S1. Ep27 - Save Hours on Email Marketing With AI Automations

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe

Noel: and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Katie: Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hey, hello. I'm Kim, Katie. And as always, we've got Noel here. Hey Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: How are you doing this week?

Noel: Well, I am splendid.

Katie: Blended.

Noel: Yeah. It's a nice short week here in the UK.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. As of recording, this is the end of August. So, yes, we've just enjoyed a lovely long bank holiday weekend.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: So this week, Noel, we are talking all things email marketing.

Noel: Yeah, exciting stuff.

Katie: Do you know, I'm actually really excited for this one.

Noel: I know. It's what you're good at? This is your forte.

Katie: But we've come together to talk about email, marketing and AI and also automations. And so bringing both of what we are good at together.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Okay. So I feel like we should start maybe by saying like, why do people like still want to do marketing in 2025? And for me, I think it's still really important to have people on your list. and not just because, you know, we don't own our social media platforms or our YouTube channels, that, you know, that is obviously correct. But also it is a way of being able to connect with your audience and also make sure that people are seeing your, you know, what you want them to see. So they're able to hear about your offers or your promotions, maybe you know, it's about your meet-up, your events, whatever it is that you want people to see, they will still see with email marketing, because as we know, not everyone sees everything on social media. People are not waiting, unfortunately, for our next social media post to go live. I mean, that would be lovely, wouldn't it?

Noel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's sometimes I hit post and it's like, hello? Anyone there? Yeah, but yeah, at least with an email, you know, it's getting to them, don't you? And getting to the right people.

Katie: And we're going to talk a bit later on in this podcast episode about actually, like, how you can increase those open rates. Because just because you've sent someone in email, just because they are on your list, it doesn't mean that they are actually, one, going to open your email and to actually read it. I mean, we all receive hundreds of emails probably, you know, on a daily basis and sometimes, you know, we get overwhelmed and we just think, you know, I'm just going to delete all of those. You know, sometimes it's not even delivered to people. If people can be away or they just think, oh, I'll read that one later when I'm not rushing around, you know, I've got some time and then they forget. we will talk about that in a bit but I feel like let's talk about you know why we want to email people and obviously ensuring that the email actually is worthwhile to send and how we can make it easier I guess for ourselves because I know like when I work with a lot of my marketing clients they're like I don't know what to say or I feel like it takes up a lot of time So, you know, I'm going to be sharing some of the things you can do to make it easier for yourself. But as well, I feel like, Noel, do you want to start with, like, ensuring that your content, your email content actually sounds like you?

Noel: Yes. Well, that's very important. Obviously, yeah, we've mentioned that quite a few times, have we on this podcast and earlier episodes.

Katie: Yeah, because I feel like so many people now are using. you know, LLMs to create their email content. I know when I read some emails that I'm on the list and I can tell that they've used AI and it's fine. But the only reason why I can kind of tell that it's AI is because it doesn't sound like them.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: I've got no problems with them using AI, but I just wanted to actually sound like the person who I was actually interested in.

Noel: Certainly, yeah, especially as a personal brand. But it's actually kind of really easy to do as well. Once you can get AI to help you define your brand voice. And once you've got that, you can put it in a document, and then you just add that in as a file. And so, well, look, you could be a Word document or a PDF or whatever. You know, you just upload that into ChatGBT. And then say, hey, look, that's my brand voice. Now create me content that sounds like me on this subject. And then it can go off and do that. But if you're on like higher paid plans, then you could also create a project and then have that brand voice document always there. So you could have a project which is just for your emails with that brand voice attached. And then whatever you put in within that project, it's going to kick it out with that brand voice, which is ideal. It's what we like.

Katie: Yeah. And we can also use the LLMs to not just write one email for us, but to actually, it could be like a sequence. So say like you were launching, whether it's a product or a course, you know, that is something that you can ask, you know, chat to you, Claude, to write for you once you have inputted, you know, like that brand voice, because you do want to make sure it sounds like you, especially if you were launching. You can, you can like obviously give it all the information that you have about the launch, the, you know, what you're selling. in all the information about like, you know, what people are going to get from buying it or participating in it. And yeah, you can even ask it to create you. Like, you know, I'm planning on sending an email every other day and then three on the last day of the launch, like write me a launch sequence for it.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: But I feel like the important part here is ensuring that your brand voice is fully like part of that. process.

Noel: Definitely, yeah. Yeah. It's got to be in there. Otherwise, your emails just sound and read like someone else's, not your own.

Katie: Yeah. And the thing is as well, like if your emails become boring or a bit robotic, then, you know, less people are going to click on your emails and actually open them as well. Yes.

