Unless you have been living under a rock, you must have heard about ChatGPT by now. It’s the friendly and free to use AI which seems to be the biggest thing to hit the internet since Google! The marketing world is particularly excited because ChatGPT will make our lives easier. Easier, or it will create Skynet and enslave us all! Hysteria aside, I wanted to see the power of ChatGPT first hand and find out if it knows more about email marketing than I do. In this article I go over ChatGPT prompts for email marketing to find out if the AI/overlord can help email marketers or not.
What is ChatGPT and who is behind it?
ChatGPT is essentially a chatbot. Unlike the unintelligent ones that popup on websites nowadays, this particular chatbot is powered by artificial intelligence. Launched only in November 2022, it already has 100 million users according to Business of apps. The concept is simple, you ask it a question or give it a ‘prompt’ and it gives you an answer, but there is a caveat. The AI is not currently connected to the internet. It pulls it’s answers based on knowledge of the world up to 2021.
The company behind ChatGPT is known as OpenAI, founded only in 2015. Elon Musk was amongst some of the initial donors that funded openAI, and currently Amazon, Microsoft and many other big investors are involved. This means they have very deep pockets and are here to stay.
How to get started
Getting started is simple and straight forward. Just head over to https://chat.openai.com/chat and create an account. Once you’re in you are presented with a simple screen:
All you need to is type a ‘prompt’ in simple English to get a response. Ask for a recipe for Chicken Fajita’s for example and you get everything you need along with instructions:
Sure, you could just ask Google but this is so much more fun!
Install AIPRM extension
This is not a requirement but if you want to use ChatGPT to help with marketing, the AIPRM extension will save you a lot of time and improve your experience. The extension comes with a ton of detailed marketing prompts written to get the best possible response from ChatGPT. This saves you time from having to learn how to write effective prompts. You can find the Google Chrome version of the extension here.
Once the extension is installed, this is what your ChatGPT interface will look like:
You can still write and save your own prompts but you also get access to existing prompts. The most popular are surfaced at the top and you can read and write comments about them as well. The AIPRM extension has prompts for email marketing, SEO, article writing, and even keyword strategy. All of this is free, for now anyway so if you manage any aspect of marketing I would highly recommend installing the extension.
Now that you are setup and ready to go, let’s put our email marketing test to the AI and see how it performs.
Can ChatGPT improve email deliverability?
The most common topic I get asked about is email deliverability, or rather inbox placement. Questions like ‘why are my emails going to spam folders?’ There isn’t a simple answer but there are ways of diagnosing issues and fixing them. We asked ChatGPT the same question and this was the response:
It’s a pretty good response, the AI sums up the basic reasons but lacks any specific actions. However, you can keep digging and ask more questions. For example, the next prompt I tried is ‘how to monitor email deliverability‘ and the response, again is pretty helpful:
Now we are down the rabbit hole, my next prompt was ‘how to run a seed list test’ and I got a detailed response. I then asked for recommendations for tools that run seed list tests, the answer contained some of the top tools I would personally recommend.
In summary, ChatGPT can share a wealth of knowledge around email deliverability. You will still need to spend time building on the answers from the chatbot but it can definitely steer you in the right direction.
ChatGPT prompts for email deliverability
If you are interested in improving your deliverability, ChatGPT could be very helpful as a start guide. Here are a few prompts to get you started:
- Recommend a tool for seed list tests
- Recommend free tools for monitoring email deliverability
- How to monitor email deliverability
- Why are my emails going to the spam folder
- How to improve email deliverability
Can ChatGPT help you create an email marketing strategy?
It can take a long time to create an email marketing strategy. You have do a fair bit of research to see what works for your industry and that can be daunting if you are new to email marketing. Let’s find out if ChatGPT can save you time and tell you what would convert.
I asked ChatGPT to ‘Give me an email marketing strategy for an online fashion store selling shoes’. and got the following answer:
All of that is pretty much what you will read on marketing blogs so it’s a brilliant answer. Again, it’s telling you what to do but not how. You have to keep digging to get more out of ChatGPT.
Let’s see how it responds to a specific question around strategy. I recently wrote a post about abandoned cart emails let’s see how the AI fairs against my strategy. Here is the response:
The chatbot gets most of the details right. Every email marketing manager will tell you to send the email around an hour after the first send and do follow-ups.
Email marketing strategy prompts for ChatGPT
Another win for ChatGPT, the AI can help email marketers with their strategy. Here are a few prompts to try:
- How to increase email signups on my website
- Give me 10 tips to increase open rates
- Email automation strategy [business type]
- Email marketing strategy for [business type]
- How to create lead nurturing emails
Can ChatGPT write email subject lines?
So far we have seen ChatGPT give detailed advise on strategy and email deliverability, now let’s if it can actually help with building emails. Let’s start by asking for tips on writing subject lines that increase email opens.
It took me a considerable amount of time to write about perfect subject lines, ChatGPT has given almost the same response in the space of a few seconds!
