The complete guide to generating email copy with GenAI: Ethics, best practices, and limitations

Have you ever wondered if you could revolutionize your email marketing game with GenAI? Or maybe you wonder whether AI email copy lacks emotional intelligence and so cannot connect with your subscribers like copy written by a human?

Picture this: crafting captivating email copy with ease, thanks to the power of GenAI. But before you dive in to GenAI, let's explore the ins and outs of this groundbreaking technology. Join us on a journey through the process of generating email copy with GenAI, during which we'll uncover the secrets of the technology, address its limitations, and navigate its ethical landscape.

Stats and benefits: Unlocking the potential of GenAI for email copy

Let’s look at some numbers, shall we? Here, we explore the compelling statistics of using GenAI for email marketing so that you can estimate whether it is suitable for your business needs.

• 20% of companies have already formally deployed GenAI-related technologies, with 55% of organizations planning to formally use them in the future;
• 41% of marketers claim that using GenAI leads to better performance and higher revenue;
• 39% of marketers use GenAI during the email production process;
• 77% of marketing specialists using GenAI are sure that it enables them to provide more personalized content;

• by using GenAI-powered tools, an employee can save up to 2.5 hours per day;
• marketers using GenAI for email personalization notice a 41% boost in revenue and 13.44% higher CTR;
• marketers using GenAI have an AOV of $145.08 compared to $138 for marketers who don’t employ GenAI;
• generative AI for email marketing can boost your CTR by up to 13.44%;
• 68% of marketing specialists use AI while performing their daily tasks;
• 57% of marketers working for big companies (500+ employees) use GenAI for their email marketing campaigns;
• marketers use GenAI to personalize emails (50%) and work on subject lines (47%).

Things that make the outcome better: Maximizing your results

So now you are aware of the benefits of GenAI for your email campaigns, from more personalized content to higher CTR and ROI. It’s time to learn more about how to use GenAI to create unique email copy that matches your brand voice and meets your subscribers’ needs.

1. Custom instructions: Make your copy unique and authentic 

What should you do after hiring a new email marketer after the onboarding process is complete? You need to tell them everything about your product or service so they can create email campaigns that match your subscribers’ needs — your brand’s tone of voice, glossary of terms, goals, words to avoid, etc.

It’s better to imagine GenAI tools as junior copywriters who require a little guidance from you to perform better. With this in mind, we now offer some tips on custom instructions for GenAI tools to achieve more suitable outcomes. Since ChatGPT is the most popular GenAI tool, with 60.2% of the industry total, we will use it to illustrate these tips.

• Making GenAI tools use your brand’s tone of voice and maintain this tone across every single email

Using your brand’s tone of voice is crucial for maintaining consistency across all email communications. This way, subscribers will recognize your emails in their crowded inboxes, and if your content is relevant and engaging, you’ll motivate them to look out for your emails.

ChatGPT has the “Customize ChatGPT” feature, which allows you to set custom instructions to provide any product or service details, including a particular tone of voice.

After clicking on your account name and the “Customize ChatGPT” tab, you will see two fields:

1. In the first field, you have to tell the tool about your brand and your brand's related products and services.
2. In the second field, you can share your preferences concerning content — tone of voice, style, words to avoid, etc.

Important to note: Ensure your instructions are clear and straightforward so that the tool has the best chance of completing tasks correctly.  

• Providing GenAI with your glossary

It’s also a good idea to equip GenAI tools with a comprehensive glossary of terms specific to your industry or brand. It will help you maintain consistency in terminology across all communications. Include commonly used jargon, product names and how to spell them correctly, and any unique terms relevant to your audience.

2. Clear prompts: Getting along with GenAI tools

Сlear and concise prompts are your key to success if you want to guide GenAI in providing content that aligns with your brand's objectives. Clearly outline the purpose and audience of each email and provide specific information, such as subject line length, email type, and call-to-action details. Clarity in prompts ensures that the AI understands your intentions accurately and delivers relevant output.

