Using Chat GPT for Sales Emails

Chat GPT is all over the news right now. It’s an amazing tool which will probably change the marketing landscape in ways we can’t even imagine but it has limitations. Our email marketing experts put it to the test and here’s what you need to know.

ChatGPT is a powerful language generation model that you can use for many applications. Its ability to understand and respond to context, as well as complete a given prompt or text makes it a powerful tool in a marketers toolbox. However, it’s important to be aware of its limitations and take steps to mitigate any negative consequences. If you’ve not tried it, it’s open and free to the public and you can test it for yourself right now, free of charge.

It will provide precise explanations of complex ideas within seconds. Ask it to write 500 words about Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet and it does it straight away, convincingly. Ask it to summarise the key events of the French Revolution – no problem.

But what’s it like at creating marketing texts? If you believe the hype it’s pretty good, but as with most things, the truth is much more nuanced.  

One of the best things about Chat GPT is the speed it works at. I’ve spent my whole career in marketing and I’ve done a fair amount of copywriting. I can write a pretty good sales email, but it’ll take me an hour at least. Chat GPT can do it in seconds. Watching it generate line after line of perfectly written text is almost hypnotic.

But if you’re planning to use Chat GPT to write your sales emails, or any other kind of marketing text, there are things you need to know.

Chat GPT is only as good as the instructions you give it

Chat GPT will do exactly what you tell it to do. To get the best out of it, you must give it very specific instructions because:

1. Chat GPT sales emails tend to be very formulaic
2. It doesn’t know about your company style guide  
3. It’s not aware of your brand values
4. It’s not aware of your target audience or customer personas
5. It will not represent your company culture or appeal to that of your customers 

Let me give you an example. If you ask Chat GPT to write a sales email about two completely different products, it will write them in an almost identical way. We asked it to write a sales email about a child’s toy and a solar panel for a private residence. 

See for yourself. In both cases I simply asked “please write a sales letter for X product.” Here are the two emails side by side, unedited:

Despite dealing with different products, these two emails are very similar and that illustrates my point nicely.

Apart from the exclamation mark in the child’s toy email, there is no discernable difference in tone. When you break it down paragraph by paragraph you can see exactly how formulaic it is, practically identical, even down to the sentence structure and punctuation. Once you’ve read a few basic sales emails from Chat GPT you’ll be able to spot them a mile off. 

The problem is nothing to do with Chat GPT, it’s done exactly what we asked of it. The more information you give it the better it becomes.

A human copywriter would know that the audience and purpose of these two emails are different but Chat GPT won’t make inferences like that. You have to tell it precisely what you want.

But that’s not all. There are at least two other very serious problems with these sales messages. If you’ve not spotted them, go back and have another look. 

Notice the first word of each paragraph, it’s all about the company or the product. A good sales letter is customer focused, it should make the customer the hero of the story, not the company. Neither email talks to the customer directly until paragraph 4 and where’s the call to action? What is the customer to do if they want more information? These messages are so hopelessly focused on the company and product, that they don’t tell the reader what to do next.

To get the best out of Chat GPT you must make no assumptions

So how do we go about fixing these problems? To get the best out of Chat GPT you must make no assumptions, and tell it precisely what you want and who it is writing for. 

In our second attempt we rephrased the question and gave it a lot more detail. I think the result speaks for itself.

The request was this:

“Please write a customer focused sales email selling solar panels for private residences. Note that the company tone of voice is positive, direct, authoritative and scientific. Please include a persuasive call to action in two different places.”

The result is better but it still feels like the tone is not quite right: 

P.S. Don’t hesitate, reply to this email or give us a call to schedule your consultation today and take advantage of our limited-time discount offer on solar panel installations. Act now and start saving money while supporting a sustainable future.

I have to admit that the technology behind this AI is incredible, but when it comes to persuasive sales messages it needs to be in the hands of someone who already knows what good looks like. 

We spent hours tinkering and tweaking the precise terms to get the best sales email from Chat GPT and in the end we gave up. 

… “Make it a bit less formal”… “please write it with a lower/higher reading age”… “make it friendlier”… “include the following benefits…” 

My advice is to use Chat GPT to help you with the basic ideas. Get it to do the research, ask it to list the features and benefits. Make it suggest new subject lines or more persuasive CTAs, but do the writing yourself. No one knows your business and your customers better than you do. 

All customers are people and all businesses are made up of people. That’s a fundamental truth which we ignore at our peril. 

But what do you think? Have you used Chat GPT to create persuasive and convincing sales emails? What about the things we haven’t talked about here, like social media updates, or landing pages? 

Don’t forget if you are looking for a team to manage your email marketing then you can contact our expert team here at Marketscan.