Predict How Email Will Evolve Over the Next Decade and the Product Bets It Implies

You are interviewing for a product manager role at Adobe and are asked a broad strategy question: what is the future of email? Give your point of view on how email will change over the next several years and the forces behind those changes, then explain what a product team should build or bet on in response. ```hint Split email by job Email does several different jobs at once: personal conversation, workplace communication, account and transaction notices, and marketing from brands. Ask which of those jobs are moving to other channels and which are becoming more important, and why. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should the answer take the recipient's side (people reading and managing an inbox), the sender's side (brands and businesses sending email, where Adobe's marketing software is used), or both? - What time horizon should the view cover: the next two to three years, or a full decade? - Is the goal a market point of view only, or also a recommendation for what Adobe should build? - Should the answer cover consumer email, workplace email, or both? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A breakdown of the different jobs email does today, with a distinct prediction for each instead of one blanket "email is dying" or "email is here to stay" claim. - The concrete forces shaping it, such as AI in the inbox, privacy and sender-authentication changes, and competition from chat and workplace messaging, each tied to who gains and who loses. - A chosen user segment or side of the market, with its specific pain points in that future. - A prioritized set of product bets, with success metrics and guardrails. - Risks, and the signals that would show the prediction is wrong. ### Follow-up Questions - If inbox assistants start summarizing or hiding marketing email before a person ever sees it, how should a brand's email strategy, and the tools it uses, change? - Open rates have become an unreliable success signal. What would you measure instead for an email program, and how? - If you could fund only one of your bets, which would it be, and what would you need to see after a year to keep investing?