As businesses harness the power of AI for strategic growth, tools like ChatGPT are transforming email marketing practices. AI has the capacity to craft compelling content, personalize emails, and streamline A/B testing, among other benefits.

 

SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Juliet Dreamhunter


 

Artificial intelligence, a term once synonymous with science fiction, is now a reality shaping the future of business. Its impact on email marketing is especially profound. Brands today leverage AI technologies such as ChatGPT to craft compelling email narratives, automate responses, and achieve unprecedented levels of personalization. This ensures that every recipient gets a unique message tailored to their preferences, boosting click-through rates and fostering brand loyalty.

This article will guide you through seven innovative prompts for leveraging ChatGPT in your email marketing campaigns, thereby enhancing your strategy and creating lasting engagement with your audience.

Context is key

Before you use any of the email marketing prompts, make sure to give ChatGPT some information about your role, your products or services, and what you are working on, so it has some context and will not write generic answers.

At the point of writing this, ChatGPT has a relatively short memory. Every new conversation you are starting is a clean slate, so I recommend always feeding it the basic context first.

There have been rumors suggesting that future versions will have some branding personalization and ChatGPT will remember who you are, which will eliminate the need to reintroduce yourself every time. However, until it’s implemented, make sure to provide at least a minimum context to give ChatGPT something to work with and not end up disappointed.
Here are 7 ways to use ChatGPT to supercharge your email marketing efforts:


Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe to our AI NAVIGATOR!


 

1. Improve your subject lines

The power of a well-crafted subject line cannot be overstated – it’s your first opportunity to capture your audience’s attention. With ChatGPT, you can generate a plethora of engaging and unique subject lines that captivate your audience and make them want to click.

Simply provide the tool with context, like the purpose of your email, your audience, and the tone you want to convey, and it will generate numerous suggestions that are more likely to stand out in an overloaded inbox.

Example prompt: Come up with a catchy subject line for an email about our upcoming summer sale that will entice customers to open the email.

2. Write more compelling emails

Creating persuasive and compelling email content is the foundation of every successful email marketing campaign. With a brief instruction, ChatGPT can write a professional, polite, and goal-oriented email that captures your service’s unique selling proposition, resonating with the intended recipient and fostering a higher likelihood of engagement.

This AI assistance not only enhances the quality of your emails but also reduces the time you would have otherwise spent in creating such detailed, engaging content, making you more productive in your daily email communications.

Example prompt for a cold email: Compose a cold email to introduce our digital marketing services to a prospective B2B client, [Client Name]. The email should succinctly explain who we are, the services we offer, and how these services could specifically benefit [Client Name] based on their current digital presence. Make sure the tone is professional, polite, and personalized to the client’s needs.

Example prompt for a follow-up email: Draft a gentle follow-up email for a lead who hasn’t responded to our previous communication. The email should reiterate the benefits of our service, offer assistance, and invite the lead to a no-obligation consultation. Keep the tone friendly and non-pushy.

You can also feed ChatGPT the email you wrote yourself and ask for improvements. In many cases, it will surprise you with some valid points. Make sure to explain the goal of the email, who you are talking to, and who you are.

3. Personalize emails quickly

Personalization in email marketing can make a substantial difference in engagement rates, but manual personalization can be a painful and slow process. With ChatGPT, you can streamline this process significantly.

For example, you can grab a link from a recipient’s LinkedIn profile and ask ChatGPT to create a personalized opening line based on their recent activities or achievements. Such personal touches are important if you want to build a deeper connection with your audience and don’t want to come around as a soulless salesman.

Example prompt: Given the LinkedIn profile link of a prospective client named Jane Doe, review the profile to gain insights into her professional background and interests. Use this information to craft a personalized opening line for an email. The line should grab her attention, show that I’ve done my homework, and lead seamlessly into a discussion about my services and how they can address her needs or interests.

