From Prompt to Copy: ChatGPT Prompts for Email Marketing
ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool with the potential to revolutionize your email marketing strategy. You can use it as your virtual brainstorming partner, or you can tap into its capabilities to create captivating subject lines and email content.
But if you know how ChatGPT works, you’ll understand that it produces responses based on the input it receives and the patterns it has learned from vast amounts of data.
You’ll likely end up with average or generic suggestions without the right prompts. A thoughtful prompt can make all the difference between blending in with the competition and capturing your audience’s attention.
So, let’s explore different ChatGPT email marketing prompts and how to use them to supercharge your email marketing efforts.
How is ChatGPT Used in Email Marketing?
ChatGPT is a generative AI platform, meaning it’s good at tasks that involve generating text and basic logical thinking. You can use it to automate certain aspects of your email marketing workflow, such as generating campaign ideas, creating subject lines, or even drafting email copy. But it’s not good at handling calculations or remembering facts.
Think of ChatGPT as your helpful assistant in email marketing. If you can delegate a task to an assistant, you can probably achieve it with ChatGPT, too.
However, most tasks will still require your participation and feedback to make sure the output meets your expectations.
The table below lists the tasks we think you should and shouldn’t use ChatGPT for:
Tasks ChatGPT is Good For | Tasks ChatGPT Isn’t Good For |
---|---|
Generating content ideas | Strategic planning and goal-setting |
Crafting subject lines | Audience segmentation |
Drafting email copy | Customer support |
Personalizing email content | Sensitive or legally regulated content |
Brainstorming email campaign themes | Creating detailed customer personas |
A/B testing email variations | Writing official company policies |
ChatGPT Prompts for Generating Campaign Ideas
When using ChatGPT to spark campaign ideas, you need to cover four elements in your prompt. This is the template we recommend:
“I’m planning a [type of campaign] campaign to [campaign goal]. Our target audience includes [description of target audience]. We want to [key message or theme].”
Let’s unpack these elements.
Type of Campaign
Start by specifying the campaign type you’re planning, such as a promotional offer, a seasonal event, or an educational newsletter series. This helps ChatGPT understand the context and generate ideas accordingly.
For example, if you’re running a summer sale email campaign, your prompt could begin with:
“I’m planning a summer sale email campaign to offer special discounts and promotions to our customers.”
Campaign Goal
Are you aiming to increase sales, drive website traffic, or nurture customer relationships? Articulating your goal helps ChatGPT tailor its suggestions to your desired outcomes.
Continuing with the summer sale campaign example, you might specify:
“The goal of this campaign is to boost revenue by enticing customers to take advantage of limited-time offers and discounts.”
Target Audience
Describing your email marketing subscribers to ChatGPT lets the model pick an appropriate writing style and better words.
Provide details such as demographics, interests, and pain points to help generate ideas that resonate with their preferences and needs.
In our summer sale campaign prompt, you could specify:
“Our target audience includes young adults aged 18-35 who are interested in fashion and lifestyle products and are looking for great deals on summer essentials.”
Key Message or Theme
Share any specific messaging or themes you want to incorporate into your campaign. For example, you could highlight product features, emphasize your value proposition, or describe the benefits of an event you’re hosting.
For the summer sale campaign, you might suggest:
“We want to convey a sense of excitement and urgency, encouraging customers to seize the opportunity to stock up on seasonal favorites at unbeatable prices.”
Check out the final prompt below:
Since the output doesn’t fit into a screenshot, you can click here to view the conversation.
ChatGPT Prompts for Creating Email Subject Lines
Your subject line directly impacts your open rates. An effective subject line can pique curiosity or offer a compelling reason to open your email, but a bland one will just sit there in your audience’s inboxes, collecting dust.
One of the best use cases of AI in email marketing is to generate subject lines. You can approach this task in two ways.
Basic ChatGPT Prompt for Email Subject Lines
If you’re looking for a quick prompt that gets the job done for a newsletter promotion or reconnecting email subject line, the one below will give you decent results:
“Imagine you’re [campaign objective] to your subscribers. Craft multiple subject lines that grab their attention and entice them to open the email.”
The output will look like this using GPT4:
Advanced ChatGPT Prompt for Email Subject Lines
The previous prompt works fine if you want content for a transactional email or an abandoned cart message. However, since your subject line has the potential to make or break your email marketing efforts, we recommend spending more time crafting the right prompt.
