. A human had to sit down, think, and type.

Now there’s an army of AI bots ready to crank out “personalized” messages. Marketing teams love it. Sales teams love it. Scammers really, really love it. 

When the potential profits are this good, a deluge of email is inevitable.  Almost half of marketers are now using generative AI to write copy. Email marketers generate $40 for every dollar they spend. And more than 60% of marketers say they’re sending more emails than ever.

Meanwhile, the bad actors have never been busier. Roughly 3.4 billion phishing emails are fired off every single day. If it feels like your inbox is under siege, that’s because it is! 

Inbox Chaos Isn’t Random, It’s Engineered

Here’s something most people miss: your inbox isn’t random chaos.

Behind the scenes, senders are quietly profiling you. Just like your social feeds, your inbox is getting algorithmically fine-tuned. AI optimizes the subject lines, it tailors calls-to-action, and tracks what you open and when.

The more you engage, the more you feed the beast and the smarter the system gets — which means you’ll receive even more noise.

Why You Need AI on Your Side

So how do you defend yourself? You can’t simply unsubscribe from everything. You can’t switch email off. Email is still how the world communicates.

But you can fight AI with AI, and invest in better inbox defenses. That’s exactly why SaneBox has teamed up with Fastmail.  

→ SaneBox members: get 30% off your first 13 months of Fastmail

Fastmail + SaneBox: The Productivity Power Stack

Together, Fastmail and SaneBox give you a foundation and a filter:

• Fastmail gives you control of your data. No ads, no snooping, no selling your information. Just fast, reliable email with the power features you need.
• SaneBox acts as your inbox defense system. It filters distractions, prioritizes what matters, and learns from your behavior over time — without ever reading your emails.

The result: a calmer inbox, fewer interruptions, and the peace of mind that your data and attention are both protected.

AI changed the rules of email, but with the right tools you can regain control of your inbox and your focus. As a SaneBox member, you get an exclusive 30% off your first 13 months of Fastmail.