4. Change the tone in a breeze

Different audiences respond to different tones of voice. A professional tone may work best for a B2B audience, while a casual, friendly tone may be better for B2C. When you talk to a younger audience, you might even want to sprinkle some slang to make your email more relatable.

Adapting to your desired tone is where all AI email generators thrive the most. With ChatGPT, you can effortlessly modify the mood of your emails to best suit your audience. Simply specify the appropriate tone – whether it’s formal, friendly, authoritative, casual, or confident – and the AI will do the rest.

Example prompt: Here is an existing email inviting customers to our annual sales event. Currently, it’s formal and corporate – please rewrite this in a casual, friendly tone to make it more relatable for our young adult audience. Keep the event details unchanged but make the overall tone light-hearted and upbeat.

Example output from ChatGPT:

5. A/B test email campaigns

ChatGPT can also assist in running A/B tests for your email campaigns.

Create different versions of your subject lines, email content, and call-to-actions, and then evaluate which version resonates best with your audience. This way, you can fine-tune your email marketing strategy based on real-world data, increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns over time.

Example prompt: Generate two variations of an email promoting our online course. Variation A should emphasize the skills to be learned, and Variation B should focus on the success stories of past students.

6. Generate ideas for building an email list

Building a substantial and engaged email list is the backbone of successful email marketing. ChatGPT can help generate creative and effective ideas for lead magnets, incentives, and strategies to grow your subscriber base.

Whether it’s brainstorming compelling content offers, devising opt-in incentives, or outlining a webinar series, ChatGPT can be an invaluable partner in growing your email list.

Example prompt: Generate a list of 10 creative and valuable freebie ideas we could offer to incentivize people to sign up for our email list. The ideas should be relevant to our business [specify your services] and valuable to our target audience [audience X looking to Y].

Example output from ChatGPT:

How To Use ChatGPT For Email Marketing 7 ideas_5

7. Collect feedback

Finally, ChatGPT can assist in collecting and analyzing feedback from your subscribers. Use it to draft comprehensive feedback forms or surveys and then analyze the responses to gain valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

By leveraging this feedback, you can continuously improve your email marketing strategy and ensure that your content remains relevant and engaging to your audience.

Example prompt for simple feedback: Write an email asking our customers to provide feedback on our recently launched online ordering system.

Example prompt for more interactive feedback: Create an engaging quiz-style email to gather feedback on our newly launched mobile app. The quiz should ask a series of short, engaging questions about their user experience, the features they found most useful, and areas they feel need improvement. Make it interactive and easy to respond to.

Bonus tip: ask for several versions at once

When generating content with ChatGPT, whether it’s for subject lines, email follow-ups, or creative ideas, consider asking the AI to produce three or more distinct versions. For instance, your instruction could be: “Compose three different versions of a follow-up email for a lead who hasn’t responded to our previous communication. Use a different style and level of friendliness for each.”

This method allows you to receive a variety of outputs with a single prompt, which not only enriches your content pool but also saves valuable time by reducing the number of separate prompts required. It’s a simple yet highly effective way to optimize your use of ChatGPT, pushing the boundaries of your email marketing campaigns and extracting the maximum value from this powerful AI tool.

Final thoughts

ChatGPT doesn’t always give you a perfect answer on the first try. The more you learn how to prompt it, the better it will understand your intention. At first, it might feel a little annoying when it doesn’t output exactly what you have in mind – but the problem is usually in the prompt and not in the language model.

Even though not without limitations, GPT-4 appears to be pretty powerful when you get the hang of prompting it, so take your time diving deeper into prompt engineering if you want to transform ChatGPT into your time-saving assistant and nail every email marketing campaign.


About the Author:

Juliet Dreamhunter is an AI and productivity consultant with MS in Computer Science. Leveraging her deep technical expertise and software engineering background, she guides individuals and organizations to optimize their processes, while her website, Juliety.com, serves as a platform for reviewing emerging AI tools and sharing goal-oriented advice.