Noel: Yeah. Because if I keep getting AI stuff from people and so, oh, yeah. I could just put that subject into church IPT and then get it to tell me what is about.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Might as well do that. That's all they've done. It's offputting, isn't it? Yeah.

Katie: Yeah, we want personality. We want, you know, we want some, you know, human aspect. Maybe, you know, we want some unhinged energy,

Noel: whatever it is

Katie: that you bring to the table. But we, you know, if you know, people. have signed up because it's you. So, like, do allow yourself to just be fully you. You don't have to be, like, overly professional, if that's not your vibe. Yeah, just go, like, for you. Do not hold back.

Noel: Yeah. I did that recently on a LinkedIn post. And then somebody who I know in the AI world commented on it and said, is my AI commenting on your AI generated post. I was like, hold on a minute, I wrote every single word of that.

Katie: Is that what you put as a response? Yeah. What did they say?

Noel: Oh, nothing. They left it there. I literally wrote every word. I didn't even ask ChachapD for any sort of help or anything like that. And I was like, oh, how rude. Do I sound robotic? I don't know.

Katie: Maybe, maybe that's your, um, your style, your brand for you, no.

Noel: Oh, that's handy, isn't it?

Katie: It is now in the AI world, yeah, definitely.

Noel: Crazy.

Katie: Okay, so we've put in our brand voice. We've gone, like, 100% us. We're putting in our energy with, you know, being unhinged if we want to be unhinged. And I feel as well, like a lot of people... I always say to me, like, I don't have time to create emails every week. So now there's two ways that we're going to approach this. So, Noel, we're going to come to you in a moment about, like, automating it, obviously.

Noel: Of course. I wonder what tool I'll use.

Katie: But before we go down, that route, I just want to say, like, when it comes to your email marketing, you do not have to re-event the wheel. You can literally take one of your social media posts that you have posted that week and you can just, like, turn it from a short piece of content into a long piece of content. And yes, you can ask AI to do that for you if you want it to. So if there's something you are promoting, something you are selling, or something that you're feeling really passionate about that week, then just take what you have, you know, put on social media and just turn it into an email. That's it. It can be that simple, especially, like, if you're not doing like a big launch or anything like that, like you can just do that. and it's so easy. It like takes minutes, right?

Noel: Yeah, definitely.

Katie: Okay, so that was all I wanted to say before like we fall into like no going, oh, let's talk about automation. People, I think, try and make things harder than they need to be. And it really does get to be this easy.

Noel: Yeah, yeah, it does it, yeah. I guess when we look at kind of the automation side of things, if you're repurposing content and you've already, say it's a blog post as an example, you know, you've already got like a URL for that post that you've already, you know, published, you can give that into AI within an automation and say, well, look, this is all of the content. All you've had to do is copy, paste a link into a spreadsheet. That's kind of how I would look at running like an email marketing, thing via automation is either from a spreadsheet, Airtable, Notion, any of those sort of things, and then say, well, this is the idea, this is what I want, and then maybe here's the links as to where it is or copy paste that post content into there, and then, you know, train the AI within that automation. So, well, this is also what I sound like. This is the email structure that I like using and things that. This is how I normally sign off. Give it examples. But one thing you mentioned to me early before we hit record on this was like, well, what if you've never sent an email? I went, that's a valid point. So what I would do at that point, because I've never really done it. I leave Katie to do that. So what I would do would be to go into chat JBT and then go, right, well, start creating me the content. And then you can ideate on that and then come up with, you know, some email templates that you like and then supply that into your automation. So then it can then start using that template. So there is a way to get started as well, which is helpful for everyone.

Katie: And I feel like as well, like you can tell AI, like what you want from the email. Like what is the purpose of the email?

Noel: So is

Katie: it for people to click a link? Is it for people to respond to you? Is it for people to, you know, buy a program or a course? Like what is the outcome that you want from this email? because every email needs to have an outcome and what is the purpose of that email.

Noel: So I feel

Katie: like as well, if you can load that into AI as well, that will help when it comes to making sure you are like putting out, you know, I don't want to say putting out the right content, but relevant content for your audience and for the goals that you have within. your business.

Noel: Yeah. I think it's also important to understand the output and the format. So if you, if within your automation, you could send that email back into your Notion, Airtable spreadsheet, whatever, it could go back in there or you could then link it into the platform that you currently use. So that could be, I don't know, Mailchimpers as an example, you know, you could be sending, creating like a draft email in, in that account ready to go. But It's understanding the format that it likes it. So is it going to want that in like a HTML format? So when you create your content within the automation, you need to kind of give it the examples in the format that it needs to send it into that platform. So if it's HTML, so you then get buttons in the right colors and backgrounds, same colors and all that sort of good stuff. Give it all that code and it will go off and do it all for you, which is really, really helpful. But yeah, the other way would be to get it back in your spray. spreadsheet and then you copy-based it.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: If that's what you like to do. Either's fine.

