13 ways to use A.I. to help with Mailchimp
Recently I sent an email out about using AI for Mailchimp etc. You can read it (and subscribe so you don’t miss future ones) here.
Below are some tips and demos of how to do some of those things. Lots of them use Chat GPT, but others are using some different tools I’ve find and like. Enjoy!
But before you read on, it’s important to say that I firmly believe that AI is NOT a substitute for YOUR voice when it comes to emails, or in fact any other content. So all these ideas are shared with that in mind.
And a side-note. Mailchimp is beta testing its own AI right now, but as it’s only available to certain users on certain accounts, we’ll park that and come back to it for another day when it’s more widely availabe.
Right, here goes…
/1. Generate content ideas when you need some inspo
ChatGPT gets to know you over time. Ask it to generate e.g. 52 ideas for a short weekly email newsletters about x for your ideal customer avatar e.g. “Please generate 52 newsletter ideas with tips about weight loss for female vegans”. (I can’t help it and always have to say please and thank you.). Then create them in batches. I would draft them myself from scratch but you could ask AI to come up with a draft for you - ALWAYS put them in your own voice or the brand voice though, AI is not substitute for you.
/2. Check your spelling, grammar and punctuation
Spelling, punctuation and obvious grammar mistakes can really grate and immediately devalue your offering and brand. You can easily get it checked by copying and pasting your draft content and asking ChatGTP to check it. I usually specify UK English just to be on the safe side.
/3. Shorten long emails (a must)
Emails get very long very quickly, especially when read on a mobile. If you can say something in 5 words instead of 10, do it. Paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to to make it more concise. Then tweak what it comes up with to put it into the right voice and personality, but it really helps take out some of the unnecessary fluff.
/4. Design an automation sequence
Ask ChatGPT to e.g. “design a month long Mailchimp customer journey about cheesemaking following an initial free webinar. The goal is to sell a course.” The results weren’t perfect but a really good place to start for some inspiration.
/5. Turn your webinar, meeting or podcast into a newsletter, blog or scope of work (this saves SO much time and energy)
I use a fabulous CRM tool called UPilot (If you’ve never heard of it before take a look). It incorporates an AI tool which joins in my Zoom meetings, then generates different types of summaries depending on the type of meeting - so that might be a blog or a newsletter for a webinar, actions and next steps for a planning meeting, or a scope of work in a certain structure for new business calls. It even gives insight as to personality characteristics of the other attendees and suggests appropriate wording.
I’ve used Fathom and Otter in the past to do summaries and transcribe, but find Upilot is more tailored to my specific needs and has been revolutionary in the way I do things.
/6. Summarise survey results
If you’ve run a survey or questionnaire in Mailchimp or elsewhere, paste the results into ChatGPT and ask it to summarise key trends.
/7. See how long something will take to read
Potential readers are typically a lot more receptive to reading something if they know how long it will take to read. Paste in your content and ask ChatGPT how long it will take so that you can tell them.
/8. Repurpose your content
Use content you’ve already written or the transcript of a webinar or YouTube video (see #10 below) and ask for it to be turned into e.g. 10 social posts, a series of x emails, or 5 top tips etc.
/9. Generate subject and preview text ideas
Paste your content in and ask ChatGPT to suggest some subject and preview lines. You could multivariate test them in Mailchimp too.
/10. Summarise a Youtube video
Even if there are no subtitles or captions on a Youtube video (yours or anyone else’s), you can still get AI to summarise it to to turn into content for this, that and the other.
To do this, click on “more” just under any Youtube video, which will open up a grey box. There you’ll see the option to view the transcript. Click on that, select all, copy and paste into ChatGPT then ask it to summarise, repurpose, whatever.
And then of course, you can have some fun with tips 11 and 12…
/11. Re-write your email in another style
As it to rewrite your email in another style, from Shakespearean to rhyme to a bedtime story. It definitely depends on your audience and brand but it could turn a boring email into something splendid. Or dire. You choose.
/12. Turn it into a song
I’ve just discovered the app AI Song, pasted in my newsletter and turned it into a Disney movie styled song (but it could have been rap, opera, country etc etc). Bloody marvellous. You can do two in the free version, after that they want £49.99 so use your credits wisely….
/13. Turn it into an audio-version
I tried out using a clever tool called Murf.ai - you can paste your transcript in, choose a voice, pace, tone, accent, gender etc, and then it produces an audio version that you can then share and download. You can make tweaks to pronunciations and add in pauses etc to help the flow. A few of the pronunciations weren’t quite right but it was pretty good. You can listen to my attempt here, read by the lovely Hazel.