Here are some examples of clear and detailed prompts:

1. Imagine that you are an email marketer. You need to generate a webinar invitation email for marketing specialists — [Webinar details]. Subject line — up to 50 characters, email body — up to 150 words with relevant emojis, CTA — Motivate subscribers to sign up for the webinar.

2. As an email marketer, create a promo email for our [Upcoming product launch details] event targeting existing customers. The subject line should be intriguing and within 40 characters. The body should highlight the key features of the product in 100 words, with a clear CTA urging recipients to explore more.

3. Develop a re-engagement email for dormant subscribers in our fitness community. The subject line should be personalized and no more than 40 characters. Keep the body concise, remind recipients of the [Benefits of the platform], and offer an exclusive discount code. End with a compelling CTA to reignite their interest.

4. Generate an anniversary email to celebrate our brand's [Milestone details] with our loyal customers. The subject line should convey gratitude and be no longer than 50 characters. Craft a heartfelt message in the body, expressing appreciation and reflecting on the journey. Include a special offer or gift as a token of thanks and encourage them to share their experiences on social media.

5. Craft a survey invitation email for our market research campaign targeting recent customers — [Survey details]. The subject line should be concise and enticing, limited to 50 characters. In the body, explain the purpose of the survey, its importance in shaping future products/services, and assure recipients of data privacy. Include a clear CTA directing them to the survey link and offer subscribers a chance to win a gift card.

3. Feedback for continuous improvement: Teaching your GenAI tools

Remember I offered you to imagine GenAI tools as a junior copywriter? Well, honest and detailed feedback is a great way to help young specialists perform better and hone their skills. The same goes for GenAI tools.

When you are not happy with the provided outcomes, just say so. It’s important to be straightforward and specify what you want to edit to get more suitable responses. Just continue providing feedback until an outcome meets your email campaign goals.

In ChatGPT, you can give quick feedback by choosing from the options offered (don’t like the style, not factually correct, being lazy, etc.) or describing specific details in a separate field.

4. Unified approach to copy creation: Using it for bigger elements rather than small single elements

Opt for a unified approach to email copy creation by utilizing GenAI for larger content elements. For instance, rather than working with GenAI tools on separate elements like subject lines, product descriptions, headings, or blog article compilations, try looking at your email as one unit.

Our team conducted an A/B test to check the effectiveness of this unified approach, which boosted CTOR by 41.34%! This collaborative approach maximizes efficiency while leveraging the strengths of both AI and human creativity.

Limitations of GenAI: Things to consider when using it for email copy generation 

We’ve taken a look at some of the benefits of GenAI and ways to get it to produce better outcomes. But what about the limitations you have to be aware of when working with GenAI for email marketing? Let’s talk about the most important ones.

1. Accountability of GenAI for copy generation

One crucial aspect to consider is GenAI's accountability in generating email copy. While it excels in speeding up email content creation, it lacks the ability to take responsibility for mistakes or inappropriate content that might offend or mislead your subscribers.

Be extra cautious if you use jokes in your email communication and use GenAI for ideas, as humor requires human judgment to ensure appropriateness to various audiences. Human supervision is crucial to ensure that the AI email copy aligns with both brand standards and ethical considerations.

According to recent research, large language models couldn’t identify grammatical mistakes in simple sentences, in contrast to humans. If you use GenAI to proofread your email copy, it’s a great idea to have a human editor look through the content generated. You don’t want your subscribers to receive an email with something like “Your going to love our new product!” or “We was excited to announce” in it, right? :)

2. Lack of human touch

When a human writer creates an email copy, they combine their real-life experience and empathy with their audience’s needs and industry knowledge to produce text that is appealing and valuable to subscribers. GenAI, however, often falls short of adding the human touch to foster genuine connections with recipients.

Email copies created by GenAI may seem generic or impersonal, as these tools lack the emotional intelligence inherent in human communication. Of course, you can provide a certain situation to a GenAI tool and ask it to put itself into someone else’s shoes, but ultimately, it cannot experience emotions — it can only discuss them.

For now, human emotions are too complex and nuanced for AI to replicate perfectly. So, it’s crucial for marketers to complement GenAI's capabilities with human creativity and empathy to craft compelling and relatable email campaigns.