Katie: Yeah. Okay. So what we can do then is we can, once we know what we want to send, maybe like if you have got a launch or something that you can actually, you know, plan your content in advance for your email marketing, obviously then we can. you know, automate all of it and schedule it. So actually, you know, it's kind of done and dusted and like you can almost like like set and forget it sort of thing.

Noel: Oh, like it sounds like that.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: That's my kind of work.

Katie: Yeah. That's that's something that I like to do with like my email marketing. Sometimes I feel like it uses up too much brain space and actually. if I write my emails for the month and, you know, then they get, you know, scheduled. I use flow desk. They get scheduled. And then, you know, I haven't then got to think of that task then until, you know, saying maybe three weeks later when then, like, I might then repeat that task. And I find that's really helpful.

Noel: Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to look at it that way, isn't it? because you think what, I could either spend an hour a week or just an hour of one day a month, you know, just to get it all out of the way in one go. Because for me, if I sit down to write one email at the week, that's going to take me an hour just to get in the right space, thinking about it and then create it. Whereas, you know, if I know I've got to do it for a month, then, you know, if I was doing it manually, obviously.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: I just get it all done really quick.

Katie: Yeah, and obviously, if you, you know, if you are writing it, like, you know, say at the start of the month for the rest of the month, it's not like you can't then go in and change it. You know, you can be like, oh, actually, this has changed or I want to edit it. You can go in and do that, but those are things that take like minutes rather than, you know, like an hour. Yeah,

Noel: yeah,

Katie: definitely. And for me, so I've been writing like emails to my list. since, I think, 2014. Sometimes, like, it would come round, like, towards the end of the week and be like, I haven't done, like, next week's email. And I don't want to leave it until, like, the day before because then that stresses me out. So, yeah, I really love getting in the habit of sitting down each month and just, yeah, like working out, okay, what am I doing this month? What am I promoting this month? You know, or what am I selling this month and just writing them all out?

Noel: Yeah, it makes all sense.

Katie: Yeah, I'm kind of getting that flow. Or you can ask AI to write it for you. So this is, you know, this is my plan for the month. I need, you know, an email every single week for this, this, this and this, and you can give it all the information, this is what I'm selling or this is what I'm promoting or this is a podcast episode that I'm going to be featured on and, yeah, done, dusted.

Noel: Nice and easy.

Katie: Yeah, nice and easy. But something that I do really want to talk about and something that I find makes a massive difference to your email. So you've done all of this hard work for your email marketing. You know, you've created all of this amazing content. made your emails look really nice, you know, maybe you've created graphics for it or added photos, do you know, I mean, you spent a lot of time on this. So we want to give it the best chance we possibly can. And I don't think people realise how important an email subject line is.

Noel: Yeah, yeah, there's some email subjects, like even I really know something there's just not going of bother. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: We don't

Katie: want that

Noel: for our emails.

Katie: Yeah, delete. No. So I always say like write the content of your email first and the last thing is creating that email subject line because it will be so much easier to create the subject line once you know like the full context of the email that you are sent in. I actually do this as well. Like if I'm just, just sending off an email to someone as well, like not even on my list, like just someone like one to one. I always write the email first and then I write the subject line. I just find it so much easier.

Noel: Yeah, definitely. I do the same way.

Katie: I do.

Noel: Yeah. Sometimes I get it first time and I think, yeah, that's a good subject line. And then other times I don't really know where I'm going to take this email.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: To write it first and then figure it out. Yeah.

