In email marketing, where speed and efficiency are key, GenAI tools are changing the game. Learn how to streamline email production by accelerating the copywriting process and discover actionable prompts and examples to supercharge your team's workflow.
Most email marketing teams we spoke to while preparing the teamwork guide said that writing the text is the first stage of creating an email after the idea is submitted for production. The text becomes the campaign's starting point, and then the designer, email marketer, and other email specialists work on it.
This means that the longer you wait for the text, the longer it takes to prepare the email. Let's figure out how you can speed up the email marketing team’s work on texts using GenAI-based tools.
What problems can arise when writing email content on a team?
Several factors can cause a loss of efficiency in email marketing teams. Email production is a time-consuming process, information can be lost at each point while submitting a task to a new performer, and difficulties when conveying ideas and messages can arise.
That’s why the following problems often arise in teams’ work at the stage of creating an email text:
- the copywriter takes a long time to delve into the task, doesn’t always understand the context, or takes too much time conveying it (the “easier to write it yourself” effect);
- the copywriter spends a lot of time writing because they always write from scratch and spend time collecting information;
- while there’s no text, all other work is at a standstill because in many teams, everything starts with the text;
- wasting time on several iterations of edits and approvals, and making corrections after the design is created;
- waiting time — when the copywriter takes the task to work, when the stakeholder can look at it and approve it, etc.
Minutes turn into hours. To speed up the team's work, you should consider reducing the time spent creating texts and waiting for approvals at each stage. GenAI can be one of your assistants.
How it works now
What stages are included when working on email text with a copywriter?
- An email marketer or team lead creates a task with an explanation of the idea and main messages.
- The copywriter begins working on the task — given the constant workload in teams, this takes from several hours to several days.
- The copywriter conducts research, collects the necessary information, emails examples, validates the information, and leaves what they’ll work with.
- The copywriter writes the text and submits it for approval.
- The copywriter makes edits (there may be several such iterations, and there’s always time to wait between them).
What can be improved?
If an email marketer is a stakeholder in the task (you know its goal, idea, type of email, and structure you need), try to involve the GenAI tool at the stage of creating a draft email. Create an email with it until you’re satisfied with everything, and then submit it to the email builder.
A copywriter can proofread and make immediate necessary adjustments to an email only when it’s already prepared in the builder.
Tips for using GenAI when creating email texts
Think of the language models created by GenAI as a junior copywriter. They cope quite well with a precise task statement and a step-by-step action plan. The main thing is that this junior is always ready to work with you.
What tasks can GenAI be used for to increase the efficiency of preparing content for emails?
- generating the subject, header, and CTA buttons — including several options for A/B testing;
- generating text in the email’s body based on a given structure and the information you provide;
- quick adaptation of past campaigns — you can copy an email that elicited good results and ask to create a new one based on it, with different content;
- brainstorming when creating a strategy for email chains and preparing a plan and drafts for complex email sequences.
Life hacks for setting goals and getting optimal results when working With GenAI
- Start with the phrase “Let’s say you’re an experienced email marketer/expert in [description of your product or brand].
- Talk about your target audience.
- Describe the tone of voice — use recommendations from your brand guidelines or write them yourself based on your email marketing strategy.
- Formulate the task precisely. Don’t write, “Prepare an email about a new product.” It will work much better to say, “You need to write a promotional email about [full name of the product]. The email’s structure should include [describe the structure].” … (see examples of such prompts below in the article).
- Provide all necessary information — the more you give, the less improvisation it will generate.
- Refine the task until you get a result that satisfies you.
- Put the result created by the chat through the “lens of humanity” — proofreading and editing are a must-have to craft a catchy email.
- After the text is completely ready, send it to the chat and ask for five suggested options for catchy headlines and preheaders for this email. Choose one or several of the best.
- Take the resulting text directly to the email builder or pass it on to the designer.
Even if you’re not yet ready to fully introduce the AI gene into your workflow, use it to remove blank-page anxiety when you face challenges trying to start a text when nothing comes to mind. It will sketch out a draft and give you cool ideas that you can start working with quickly.
When I get stuck, I just write: “I need to write a polite follow-up email for an expert, and I don’t know how to start. Help me.”
Now, let's demonstrate how this works with specific examples.
How to speed up email text creation with GenAI: Real examples
To demonstrate how to work with GenAI, I took four different types of emails as examples and tried to work with ChatGPT to create similar ones. Let's compare time spent and the results obtained.
