• by Ray Schultz , April 27, 2023

One hot topic at last week’s Email Insider Summit was, perhaps predictably, generative AI. Numerous brands are trying it -- but uncertainty remains, judging by a panel titled, Chat GPT Is That You: Ai and the Future of Email Content. 

Take JOANN Fabrics. The company has for seven years used Phrasee, but is still trying to wrap its head around ChatGPT: It is trying that for headlines and SMS copy, but not yet at scale, says Olivier De Ridder, manager, CRM and Loyalty Strategy. 

AdoreMe has tried Chat for two things: product recommendation and text generation. It has proven useful, on a test basis, for product descriptions, pointing to possible time savings.  “It used to take 20 to 30 hours a month for copywriters to work on descriptions,” says Gaelle Ouggourni, CRM manager for AdoreMe. “Now it takes one to three hours.”  But there are drawbacks: It’s hard to correct and tweak the model and for some things the copywriters feel “it would have been more efficient just writing the copy.” 

At travel company Abercrombie & Kent, “AI is not super-heavily on our radar,” says Jimmy Wojtila, manager, digital marketing.  “We’re trying to tap into chatGPR for creative briefing and SEO,” low-hanging opportunities. One limitation is that “our writing team has experienced a lot of the destinations.” He added, “it’s not something where AI can just browse the web and come up with a description of the travel.” 

What are the drawbacks to date? 

For JOANN Fabrics, Phrasee has “learned all the corpus of our data” and what has resonated with the audience,” de Ridder said. “In contrast, “ChatGPT sucks all the content on the web: It’s more generic, it doesn’t always have that voice.”  

For Abercrombie & Kent, “I’m curious I’m curious if will ever get to a point where we can have the writer powering the ChatGPT: Here’s everything you need to know,”  Wojtila  said. It may work for short-form copy, but Abercrombie & Kent still does a lot of long-form print. “I’m not sure it will ever work for that,” he added. 

Ouggourni recommends that brands ask their team to list all their ideas, however wild. Then they can be winnowed down and the feasibility analyzed for each use case.