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As AI technology continues to evolve, many email marketers are using AI tools to level up their marketing. Using AI, even a novice marketer can quickly draft emails, revise copy, or develop a content strategy. From our experience as a full-service email marketing agency, we’ve uncovered several AI functionalities that help marketers soar!

How to Choose an AI Tool

Since the recent boom in AI technology, a plethora of tools have been made for seemingly every topic. There are tools to generate ad copy, blog posts, and everything in between. Ultimately, most publicly available AI generators are based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Rather than paying for a subscription to a language model tailored to your industry, we recommend starting with a free ChatGPT account. 

Large language models are built to adapt in response to user input, so you can tailor ChatGPT’s responses to your needs without a paid subscription to a more tailored AI bot.

Drafting Email Copy with AI

In email marketing, AI often best serves as a brainstorming partner. While chatbots still run into factual errors, they can provide a great first draft that you can customize to your liking. Here are some prompts you can use to generate copy for your next email:

• Generate concise copy for a nonprofit marketing email. The goal of the campaign is to boost donations, and the nonprofit organizes tutoring and classes to improve youth literacy. Please keep the copy between 200 and 1000 words and include a CTA that links to our donation page (insert URL),

• Create 3 drafts of a brief marketing email for our small jewelry company. We are highlighting the spring gold collection. Please include 3 products with price and a 20% discount code.

• Show me 2 drafts of a 250-500 word email promoting my company’s Labor Day sale. Include the code LABOR30 for 30% off.

As you can see from the prompts above, specificity is essential when using AI. The more clear you are about word count, tone, and content, the more likely it is the tool will generate something useful. Don’t leave your AI bot to make assumptions – They are likely to be inaccurate or give your email a less human sound. Plus, emails with a high volume of grammar and spelling errors can even cause deliverability problems down the line.

Revising Marketing Copy

After you’ve taken the first stab at writing your email copy, AI can swoop in to help you revise it. Just copy and paste the text into your AI chatbot and try any of the following prompts:

• I’ve pasted copy for a marketing email above. Can you make it more concise and engaging?

• Please correct the tone in the email pasted above. The tone should be friendly and direct, matching the language on [your website URL]

• Our organization is working on a newsletter for our recurring donors. Based on the email pasted above, what are 5 things we should improve to follow current email marketing best practices?

As always, you’ll want to give the revised copy ChatGPT spits out a final pass and potentially make some corrections for accuracy. 

If the results are not to your liking, don’t hesitate to provide some more direction. A prompt like “Looks good – Can you make it more concise?” can work wonders for your writing.

Generating Quality Subject Lines

AI tools can enhance your email marketing by generating effective subject lines. Many email marketers understand the value of A/B testing but may get bogged down by creating multiple subject variations for every email. With AI, you can quickly generate subjects that match your brand’s personality and follow best practices.

Here are some prompts you can use to generate email marketing subject lines with AI:

• Create 10 engaging subject lines for a promotional email about our new summer collection. At least 7 of the options should include an emoji.

• Generate 5 personalized subject lines for a follow-up email to customers who have recently made a purchase. Each subject line should be 3-5 words long.

• Suggest 12 subject lines for an email campaign announcing our upcoming webinar on digital marketing trends. The subjects should be refined, professional, and formal.

Using AI to Develop a Content Strategy

AI can streamline your content strategy by analyzing audience behavior and preferences, helping you identify what content resonates most.

To use AI for a content strategy, you’ll need to provide some record of your previous campaign results. If you’re a Mailchimp user, consider exporting your campaign analytics for the AI to reference. Mailchimp’s custom reports are a great tool for retrieving your analytics data.

Here are some prompts to generate a stellar email marketing strategy with AI:

• I’m pasting the open rates, click rates, and subject lines for our past 20 campaigns below. Please analyze the results and make 5 recommendations for next year’s content strategy.

• Here is a list of last year’s campaigns with each email’s send date, subject line, and open rate. Based on these results, please generate a calendar of campaigns for the next year that includes elements of what worked well this year.

• Please generate a list of topics for our monthly newsletter based on current trends in [your industry]. For each topic, include 3 concise subject lines and 3 CTA options.

When generating a content strategy, it can be helpful to break the project into smaller tasks.  Instead of asking your chatbot to perform everything at once, prompt it to generate some topics, then subject lines, and so on. 

You can even offer links to outside resources (like Pure Firefly’s blog…) that the AI should reference for best practices.

Mailchimp’s Built-In AI Tools

A handful of AI tools are available within Mailchimp to help users generate email copy and automations. These tools can be a great way to try out AI generation without creating an account on any new platform.

These are the currently available features, with more on the horizon in the coming months.

1. AI-Powered Journeys: Under the “Pre-Built Journeys” tab, Mailchimp offers 3 AI-generated automations to help engage new subscribers, recover abandoned carts, and encourage lapsed customers to purchase again.
2. AI Content Writing: When writing an email or subject line, you may see a little blue icon pop up below your text. Just click on the icon, type in a prompt, and Mailchimp’s AI will generate the text for you!
3. Creative Assistant: You can use the creative assistant to generate graphics for your email header or body. Just add some images, a line of text, and your brand colors, and Mailchimp will generate pleasing designs to use in any email!

For now, Mailchimp’s AI tools are available to users on the standard plan or above. If you’ve been looking for a reason to upgrade, this could be the time!

Need a Hand with Email Marketing? Call Pure Firefly

For new users, it can take some time to use AI effectively in email marketing. Pure Firefly’s team of email experts has worked on hundreds of Mailchimp accounts. We help clients develop robust email marketing strategies, leveraging all the tools at their disposal.

For quick questions, book a one-on-one training call. Or, for more complex projects, contact us to get a detailed quote.