How to Harness the Power of AI Writing Tools for Email Marketing
Developing Subject Lines, Body Copy, and CTAs Without Eroding Trust in Your Brand
*As with all articles, this post may contain affiliate links.*
First off, congratulations for not being a Luddite and at least exploring how AI can help you more effectively market to your leads and customers!
Although the accessibility of AI tools is becoming more commoditized and intelligent, this isn’t a new phenomenon for most email marketing professionals. In fact, I spent a decent chunk of money in 2018 when I managed the email and SMS channels for Kirkland’s home decor.
We used a tool called Persado, which at the time had a compelling subject line writing tool, especially for enterprise level clients like us. What I learned then, and I’m still learning now is that AI can help drive performance, but you can’t violate trust with your customers in the process.
Before you get started…
I made a costly and myopic mistake in 2018 when using Persado… I didn’t think through the impact of my short-term focus on email channel performance.
When customers think of you… what comes to mind?
At Tend, we have had a strong point of view on our values from the beginning. Those values guide every decision we make, and they heavily influence our CRM communications. An example of this is our value to ‘Earn Trust’. Just because you are a healthcare organization doesn’t mean people will automatically trust you.
So, in all of our communications, we are focused on earning trust. That means we don’t use gimmicks in our comms that may drive short term performance. Every touchpoint with our leads and members is a chance to build trust or lose it. I take that responsibility seriously because if I lose truest with our members, I could be impacting their trust in our clinical staff. If they don’t trust the staff, they may decline services that improve their oral and overall health. The stakes are high.
Now is your chance to think through what your brand stands for and how you want your customers to think of you a year from now. Being clear on this may feel like an unnecessary constraint, but it’s actually a tool to help you reduce distractions and move faster in the long run.
What audience do you want 12 months from now?
At the heart of lifecycle marketing and a healthy CRM system is a balance of short-term goals and long-term viability. This is why managing CRM for a publicly held company can be challenging. If the CEO is under pressure to boost sales in the short term, one of the fastest ways to do that is to suck the life out of their customer database.
As a result, your unsubscribes increase and consumers feel taken advantage of… in other words, trust is lost.
So, as you lean on AI to help you with copy writing, you should view the copy through the lens of this short-term and long-term tension. The best way to do this is to have a high emotional IQ and have empathy for your audience.
Early in my career, I didn’t have the conviction to push back on senior leaders who used our database like an ATM. Don’t make the same mistake I made.
What inputs are needed to guide your AI tools?
The phrase garbage in / garbage out has never been more applicable than with AI writing tools. You are the marketer who knows your customers in and out, don’t forgo that knowledge in deference to an AI tool.
Develop your ‘way in’ before asking AI for help
Great marketers know how to frame products and services through the lens of the reader. Getting good at developing your value prop and leaning on deep customer insights is a skill that translates to all industries. If you’re early in your career, I’d strongly suggest learning about Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion.
Here is a little video that outlines some of the research and thinking behind these principles…
Understanding your audience and what motivates their behavior is foundational for effective copy. By being clear on what you need out of your copy, your end result will be much more effective.
What AI Writing Tools Are Best for Email?
There are a lot of tools to help you, so this isn’t an exhaustive list. If you know of a great tool that’s missing from this list, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll get it added to the list.
Tools for Writing Subject Lines
Encharge’s Subject Line Tool
This is a great and simple to use tool for generating subject line ideas. Tell it a little bit about your email content and the tone of voice you’d like to use and it provides seven subject line options to choose from.
Copy.AI’s Subject Line Generator
This is a much more robust tool than a simple subject line generator. It’s a full scale copy solution. One of the best parts about this tool is the ability to build and define different brand voices. If you are managing content for multiple clients, this is a really powerful feature.
Tools for Writing Body Copy
Capsule’s Content Assist Tool
Baked into the Capsule CRM system is a tool that writes emails for you. It’s ideal for streamlining the email creation, editing, and sending process.
Jasper AI
Jasper can seem overwhelming at first and does come with a monthly fee that could be hard to justify for side hustlers and very small businesses. But, it’s a really powerful suite of tools that can help with not just writing, but also artwork and you could even spin up your own AI product by leveraging their API. The have different usage levels with the lowest price being $49/mo.
Chat GPT
If you’re looking for a less scalable solution for some copy ideas, Open AI’s Chat GPT is a great place to start. It may take several iterations to land on copy you’re happy with, but learning on a platform with no costs is a nice place to start.
You have Email Copy… What Now?
Just because you have email copy doesn’t mean you should automatically send it. Take time to read it, edit it, and run in past someone else internally who can sense check it against what you’re aiming for as a business.
Don’t Break Your Own Rules
If you followed my advice above, by considering your brand voice and audience objectives in the long-run, now is a chance to put your convictions to the test. Evaluate your copy as a match for your brand voice, as a tool designed to earn trust, and as a tool to drive your short-term goals without compromising your long-term goals.
Measure Your Success
As you start rolling out more AI influenced content, be sure to understand your prior performance baseline and you have systems in place to monitor your current initiatives. Of course you’ll want to keep an eye on your standard metrics like open rate, click rate, and unsubscribes, but I’d encourage you to go beyond that. Be an active listener of your customers and don’t be afraid to sift through qualitative feedback in addition to the hard data.
Listening to NPS feedback, product surveys, research interviews, and more is the secret sauce to not only drive performance, but prevent derailments before they happen.
I love learning about new marketing technologies. If you’re using an AI tool for content creation that’s missing from this list, please comment below and tell me all about it!
