EVERYTHING You Need To Know About AI For Email Marketing

Can you use AI for email marketing? Everyone is talking about ChatGPT at the moment. Unless you live under a rock, you'll have seen or heard something about AI or even tried it yourself. So can tools such as ChatGPT help with your email copywriting?

Let's dive into all this!

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

(0:48) Join our FREE Facebook Group.

(5:55) Should you use AI software like ChatGPT for email?

(9:29) Can this new AI software create stories for your emails?

(16:04) Where could you use AI for your email marketing?

(21:04) What is the best AI email marketing copywriter?

(24:25) What are the drawbacks of using AI email marketing software?

(26:35) What happens when you combine our powerful email templates with AI?

(28:01) Writing your own emails makes you a better marketer.

(29:48) Only you can craft better messaging for your marketing.

(33:32) Subject line of the week.

Should you use AI software like ChatGPT for email?

Last year we did a podcast episode about AI called Write Emails Using Artificial Intelligence (AI). But AI is such a hot topic right now that it felt it needed revisiting.

Are emails written by AI 'good enough'? The fact they're written by a computer is great, yes. Only a few years ago, the thought of this happening would have been ludicrous. But now these things are possible, and that's amazing.

The real question is - if you'd paid an email marketing agency to write an email for you, and you got something along the lines of what you get from an AI tool, would you be happy?

The answer is no.

Because it's amazing that a computer can take a prompt and write an email for you that not only makes sense but also covers the topic appropriately. But is it as good as what a human could write? Is it as good as what an agency could produce? Or even as good as something that you could write yourself with our teachings and frameworks? No.

To borrow an expression from our friend Jon Benson, when you read an email out loud that was written by AI, it's a bit like hearing the radio announcer's voice in your head. You know that tone - it sounds artificial. And humans connect with other humans. They connect with your personality. So as soon as you put AI in the mix, you're taking that humanity away. And that's a big loss.

Can this new AI software, such as ChatGPT, create stories for your emails?

We’re not saying AI has no place in marketing – it’s actually extremely useful. But can it create the stories we include in our emails? A lot of our approach is based on storytelling because stories are compelling and persuasive. And yes, AI can help you find stories.

In fact, Rob did a little experiment and asked ChatGPT to come up with a story that happened to him that day that he could tell his friends down the pub. And when the software started typing about elephants dancing in the streets, Rob had to stop it. The tool was writing a dream. So Rob asked the tool to try again, but this time to make the story believable. It had to be something that could happen in real life, be logical, and follow the laws of physics and nature.

In the end, the tool came up with the story about Rob seeing a cat in the street. Initially, the cat seemed a bit shy and cautious. But then Rob found something in his pocket and fed the cat, and the cat became friendlier. All good here.

Then Rob asked the tool to relate that story to a lesson about email marketing. And sure enough, the tool came back very quickly saying that the story about the cat was a bit like building relationships with your subscribers. When they first come into your world, they’re going to be cynical and skeptical because they don’t quite know what to make of you. But over time, by delivering value, rewarding them, and treating them well (like Rob did with the cat) you nurture the relationship. And, just like the cat, your subscribers become more trusting.

Do you really want to share stories that aren't true?

So the tool did it! It created a story that could work. However, if you ask AI to create stories for you, they're not going to be true. This story was realistic, but it didn’t really happen to Rob!

And for us, the real superpower of great marketing is that it’s founded in truth. When people come up to us at events and mention things we’ve said or shared, we don’t have to scrap our heads trying to remember. Because what we say isn't made up or fictional - it's real! And we make sure that what we share is always real because we want to build trust.

So, as more and more people use tools such as ChatGPT or Jasper, you have a real opportunity to stand out by telling stories that are real. Plus, your individual style is also unique and something that will stand out over anything AI-generated. A piece of software can write your stories for you, but by writing them yourself (and ensuring they're true) you can stand out both through content and style.

Where could you use AI for your email marketing?

With that said, there are a few places where you could use email marketing.

Email subject line AI generator

AI could be useful in helping you come up with subject lines. We don’t necessarily recommend that you start doing this. But if you wanted, you could copy and paste your emails into the platform and ask it to generate a few subject line ideas for you.

There's a problem with that though. ChatGPT (or other AI tools) haven't studied our Subject Lines That Drive Sales course. And that teaches you a different approach to creating subject lines. For us, it's not about pulling out the benefits of what you're selling - that's what everyone else seems to be doing. And most of the time, AI software is going to come up with benefit-driven, very linear subject lines that won't use the techniques we recommend, such as compound curiosity. But if you were really stuck, you could use AI for this purpose.

Email prompt ideas

You could also use AI to come up with prompt ideas for the stories you want to share in your emails. To be fair, it might take you longer to work out what prompts to type into the tool to get the story you want than to use one of the story generator shortcuts we created. But it's an option.

Or, you could put the bare basics of an idea or your first draft into the tool, and ask it to re-write the story for you in a different style. You may want it casual, fun, and upbeat, for example. If you don't consider yourself a confident writer, this could help.

You could also do what Rob did. You could come up with a story, and ask the tool to relate it to a lesson about what you sell. It might not be in your exact style (so you then have to edit it), but the tool could help you build that bridge between the story and the lesson.

Transactional emails

Another option is to have AI software write your transactional emails for you, such as the email that sends out the login information for your course, for example. Those emails are important, but they often fall to the bottom of your priority list because you have other more pressing emails to write - the ones that get you sales! So you could ask an AI tool to re-write some of your more transactional emails in a more interesting and inspiring way, for example.

What is the best AI email marketing copywriter?

When it comes to choosing the best AI tool to use, we can think of 3 main players in the email copywriting space:

• ChatGPT,
• Jasper,
• and CopyPro.

There are definitely others, but these are the main ones. The first thing you want to consider when choosing one is what they’re powered by. And in reality, they're all powered by the same thing but interfaced differently.

They all have training and information fed to them, so you want to take that into account. Have they been taught email marketing techniques? We don’t know much about the direct response digital marketing training that ChatGPT has had, for example. But Jasper claims to have read 10% of the Internet. And it also has some frameworks specifically for headline structures, Facebook ads, and blog articles. When it launched, it definitely had a very content-heavy approach (rather than a marketing-heavy one), but it seems more balanced now.

If you think about what we do, for example, a Rob-and-Kennedy subject line is very different from what's considered a good subject line in traditional copywriting. We know that our technique works, and that’s not to say others don’t, but AI can’t replicate the way we do things. And that means you'll have different results based on the techniques that are being used, where the inspiration is pulled from, and how it’s worded, structured, or written.

What are the drawbacks of using AI email marketing software, like ChatGPT?

If you use AI to write your emails, you might find they all sound the same - like they've been written by a radio announcer. When we write our...