3. Bias and discrimination

As we know, on the Internet, you can find all kinds of questionable information: digital junk, fake news, and offensive content. GenAI learns from these existing datasets, so there's a risk of perpetuating biases present in the training data, leading to discriminatory or offensive material.

A human editor’s review and oversight are essential to minimize these risks This risk minimization is vital to protecting your brand’s reputation, so I recommend ensuring that your emails to subscribers uphold the principles of inclusivity, diversity, and ethical standards.

Localization matters: Tailoring across borders

Today, you need to do much more to reach your global audience than just translating your email content. With localization, you can adapt your email copy to resonate with the cultural nuances, preferences, and languages of various regions or countries.

For example, in the US, Valentine’s Day is a day to express love through gifts and romantic gestures, while in South Korea, this holiday is a bit different — there is also White Day on March 14th, where men give presents to women who gave them chocolates on February 14th. It’s essential that you stay aware of such cultural differences so that your email campaigns remain relevant.

1. How GenAI can help you here

With advanced natural language processing capabilities, GenAI can generate multilingual content that captures the essence of your emails while respecting linguistic and cultural differences.

Here is how GenAI can help you deliver relevant and engaging emails to diverse audiences worldwide:

1. Ask GenAI tools about the customs and traditions of your global audience (but don’t forget about fact-checking).
2. Translate and proofread your emails with the help of GenAI tools.
3. Provide your tool with details about your global audience (language, weather, traditions, etc.) so that it can use this information while generating email copy for your campaigns.
4. Optimize your email content for different audiences (age, location, industry, etc.).
5. Ask GenAI tools if your email copy is clear and straightforward. Sometimes, we can put a lot of professional terminology into our texts or just miss some confusing messages. GenAI tools can help you look at your copy with fresh eyes.
6. Remember to check if the generated texts are relevant to audiences from different countries.

In the example below, I asked ChatGPT to proofread my copy in Italian, so it offered some adjustments and explained why I should edit those parts:

Our recommendations

1. Leverage data-driven insights

Use analytics and customer data to learn more about your global audience and conduct email list segmentation. By understanding the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, you can tailor your email content to resonate with their specific needs and interests.

In the example below, ChatGPT generated for me a Bastille Day email for a bookstore in French. It created an engaging email, used the right date (I didn’t provide it in the prompt), and, I think, grasped the spirit of the holiday.

2. Collaborate with native speakers

GenAI tools can be a great help, but I still recommend partnering with native speakers to ensure linguistic accuracy and cultural relevance in your email copy. They will help you navigate linguistic nuances, idioms, and cultural sensitivities.

3. Keep an eye on cultural trends

Always check the latest global events to ensure that your emails are always well timed and sensitive to current circumstances. For instance, after a recent earthquake in Taiwan, it would not be appropriate to send promo emails immediately following the tragedy.

Stay informed about cultural trends, holidays, and local events in your target markets to incorporate timely and relevant references into your email campaigns. Did you know about One Piece Day? It is celebrated in Japan on July 22.

There aren’t a lot of brands that keep an eye on such small local holidays, so your subscribers will be happy that you acknowledge their traditions. They will definitely remember such an email from your company!

By the way, we created an email marketing calendar to help you stay up to date with all possible occasions for your emails — from Christmas and Black Friday to Unicorn Day and Be a Millionaire Day. Check it out.

The perfect GenAI tools: Choosing your arsenal

1. Decoding the criteria: What makes a GenAI tool effective?

Before we dive deep into a wide range of GenAI tools, let’s think about what makes such tools effective. Here are the criteria I came up with:

1. Accuracy and precision

An effective GenAI tool should provide accurate output, so you don’t have to spend even more of your time rewriting and polishing your GenAI newsletter. It should generate content that aligns with the custom instructions discussed above and meets the specified criteria. This includes grammatical correctness, absence of offensive content, and relevance to your audience.