To generate more effective subject lines using ChatGPT, your prompt should include three details:
- The main message you want to convey in your email.
- A description of your target audience, such as demographics and interests.
- Emotional triggers or hooks, such as curiosity, urgency, or excitement.
We recommend the prompt template below:
“I’m crafting an email to [purpose or type of email]. The goal is to [campaign goal]. Our target audience is [description of target audience]. We want the subject line to [desired tone or emotion]. Can you help me come up with a few catchy subject lines that [specific action or outcome]?”
Check out the results below:
Pro tip: ChatGPT tends to use exclamation marks at the end of subject lines, which isn’t a good idea. You can add this phrase at the end of your prompt to get properly formatted subject lines: Avoid using exclamation marks (“!”).
Prompt Modifiers to Make Your Subject Lines Stand Out
ChatGPT tends to follow a fixed structure when generating subject line ideas — a phrase followed by colons followed by another phrase. There was almost no way to change this in GPT3.5. But with GPT4 and GPT4-o, adding the following phrase to your prompt sometimes works:
Don’t use colons (“:”).
You can also add these modifiers to the end of your prompts to create unique subject lines:
- Use relevant emojis to grab attention.
- Include numbers to create a sense of urgency.
- Pose relevant questions to engage the audience and pique their curiosity.
ChatGPT Prompts for Email Copy
The idea here is similar to what we’ve already covered. You need to provide specific details about your campaign goals, target audience, and the message you want to convey. You may also include information about your product/service and your email CTA.
However, you should be ready to spend some time editing the output because ChatGPT can’t get every detail right. Plus, it tends to overuse certain phrases and structures.
Let’s start with a straightforward prompt to generate the first draft of your marketing email:
“Write a compelling email promoting [product/service] to our target audience of [target demographic] interested in [relevant topic]. Emphasize the [key features/benefits], including [specific details]. Aim to create a sense of [emotional response] and urgency to [action].”
The response is too long to fit into a screenshot. So, if you’re interested in viewing it, click here.
Pro tip: You should be careful with your choice of words. ChatGPT operates based on keywords, and it tends to repeat the same words and phrases you use in the prompt. So, think about how the AI might interpret your prompt.
If you take a look at the ChatGPT’s output, you’ll know that it’s hardly enticing. It’s generic, long, and repetitive. But you can make a few tweaks to improve the outcome.
Include a Brainstorming Step
ChatGPT usually picks the blandest, most generic way to write emails. Luckily, you can widen its scope of consideration if you introduce a simple but effective step: brainstorming.
Before you prompt ChatGPT to start writing, take a moment to brainstorm yourself. Think about the message you want to convey and any unique angles or offers you can include.
Rather than jumping straight into asking for the email content, guide ChatGPT with prompts that encourage creative thinking.
You can do the brainstorming step for each part or paragraph in your email. Alternatively, you could ask ChatGPT to tell you how it plans to write your email and then modify the steps.
These example prompts will give you some inspiration:
- “Brainstorm ideas for an attention-grabbing CTA for our summer sale event.”
- “Explore different ways to introduce our new product to our target audience.”
- “Generate creative phrases to emphasize the exclusivity of our limited-time offer.”
Provide a Basic Structure for ChatGPT to Follow
Sometimes, ChatGPT needs more guidance to steer it in the right direction. You can break down your email into multiple sections and describe the details or information you want in each section.
For example, if you’re creating an email survey, you can group your questions into multiple sections and describe each section separately in your prompts.
You can even write the beginning of each section and ask ChatGPT to continue your text.
Take a look at the example prompt template below:
Write an email promoting [product/service] to our target audience of [target demographic] interested in [relevant topic]. The email should follow a basic structure consisting of:
- Problem statement: Introduce the [problem/pain point] that our [product/service] solves for the target audience.
- Solution: Present our [product/service] as the solution to the [problem/pain point], highlighting its key features and benefits.
- CTA: encourage the reader to take action, such as [specific action], to [achieve benefit].
Use Copywriting Frameworks
Copywriting frameworks provide structure, direction, and a proven formula for crafting persuasive and engaging messages. They break down the process of crafting compelling copy into manageable steps.
They also help steer ChatGPT in the right direction and make sure the generated email copy hits the right notes.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT to write your message using one of these frameworks:
- Problem, Agitation, Solution (PAS).
- Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA).
- Promise, Picture, Proof, Push (4Ps).