Trigger emails
This large group includes all emails sent based on some event, such as welcome chains, transactional emails, reactivation emails, etc. Their special feature is that they’re designed with a precise understanding of the situation in which the subscriber will receive them. Such emails are prepared in advance as part of a larger interaction chain.
Let's take the re-engagement email as an example. Stripo sends this email to those who stopped opening our emails long ago. It’s the last email in the reactivation sequence in which we seek feedback from subscribers.
Prompt:
Let’s say you’re an experienced email marketer of Stripo email builder who values newsletter subscribers.
Target audience: Subscribers who last opened our emails a long time ago.
Task: You need to write a polite reactivation email telling them that we missed them and that we need to receive feedback. Write a subject line, preheader, and text for the body — title, a short email text of four to five sentences, and a button with a call to take the survey.
Be polite and friendly, and don’t write too much.
Here's what the chat got on the first try:
I think this result is pretty good; this is the email we actually sent:
(Source: Email from Stripo)
Conclusion: Preparing the text of such an email doesn’t take much time for a copywriter, but we remember the time spent submitting the task, waiting, then receiving the results and approval. Simultaneously, the email marketer can prepare the texts of such trigger emails using GenAI in 15–20 minutes without involving copywriters.
Digest newsletters
Collections of articles or other materials are often sent in the email digest. The most important thing for such emails is to make a catchy announcement for all material and possibly combine it with one common paragraph at the beginning.
So, let's set up such a task for a virtual copywriter.
Prompt 1:
Let’s say you’re an experienced email marketer of Stripo email builder who values newsletter subscribers.
Target audience: Newsletter subscribers and users of the Stripo email builder.
Task: You need to prepare an email promoting our ready-made interactive blocks, which allow you to use gamification when creating festive Christmas emails easily. Technically, all the settings are done in the modules; you just need to add your data.
Write a subject line, preheader, and text for the body — a title, one paragraph about this opportunity, and a catchy announcement of each mechanic: questionnaire; wheel of fortune; name match; puzzle quiz; find a pair.
Be polite and friendly. You can use light humor. Don’t write too much.
The first version of the text was too superficial and didn’t reveal the game mechanics’ features; therefore, I clarified the task.
Prompt 2:
Rewrite this email again. Add a title about interactive modules to the block. Expand the description of each type of mechanics by including two sentences in each announcement — the first as a call to do something and the second as an example of how this can be used specifically for the Christmas theme. At the end of each announcement, add a call to action: “Get Started.”
This is what I managed to write using СhatGPT:
Subject line: Bring the Joy of Christmas to Your Emails 🎄✨
Preheader: Delight your audience with festive interactive blocks — no coding needed!
This is already a draft that can be improved. The result would have been even better if I’d provided more details about each interactive mechanic.
And here is the email that the Stripo team sent:
(Source: Email from Stripo)
Conclusion: GenAI does a good job with digest newsletters. To make the job easier, you can copy the first paragraphs for article announcements and ask the tool to turn them into attractive calls to read. This approach frees up time better spent reading each piece of material and preparing an announcement.
Educational newsletter with storytelling
We write emails with inspirational stories to our email marketing subscribers to inspire and engage them in communication. These newsletters are quite voluminous in content, and their task is to educate. The first step in creating such an email is to search for ideas.
Prompt 1:
Let’s say you’re an expert in marketing and brand promotion.
Target audience: Email marketers who read our emails to get inspiration for their email campaigns.
Task: You need to find and describe in an email three creative success stories from the world of advertising and marketing that helped companies stand out, become memorable, and make a lot of money. You need to show readers that they can be successful and inspiring simultaneously. These stories can become a reason to create something super creative in projects. First, just propose 10 variations for stories of famous brands from different fields or creators that we can tell you about.
After the chat suggested 10 ideas, I chose three that I liked.
Prompt 2:
I’d like to write an email with stories about:
Story 1: Apple’s "Think Different” campaign.
Story 2: Balenciaga, shocking, and the IKEA bag.
Story 3: A self-destructing painting for $1.4 million or Banksy — a protest artist!
Can you help me? In each story, you need to highlight what was unusual about the marketing approach and how the brand benefitted.
The chat offered these short versions of the stories:
I want to write about this in more detail, so I’m clarifying the task.