2. Adaptability and customization

The ideal GenAI tool should offer flexibility and customization options to cater to diverse email campaigns. It should allow you to tailor the output according to specific requirements, such as tone of voice, style, vocabulary, and target audience.

For instance, yesterday, you had to generate an email with a terms and conditions update for all your subscribers, and it had to be written in a formal tone of voice without any emojis or images. But today, your task is to generate a weekly digest for your active subscribers in a friendly tone of voice with animated GIFs and a compilation of relevant blog articles.

These are very different emails, and a perfect GenAI tool should adapt to numerous scenarios and custom instructions to produce engaging email content and meet the unique goals of all your campaigns.

3. Efficiency and speed

One of the main benefits we are looking for when using GenAI tools for email copy creation is speeding up and automating the production process, right? That’s why it’s crucial to choose a tool that generates output promptly without compromising quality so you won’t have to worry about hitting deadlines or waiting in line until a server is free.

4. Constant updates and support

A top-notch GenAI tool should prioritize continuous improvement and provide robust support mechanisms for users. While choosing your perfect tool, check if you can contact a support team with any questions or issues. It would also be great if you could find documentation or text and video tutorials on the website to learn more about the tool without needing to contact anyone.

2. Exploring the landscape: Overview of leading GenAI tools

It’s now time to choose the perfect GenAI tool to meet your email campaign goals. I have explored the landscape and come up with the top four tools you can test and choose from.

1. ChatGPT

Well, we can’t talk about GenAI tools without mentioning this one, can we? You can ask for its help with anything — research for your new article, engaging email copy, ideas for a new project, and even tips for planning a trip or creating an interesting recipe :).

ChatGPT gives quick answers and is constantly improving. Still, it’s crucial to provide the tool with the context of your input, as sometimes it can offer irrelevant answers.

Developer: OpenAI

Price: Plus plan — $20 per month; Team plan — $25 per person/month. The Free plan is also available, but it works slower during peak hours.

Top features:

• quick outputs;
• available on the Web, iOS, and Android;
• extra tools for the paid plans (DALL·E for image and GIF creation and editing, Browsing, Advanced Data Analysis, etc.);
• constant updates and improvements
• informative help center;
• GPT-3.5 model for the Free plan and GPT-4 model for the paid plans;
• multilingual capability;
• numerous chats with the “Customize ChatGPT” feature for each of them;
• translation and localization.

Choose this tool if you are looking for a cost-effective and reliable tool that can provide some level of creativity, personalize your email copy, and help you adapt it to your global audience. I used ChatGPT for translations and while the texts it produced still needed proofreading by a native speaker, they were pretty decent. 

2. Gemini 

If you require your GenAI tool to process text, images, and audio, consider using Gemini. It’s a great option for marketers who require their GenAI tool to work not just on text, but on the entire email, including images, videos, and audio. Gemini is available in three model sizes (Nano, Pro, and Ultra), enabling it to achieve a higher level of scalability.

Developer: Google

Price: Gemini Advanced — $19.99 per month (1.0 Ultra model for complex tasks, Gemini in Gmail and Docs, and 2 TB of storage). The Free plan for your daily tasks is also available.

Top features:

• Google services integration;
• transcribing of meetings;
• the Free plan allows you to work with text, audio, videos, and images;
• personalized email content;
• customer support, chatbot, and informative FAQ;
• multilingual capability;
• translation and localization;
• data management and analysis (e.g., customer reviews, reports, etc.).

Choose this tool if you require a budget-friendly tool to work not just with email copy, but also with audio, images, and videos. I think its information base is of higher quality than ChatGPT. It provides a lot more precise facts, especially regarding localization, which is really cool! Gemini offers more information in a single iteration, whereas ChatGPT might take 2-3 attempts. However, when you ask Gemini to "Optimize these sentences," sometimes it adds an extra 4-5 sentences on its own, which isn't ideal.

3. LLamA 2 

If you are on a budget and require a free tool for your GenAI newsletter, try LLamA 2. It gives limited outputs to prompts that may generate inappropriate content, but it provides quick and creative texts for your emails. It should be noted that it is mostly English-trained, so it won’t be suitable for your global audience.