- The Hero’s Journey.
Pro tip: Before asking ChatGPT to write using a specific framework, ask if it’s familiar with that framework. Sometimes, the model gets confused with acronyms or makes assumptions about the steps in a framework. Make sure you’re on the same page and provide definitions if necessary to get the best results.
The example prompt below uses the PAS framework and clearly defines the expected email format:
Write an email promoting [product/service] to our target audience of [target demographic]. Use the PAS framework to guide the content:
- Problem: Identify a common [problem] faced by our target audience, such as [specific issue].
- Agitation: Agitate the problem by emphasizing the frustration and impact it has on the audience’s [emotion/concern].
- Solution: Present our [product/service] as the solution to the problem, highlighting its key [ingredients/features] and benefits.
Keep a List of Banned Words
ChatGPT relies on patterns and associations in its training data to generate text. So, it has a tendency to default to familiar words and phrases, even if they’re not the most engaging or appropriate for the context.
One way to challenge ChatGPT to think outside the box is to provide a list of banned words at the end of your prompt.
In our experience, you can include around 30 to 40 words before ChatGPT starts ignoring your list. If your prompt is already long, you can provide the word list once the AI has generated your content and ask it to rewrite the text.
Here are a few words and phrases we’ve seen ChatGPT overuse:
- Elevate,
- Navigate,
- In today’s world,
- In the world of,
- Realm,
- Game-changer
- Unlock,
- Crucial,
- Important,
- Vital,
- Critical.
Pro tip: You could also ask ChatGPT to include specific words in the copy. Check out our list of email marketing power words for ideas.
Optimize Your ChatGPT Prompts for Better Results
So far, we’ve covered plenty of ways to get ChatGPT to produce great results, but there are still minor tweaks you can make to push the envelope even more.
Let’s cover three other prompting techniques that’ll get you even better results.
Build a Persona
A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.
If you know a few details about your ideal subscriber or customer, you can ask ChatGPT to create a persona that fills in the blanks. This way, you’ll know what assumptions the model will make based on your input, and you can correct the ones that don’t fit your situation.
Creating a persona has other advantages, too:
- You can refer to it later in your conversation to make sure ChatGPT doesn’t forget your target audience.
- You can use it to write follow-up emails for your campaigns.
Click here to see an example of a persona created using ChatGPT.
Assign Roles
ChatGPT has a basic understanding of different jobs and roles, so if you prompt it to act like a certain role, it’ll mimic that persona in its content.
You can start your prompt like this:
- Write an email from the perspective of a [role].
- Act as an experienced [role].
- You’re a [role] with knowledge and experience in [role description].
Adjust Your Tone
ChatGPT’s default tone is typically neutral and formal, which isn’t always the right tone for mass marketing emails.
The good news is that you can ask ChatGPT to write using a different tone or style. For example, if you’re promoting a fun and lighthearted event, you might want to use playful language and humor in your prompts. On the other hand, if you’re sending a more serious or professional message, you might opt for a more formal tone.
The table below contains a list of writing styles and tones you can expect from ChatGPT.
Writing style | Opposite |
---|---|
Friendly | Assertive |
Professional | Casual |
Conversational | Serious |
Approachable | Unemotional |
Serious | Lighthearted |
Persuasive | Neutral |
Pro tip: If you have specific email branding guidelines that you want ChatGPT to follow, you can provide a sample of your ideal text and ask the AI to analyze it. Then, in your next prompt, ask ChatGPT to generate the output by mimicking the tone and style it has already analyzed.
Content is Only Part of The Equation — Deliverability Maximizes Your Email Impact
Artificial intelligence can help you produce stellar content, but it’ll all be for nothing if your emails fail to land where they matter most: your audience’s inbox.
That’s why deliverability holds the key to unlocking the full potential of your email marketing. And that’s why deliverability should be the number one factor you consider when choosing an email marketing service provider.
At Campaign Refinery, every aspect of our system is built around ensuring maximum deliverability:
- Automatic list cleaning tool.
- Engagement gamification to boost interactions.
- Mandatory domain authentication from day one.
- Strict policy on cold emailing and high unsubscribe rates.
- And more.
When you join Campaign Refinery, you join a community of fully vetted email marketers who follow all the best practices to reinforce the collective reputation for everyone.
Apply to join Campaign Refinery today and enjoy the benefits of cutting-edge deliverability!