Katie: So your email subject line as well can also be a make or break or as to whether it gets delivered in someone's inbox or whether it goes in someone's junk box as well. So it's really important. So, you know, making sure that your email subject line is landing in people's inboxes. It's actually getting them to open it and not meeting it. So what we want to be doing is making, like, email subject lines, like, why would someone want to open this? It's like, what's in it for them? And I always find, like, curiosity works really well because people are like, oh, what's that? I want to find out more. If you're kind of, like, like the whole email in that subject line people are like well I don't need to like open it and also there are actually things as well that make your emails going to junk boxes like there's certain words and things like that you know you want to check those out and make sure you're not adding you know those into your email subject lines and also you want to make sure well like so email subject lines can be like positive or negative and both are are fine so it's kind of like um you know like three ways to live a happier life like great exciting like tell me everything and it's funny it's kind of like what doesn't necessarily now work on social media sort of still works with email marketing um okay so yeah there's there's also tools out there as well where you can actually copy and paste your email subject line and it will give you a score so it will be like you've used too many words you've not used enough words it it's like positive or like it's maybe it's too negative you know you add this or you know like it could be like add a number or something like that So there are really some great tools in there that you can use to really enhance your email subject line. And so because I know like a lot of us use like chat chit or clause to, you know, create our subject lines for us because, you know, everyone's always using it for like content hooks and stuff like that. So of course people are going to be using it for email subject lines. So I find as well, like with the LLMs, they love really long. like hooks and subject lines and actually you don't want like a really long one because you want someone to be able to see like the whole of what the subject line is and you know depending on you know like if it's hotmail gmail something like that you know it does cut off doesn't it after a certain amount of characters

Noel: yeah yeah you don't want the dot dot dot dot dot no

Katie: well you do want dot, dot, dot, dot. If it's obvious, what the dot, dot, dot, dot.

Noel: Yes, we don't want to be cut off.

Katie: No, you don't want to be cut off. So it needs to make sense before the dot, dot, dot.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: That's really something to think about as well, I find. Yeah.

Noel: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Katie: Yeah, lots of things that actually make or break your email subject lines and whether they get put into your inbox or junk box as well.

Noel: But then there's also, obviously you can also automate this as well.

Katie: Exactly.

Noel: So I would say like we do like writing our normal emails, once we've got our actual email content, we could then use our automation to then go off and craft us those perfect email subject lines that are going to get open. So let's say you would like a particular tool where it's doing all the scores and checking. You could almost train AI to look for that or sit within those. certain guidelines. So if it's like, well, that's too many words. Say 10 words is too many. So blah, well, you've got to do it in less than 10. You have to use an emoji to make it a bit more attractive and interesting. And things like that, you know, or this is the character length. You know, you could train it to understand that criteria and then create your subject lines to match that criteria as well as sounding like you and also matching the actual email, because that's a big thing. Right, yeah, yeah,

Katie: that is pretty important.

Noel: If you miss that bit, yeah, it could be a bit spot-up all there. It will go off and create subject lines for something random.

Katie: Yeah, we don't. Yeah,

Noel: no, definitely not. Yeah, that's kind of, I'd say, kind of straightforward to do. Because if you understand those rules, you can easily apply them into an AI with an automation. You can also do it in chat, GPT, as well. If you understand that, you know, you can tell it that in the conversation. and so this is the parameters that I want, you know. I'd also give examples of, like, what you've done before that you really like and has worked really well. Yeah, especially,

Katie: like, if it's got a good open rate, I would copy and paste those email subject lines in

Noel: as good

Katie: examples.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: And, of course, like, you can tell it as well, like, if there's any words you want to avoid or, you know, or never use.

Noel: yes definitely yeah there's a lot of words that users regularly isn't there when you do hooks and stuff like

Katie: yeah but also like there's there's some words within subject lines that for example like Gmail will see a spam so we'll just chuck your email straight in the spam folder without even like kind of you know a second thought even though like you know there's there's nothing spammy about it, but obviously you have to get through like, you know, like Gmail and hotmail and, you know, all the other outlook and, you know, other filters as well.

Noel: Hotmail, I was showing our age there.

Katie: I could have said, what?

Noel: I mean, I've got one that's MSN, so I shouldn't say anything.

Katie: I could have said like Blue Yonder or Yahoo.

Noel: AOL.

Katie: A.O.L. Yeah, definitely showing our age with those. But yes, you have to, like, you have to realize that those email providers also have their own filters that you need to, you know, get through as well to make sure that you want sending spam. Okay. Well, that was quite a little masterclass about email marketing. I know we flittered about here, there, and everywhere. So I hope you were able to keep up with that and follow along. As always, if you've got any questions, then you can reach out to us in our free LinkedIn group, AI Automation's business. And of course, if you are in our community, our membership over on the school platform, then you can ask away and we will answer your questions in detail and we can help you with anything that's email marketing related, whether it's automating, helping you with email subject lines and also, you know, maybe setting up some of those parameters within like chat dbt to ensure that you will always create it. 10 out of 10 email subject lines. And as always, we put exclusive content from this podcast straight into our membership over on school platform. If you search AI Business Club, you'll find us. Please come and join us. It's a wonderful place where we teach all things AI automations and things like this. Marketing. We would love to have you there and join us. But for now, we will catch you next time for another episode. thing.