Developer: Meta AI

Price: Free (you only need to get permission to use it if your product or service attracts more than 700 million monthly users).

Top features:

• safety — the tool gives limited outputs to prompts that may generate offensive and harmful content;
• open-source language model (you can build your own chatbot);
• generating creative and engaging email copy;
• summarization and analysis of data provided;
• grammar correction;
• trained mostly in English.

Choose this tool if you are looking for a free and secure tool to generate email copy for your English-speaking subscribers.  

4. Copy.ai

This tool is a perfect match for marketers who want to save time and maintain consistent emails easily. Here, you will find various content templates, various Brand Voices to add, infobase to save and use information, and more.

Developer: Copy.ai

Price: Monthly plan — $49 per month; Annual plan — $36 per month (unlimited words, extra writing tools, 25+ languages, unlimited projects, and more). The Free plan is also available and limited to 2000 words.

Top features:

• various Brand Voices to maintain consistency;
• infobase to save and reuse essential data;
• content templates to save time;
• transcription services;
• translation and localization;
• personalized email copies.

Choose this tool if you require a more full-featured GenAI tool with numerous services, functionality to maintain brand consistency, and email localization to meet your global audience’s needs. The Free plan is quite limited, so it won’t suit you if you generate a lot of content.

GenAI ethics: Mistakes to avoid while generating email copy

GenAI tools can be life savers on the busiest days at work, but there are still some mistakes you should avoid to keep your subscribers satisfied and your brand reputation intact.

1. Do not spread deceptive or misleading content

It seems obvious that you mustn’t spread misleading content in your emails, but you can still do so unintentionally while generating your email copies. GenAI tools learn from all kinds of information available on the Internet and can still make mistakes. Make sure that a human specialist fact-checks and proofreads all of your AI-generated emails.

2. Do not use GenAI to convince or force people into buying

While persuasive messaging is essential in marketing to stand out from the crowd, you don’t have to use GenAI to force subscribers to buy from you or manipulate them. Instead, focus on providing value and building authentic connections with your subscribers. Use GenAI to speed up the production process and get new ideas for your texts.

3. Do not use deep fake images, videos, or social proof featuring celebrities

Using misleading social proof featuring celebrities in your email campaigns is one more way to create legal trouble and destroy your brand's reputation. If you want to use social proof, I recommend using authentic user-generated content (photos, videos, etc.) with testimonials that accurately represent your products or services and resonate with your audience.

An email with one or two honest reviews from your customers will be much better than one filled with a dozen AI-generated images of celebrities wearing your new collection. 

Wrapping up

Harnessing the power of GenAI offers unparalleled opportunities for innovation and efficiency. By providing clear instructions, customizing prompts, and refining content based on feedback, creating a GenAI newsletter will become much easier for you and save you time.

Key takeaways:

1. Use custom instructions to make your email copy unique and authentic (you can add your brand’s tone of voice and glossary of terms to some GenAI tools and set custom instructions for different email campaigns).
2. Make GenAI tools understand you better with clear prompts — outline the purpose and audience of each email and provide information like subject line length, email type, and call-to-action details.
3. Teach your GenAI tool with continuous feedback. It’s important to be straightforward and specify what you want to edit to get more suitable responses. Some tools provide a feature for quick feedback.
4. Look at your email as one unit — opt for a unified approach to email copy creation by utilizing GenAI for larger content elements.
5. Remember the limitations of GenAI (bias and discrimination, accountability, and lack of human touch), and always proofread your email copy before sending it out.
6. Use GenAI for localization to reach your global audience and make your email campaigns more relevant.
7. Avoid common mistakes while creating a GenAI newsletter (do not spread misleading information, do not force subscribers into buying, and do not produce deep fake content).

GenAI tools can act as junior assistants and help you complete tasks in the blink of an eye, but you should constantly train and improve the tools to achieve better results. Remember, while GenAI for email marketing can streamline processes and offer valuable insights, human creativity and strategic thinking remain essential for crafting truly impactful emails.