Having played around with ChatGPT for the past week, I think we’re either on the cusp of something truly special, or we’re doomed as a society… Of course I’m exaggerating here (maybe?), but I do think AI is going to change how we do marketing in the future.
To put the AI to the test and to truly understand how good (or bad) it is, I picked email marketing as my channel, and ecommerce as my industry to test its ability.
I tested its capability across a bunch of competencies like:
Strategic thinking
Tactical understanding
Ability to ideate
Ability to write
Technical basics
And here’s what I found:
1. Strategy
I asked the AI to create an email marketing strategy for my online store:
I heard if you’re nice to the AI they’re going to give you better results ;)
2. Audit
I then asked the AI how to audit my current email marketing efforts:
3. Tactics
The AI gave me strategic advice like looking at conversion rates and making more informed decisions based on data.
But can it actually give me specific tactics to execute that strategy?
4. Content plan for lead nurturing
I then asked the AI to create a lead nurturing plan for my store:
5. Ideation
I asked the AI to build on this and give me subject line ideas that will result in higher open rates:
6. Copywriting
Next, I asked the AI to write me the first email in the nurture series:
7. Technical
Seems like it's doing good so far. But can it go a step deeper and actually create some emails for me?
It sure can!
Conclusion
All of this work took me 5 minutes to complete. In the real world, coming up with a strategy and ideating on that would probably take at least 5-10 hours. Plus, coding out an email template would have taken an additional 2-5 hours (with images and testing).
But how good are the answers? I'd give it a 6/10. While good, the strategies are not very tangible, and I'd imagine if you're not versed in digital marketing you'd have a difficult time building on these.
Granted, I didn’t pick a niche for my ecommerce store, but rather made it more general. And the AI still performed well given the limitations.
But that's still very impressive given the time spent prompting the AI did in 5 minutes what would have taken an email marketer at least a day - for free!
And this is just the beginning!
We're only seeing the first iteration of a technology that is likely going to improve by many orders of magnitude in the coming years.
It might replace you. Or it might end up 10x ing your productivity. Doesn't matter, we're all going to be in the metaverse soon enough!
Christian Baun
Christian Baun is a marketing automation specialist with a background in demand generation, content marketing and email marketing.