What AI Shopping Agents Mean for Email Marketers

A lot of the conversation about AI shopping is happening in the SEO world. How do you show up in ChatGPT? How do you get recommended when someone asks an AI assistant to find them the best running shoes? Will AI agents eventually browse, compare and buy on someone's behalf?

Those are big questions. But as someone who works in email and CRM, I keep coming back to a different one: if AI starts doing more of the finding and the buying, what happens to the channels brands use to talk directly to their customers?

My honest take is that email and SMS don't become less important. They become more important. Here's why, and what I think email marketers should be doing about it.

The discovery layer is shifting

For years the path to purchase looked fairly predictable. Someone searches Google, clicks a result, browses a site, maybe signs up for an email, and eventually buys. Brands could shape almost every step of that.

AI assistants are adding a new layer in between. More people are asking an AI to recommend products, compare options or summarise reviews instead of clicking through ten tabs themselves. Some platforms are building shopping features directly into these assistants, and the idea of agents that complete purchases for people is very much being explored.

Nobody knows exactly how far or how fast this will go. But the direction is clear: brands will have less control over how they're discovered.

Why owned channels matter more, not less

When discovery happens on someone else's platform, you're playing by their rules. Algorithms change, visibility changes, and you can't always see why.

Your email list and SMS list are different. They're yours. Nobody can take them away or change the algorithm overnight. If someone has chosen to subscribe, you can reach them directly, in your own voice, without an AI deciding whether your brand makes the cut.

So if AI makes it harder to be found, the customers you've already found become even more valuable. And email is still one of the best tools for keeping them.

The first order might come from AI. The second should come from you.

Here's how I see it playing out for a lot of brands. An AI assistant might recommend a product, and a customer might buy it with very little interaction with the brand itself. That's a first order with almost no relationship attached.

That's exactly where post-purchase email does its job. The thank-you, the how-to-use content, the review request, the genuinely useful cross-sell. If the first sale came through an AI, your flows are what turn that customer into someone who comes back to you directly next time, instead of asking an AI again and getting recommended a competitor.

What I'd focus on as an email marketer right now

Will AI write and send our emails for us?

Probably more and more of it, honestly. AI is already helping with subject lines, copy drafts, send-time optimisation and predictions about who's likely to buy next. I use AI tools in my own workflow and I think email marketers should get comfortable with them.

But I don't think that makes the job disappear. It shifts it. Less time writing the tenth version of a subject line, more time on strategy: which flows to build, how to segment, what the brand should sound like, how to keep customers coming back. The thinking still matters.

The bottom line

AI is changing how people find and buy products. That's real, and email marketers shouldn't ignore it. But the core job of email and SMS hasn't changed: build a direct relationship with the people who've chosen to hear from you.