Prompt 3:
That's right, but I need to describe these stories in detail. Let it be three to four paragraphs describing the story, then paragraphs discussing goals and features, as well as summarizing the results.
And I get this result for each story:
I then can ask the tool to clarify the results by indicating the numbers, providing links to detailed materials about each story, and writing an introduction and conclusions for three stories.
Now look at the email that our head of content, Olha Onykiienko, prepared for subscribers:
It’s interesting to see how much time was spent creating the text for an email of this size.
Stages |
Without AI (h) |
With AI (h) |
Time savings |
Generating ideas |
3 |
0.5 |
2.5 |
Research |
4 |
- |
4 |
Writing |
8 |
2 |
6 |
Proofreading and editing |
2 |
1 |
1 |
Total: |
17 hours |
3.5 hours |
13.5 hours |
Conclusion: The GenAI allowed us to find and process fascinating ideas, collect information, and prepare a good draft quickly. You then can add a personal approach and your conclusions to the text during the editing stage. Simultaneously, a 4.85-fold reduction in time needed to prepare such an email is amazing, even without considering waiting time and approvals (see the difference for yourself by comparing it with your company's regular flow).
Promotional emails
And now we have a challenge with a twist — a promo email.
Usually, promo emails are prepared based on promo descriptions of products that the marketing team already has developed for the website, containing all the parameters and characteristics that allow you to stand out from competitors and describe the benefits and pain points. Factor in this information and provide ChatGPT with instructions on what email structure is needed to put it together.
Imagine that we need to prepare the text of a promo email for the Nissan Z. How could we ask ChatGPT for help?
Prompt:
Let’s say you’re an experienced creative copywriter for Nissan brand email campaigns.
Target audience: Young people who love speed and choose cars that make them feel like they’re driving a sports car.
Tone of voice: Convincing, friendly, original. Be creative and offer interesting images. Be brief.
Find all the information you can about the Nissan Z 2024 and prepare a promotional email. The headline and first paragraph should name the car and describe it as having 400 horsepower and six cylinders. It also should include a message that it’s almost out of stock, along with a button to push as a call to action.
Suggest an email structure that will explain the car’s four key technical parameters and the benefits that the owner of such a car will receive. For each block of the email, use a catchy subhead.
In the final part of the email, discuss the 3.0-liter V6 twin-turbo-charged engine and write calls to action for the buttons “Design yours” and “Discover prices.”
I'll show you the results we received from the chat. It could be good for a promo of some ordinary, inexpensive product, but too weak for a car. Everything seems to be correct, but too bland. Of course, you can try to improve it, but these changes will be minimal without adding great creative ideas.
Now look at the masterpiece from Nissan’s copywriters and see for yourself:
(Source: EmailLove)
Conclusion: GenAI still finds it challenging to tackle truly creative tasks, but let's be honest: At brands like Nissan, teams of copywriters and promotional email production staff work on such tasks, in which waiting time resources are unimportant. Therefore, it’s still too early to delegate this task to ChatGPT. It’s better to involve it in searching for ideas and collecting insights from the information obtained during audience research.
How to use Stripo tools to optimize teamwork
The Stripo editor already has been functionality allowing you to delegate work via email production.
This tool is simple and intuitive. Just enter your topic or set the direction for GenAI, choose the tone and capitalization style, decide whether to include emojis, and select the language for the subject lines. With one click, you’ll get diverse options in seconds.
If the subject lines do not feel right, you can generate more until you find what you want. The generator is free and always ready to assist during creative brainstorming sessions.
The AI Assistant takes email creation to the next level by easily generating full-fledged emails. Through a simple and user-friendly interface, users can create emails based on prompts and predefined data, such as logos, websites, and target audience details.
This feature automates email production beyond what’s possible with standard GenAI tools, enabling rapid email generation while preserving previous communications’ design and tone.
In just minutes, the assistant can craft new emails tailored to your past campaigns, saving on work hours and ensuring that all essential content is included seamlessly.
Wrapping up
Using GenAI to work with email text is a great idea to reduce teamwork time due to unnecessary waiting, lengthy searches for ideas and information, and preparation of email texts. As you can see, with most types of emails, GenAI-based language models handle quite well, i.e., you can spend more time and effort developing a strategy and preparing creative promotional campaigns that will allow you to stand out in the inbox.
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