Email Marketing With AI 🤖

Using the Sixth Man of the Year - ChatGPT to help us out

Author

Max Sturtevant
March 19, 2024

Howdy partner.

It’s Max with The Inbox newsletter.

Today we’re going to have some fun… with AI 🫡

I like to view ChatGPT as our agency’s Sixth Man of The Year.

It’s not taking over a significant position.

But it has an important role that is utilized to help out the team.

As we know however, AI isn’t perfect yet.

You can’t tell it to write an email and upload it straight to Klaviyo without checking.

It’s not very “human” with its choice of words yet.

Trust me, I’ve tried.

You usually just end up spending the same amount of time trying to fix prompts and edit the copy than if you just wrote the email manually.

So we like to use ChatGPT for something else.

Ideation.

Coming Up With Content Ideas

As you may know, my email philosophy revolves around Micro Topics and keeping our emails simple. One main idea.

We’ll find common FAQs and create a full email addressing that one question.

But it can be very difficult to come up with ideas if you’re sending 4 campaigns per week.

It’s fine at the start, but a few months in it gets tricky.

You can only be so innovative.

That’s where AI comes in.

Even if it can’t write the emails, it can toss you the alley oop.

We’re going to use a 10×10 product ideation framework to come up with 100 campaign ideas in under 60 seconds.

First we want to create 10 macro topics in your brand’s industry then create 10 micro topics under each one of those.

I’m just going to give you the prompt we use and then an example that could be done for a supplement brand.

Prompt

"I have a [niche] brand that sells [products and their purpose].

Our brand is meant to [2-3 sentences of brand info and mission statement / benefits of brand].

Our average customer [5-6 sentences about your customer demographics, their daily lives, their desires, their wants, and their needs].

I want you to give me 10 overarching topics that my brand can create content about. The topics should be very general and tie into our product benefits and the lives of our customer.

Then with those 10 overarching topics I want you to create 10 subtopics under each. The subtopics should be very specific and should educate the customer on the topic and potentially position our products as a solution."

Example Prompt

"I have a supplement brand that sells creatine, protein powders, and supplements to help with overall health and wellness.

Our brand focuses on proving whole-food based supplements and we dont use ANY synthetic vitamins or minerals. We are completely natural. Our products are all 3rd party tested for quality and purity. Our mission as a brand is to help people win... most supplements are synthetic and often times create short term benefits with long term side effects. Our supplements truly supplement our customers goals and results and are always completing and fulfilling their nutrient needs not just giving a quick bandaid.

Our average customer respects hard work and quality products. They stand against laziness and weakness. They are problem solvers (always trying to fix things or improve them). They are tied to an identity of being in shape, athletic, etc. They want to keep building muscle and dont want to lose any as they get older. (might have trouble letting go of the GLORY DAYS) They aren't old hags, they are 30-50 yr olds that view themselves as young lions that are having a bit harder time feeling how they use to. They want to be viewed as strong, in shape, dicsiplined, and hard working. They want to look young and healthy... they want to keep up.

I want you to give me 10 overarching topics that my brand can create content about. The topics should be very general and tie into our product benefits and the lives of our customer.

Then I want you to create 10 subtopics under the 10 overarching topics you created. These subtopics should be very specific to my niche and products to the point that I could create an email campaign about each one”

And boom.

ChatGPT will spit out 100 micro topics under 10 macro topics.

For sake of room in this email I won’t put what ChatGPT spit out.

But you can copy and paste the example and see for yourself.

You may want to go in and do some edits but this is just a starting point.

Hope you find it useful.

Let me know if you have any other cool AI tricks, would be curious to know.

(I’ll be sharing more on future newsletters hehe)

Email Inspiration Of The Day

Brand: Seed

Notes:
This is just an amazing email.

It may not seem like much, but it checks all the boxes for my driving philosophies in email marketing.

Rather than go one and on about multiple topics, Seed targeted one FAQ and created a quick and snappy email to answer the question.

No one is going to spend more than 10 seconds on an email so it’s important to lay out your information in a clear, simple, and digestible way.

A/B Test Result Of The Day

Here was a 3 part pop-up form test for a client we recently ran.

Copy 1 of WC Mobile Pop-Up: A typical form asking for the email address first with copy “Take 10% OFF your first order”

Micro Commit: This form had the same copy of “Take 10% OFF your first order” but instead of asking for the email right away we had two buttons that said “Yes Please!” and another that said “No thanks”.

Micro Commit Clear X Top Right: This was the same exact form as the Micro Commit but we out an X in the top right corner for people to close out (which the other did NOT have). It had nearly 1/3 less submissions.

It’s clear that the middle variation had the most clicks.

But why?

First, micro-commits are much easier for the customer to advance. Rather than straight up asking for the email, we make a small ask which is just click a button. THEN we ask for the email, and since they have already committed they are much more likely to fill in their email.

But this form also didn’t have a clear X in the top corner while the bottom variation did.

My theory is this:

  • Right when someone sees a form they automatically look to the top left corner to x out and do so as fast as possible.

  • By forcing them to answer if they want a discount or not, they are much more likely to participate. And no one wants to say no to a discount.

Use these results for yourself!

Thanks for reading!

Reply to this email if you have any questions or further content you want covered.

Cheers,

Max

PS - It’s a great day to have a great day. Let’s crush it folks 🫡