So the tips are great, I wanted to see if it can actually write subject lines. I asked for 10 subject lines for an online store and got the following:
Again, these are subject lines I would recommend and should get decent open rates. I would put the first result into subjectline.com and got a 100 score, which is as good as it gets.
Let’s try another one:
Again, the subject lines meet best practise. I put the third one in to subjectline.com and this time I got a score of 74 out of 100. It’s still pretty good, you might to make subtle adjustments but that’s what subject line testing tools like subjectline.com do.
ChatGPT can also read your articles and suggest subject lines based on that article.
Subject line prompts for ChatGPT
Another test passed by ChatGPT! If you need subject line inspiration ChatGPT can truly help. Always ask for a number of subject lines so you have choice. Here’s a few prompts for you to try:
- Give me tips for writing email subject lines
- Write 10 subject lines for an online store selling [business type]
- Write 10 subject lines for a newsletter about [topic]
- Write 10 subject lines for a welcome email
- Write 10 subject lines for re-engagement emails
- Write 10 subject lines based on this article [link to article]
Can ChatGPT help write email content?
So far ChatGPT has been impressive, it can help with strategy and subject lines. Now let’s see if it can help with actual email content.
Can it write HTML?
I asked ChatGPT if it can write HTML and though it’s not the primary function for a chatbot it does have the ability to write code. So I gave it the following prompt:
Create a HTML email template and style it using CSS. It should include 6 products for sale with clear call to actions
The response is pretty good. Of course it’s a generic template but it does provide a basic structure which you can see here.
The code itself is clean and though it meets best practise for web pages, it misses out some of the best practises for emails.
So in summary, yes ChatGPT can write HTML email and style it using CSS. If you were very specific with your prompt you could get something useful out of it. However, you can’t just take the code and use it.
Writing B2B email copy with ChatGPT
So I don’t recommend using the AI for building HTML templates but cold copy is a different story. I asked ‘write a series of 3 emails to cold prospects promoting my services a marketing consultant’ and this is the response I got:
That will save email copywriters a lot of time! Perhaps small businesses will save a lot on hiring people like me to write their emails. It’s not just that the content is good but so is the strategy. Starting with an introduction, following up with a case study and the final email with a closing proposal is what most marketers would recommend.
ChatGPT prompts for email content
ChatGPT might not be create for creating HTML templates but for content there is a lot of brilliant prompts. Here’s a few for you to try:
- Write an excerpt with 50 words based on this article [Link to article]
- Write a welcome email introduction paragraph for [business type]
- How can I increase clicks from my emails?
- Write a cold email copy for [business type]
- Give me ideas for a newsletter for [business type]
Can ChatGPT create images?
Have you spent endless hours looking for royalty free images or found paid images to be a little expensive? Well ChatGPT, or rather OpenAI has a solution for that as well. It’s called DALL-E and you simply give it a prompt to generate an image.
I asked DALL-E to generate a picture of ‘people sitting around a desk at a meeting in a board room’ and got the following options:
The faces are a bit distorted so don’t look too closely at them! If you avoid real people, the results are actually pretty good. Next image I asked for was of a robot working in a warehouse and the results are very good:
The images are generated in an instance and the more detailed a prompt you give DALL-E the better the results. You can pick colours and style by defining them in the prompt.
DALL-E also allows you upload existing images and ask for variations.
So if you need free images DALL-E will be save you a lot of time. As it stands, the images are free to use even commercially. There is a limit on how many credits you can have for free each month so use them wisely.
There are other tools like DALL-E. Another one I have tested is Midjourney.
Midjourney
Unlike OpenAI, Midjourney is not a heavily funded project. Created by a small team, the tool currently runs on a Discord server allowing people to ask for images by giving it a prompt. I tried the same prompt through Midjourney for an image of ‘people sitting around a desk at a meeting in a board room’. This was the result:
Slightly less realistic compared to DALL-E but if you provide more detail in your prompt you can get something very close to what you need.
DALL-E vs Midjourney
Having tried both AI’s, I have found Midjourney to create better images. Though both are amazing.
In terms of usage, DALL-E is free to use even commercially. Images generated on Midjourney are not free to use for commercial purposes unless you purchase a paid membership. However, the cost for Midjourney makes it affordable compared to other services like Shutterstock. You can get a basic package for $10.
Our conclusion on ChatGPT for email marketing
The AI is amazing. There is a lot of help it can offer for email marketers, especially if you are new to the topic.
The AI can help write content, create images, write strategies and just generally teach you a lot about email marketing. What it can’t do is create perfect HTML email templates.
To get the most out of ChatGPT put some thought into your prompts. Write prompts that are specific and detailed. Ask follow up questions and ask for recommendations. The AI will tells you what to do, it will not necessarily tell you how to do it. Generally speaking though it should make email marketing easier.
Just remember, ChatGPT is not currently connected to the internet. It’s dataset is limited to knowledge from 2021 so don’t expect it to tell you the latest trends.
