This article has been written by Shilpa Shetty pursuing a Remote freelancing and profile building program from Skill Arbitrage.
This article has been edited and published by Shashwat Kaushik.
Table of Contents
Introduction
For a business to thrive in today’s cutthroat competitiveness, it has to spare resources for engaging the customer, creating brand awareness, sales, promotions, propaganda, building a loyal and lifetime relationship with customers and so much more. A newsletter is one such communication tool that can help the business with all of the above.
What is a newslettera
A type of grey literature, newsletters are basically printed or digital documentation that showcases some relevant information about a business to its current or prospective clientele. Undoubtedly, this makes newsletters a very essential tool in the field of marketing. Through periodic communication, it helps to bridge the gap between the business and its subscriber base.
Changing styles of a newsletter
Over time, the essence of a business newsletter has undergone a massive transformation. Gone are the days when text heavy pages of data, facts, figures and business targets were laid out in the most clinical fashion. The primary idea then was to put forth the message, that is all. Little attention was paid to the look and feel of the mode of communication. To put it simply, newsletters were all business.
Marketing strategists realised that the potential customer was only likely to give a look beyond the first glance if there was more information to gather while spending less time reading. It was time to give a creative makeover to the traditional format of a newsletter in an age when it has become crucial to grab the reader’s attention in the quickest and most engaging way.
A key element to market strategies
It is a no-brainer that the expansion of a business is directly proportional to the growth of its customer base. The latter can be achieved if the business is able to hook the audience in spite of existing competition. A newsletter can be a great tool in the arsenal of the marketing team for increasing engagement.
Changing trends: need for AI-generated newsletters
AI has revolutionised the way content is generated today. Gone are the endless hours of brainstorming sessions with the content team in order to generate story ideas. Furthermore, maintaining consistency in the quality and topicality of content is becoming a daunting task for businesses.
Leveraging AI for scalability and consistency
An AI newsletter generator cuts down on the time required to generate and then fine tune content. AI tools can handle this in no time with equal efficiency and creativity. No longer does one have to spend days creating a newsletter when an AI powered writing tool can do this in seconds. The amount of time saved in turn can be fruitfully spent on developing further marketing strategies, thereby increasing productivity. AI tools aid in eliminating the time spent on manual editing. AI-driven content is engaging and can be tailored to captivate the audience. In addition to the above advantages, using the AI generator renders the entire process to be cost efficient.
Clearing a path for the writer’s block
When the creative team is grappling to come up with topics for the upcoming editions of the newsletter, AI tools can quickly suggest umpteen possible ideas you could choose from. This would be an excellent way to start generating a repository of topics relevant to your business goals and achievements. Though you must keep in mind that these are merely suggestions, which may or may not help put something in place.
No compromise on quality
AI tools are a lifesaver, especially at times when it becomes tedious to create content manually. It could be due to a lack of resources, a shortage of manpower, a lack of creativity, cumbersome editing jobs, intense marketing demands and so many more. AI takes care of all these problems and delivers an end product that is compelling.
What is an AI newsletter generator
AI powered newsletter generators take in prompts to deliver proficient newsletters in a matter of seconds. There are many newsletter operators and platform options available. Their goal is to leverage AI analytics to create dynamic content to optimise reader engagement. With the help of AI tools, it has never been this easy to create curated content.
Best practises for employing AI for content compilation
There are always two ways of doing something: the average way and the smart way. Let us look at some smart ways of going about collating content using the AI newsletter generator.
- Remember that AI-generated content will only be as effective as the prompts you feed in. After all, AI will produce high-grade content automatically but only at the behest of the human mind. The more inclusive the prompt, the more relevant the delivered output will be. The prompt must be well structured, crisp and concise.
- You may need a minimum of 2-3 prompts until you get AI to produce the exact content you imagined for the newsletter. Rewording the instructions by adding or deleting pointers from you will help direct the AI tool on a focused path. With each new prompt, the tool is able to work through iterations leading to the most favourable output.
- The initial feed would be the rough draft. As you progress through several drafts by tweaking them to suit your purpose, the final outcome will be the one with the maximum impact.
- Clarity is key. To beat around the bush with AI is wasting useful time and resources. Here, you have at your command a powerful tool that needs direct instructions and not vague, complex statements. Simple does it here.
- You never have to settle for anything less than perfect. If you are dissatisfied with a certain portion of the AI-generated text, it is as simple as modifying your command, refining the input keywords, or adding on to the prompts till you get the desired output.
- An overload of information or insufficient data both defeat the purpose of the prompt. Know what you need from the machine and give it direct commands to do so.
- To blindly trust AI-generated content is foolishness. AI can only do best with what humans provide. You have to understand that working with AI is a series of trials and errors. If you think the AI content lacks impact, it is only because it can always be improved upon.
- Sometimes a simple prompt may generate redundant material. It is important to not just look for missing data while editing but also do away with the unessential bits. And this is where the human eye will play a crucial role.
- A well-written newsletter is one that is structured methodically. If the entire content of the newsletter is generated in one shot without a framework first, chances are it will be burdened with too much text. Essentially, you must work the content around an outline. This keeps AI focused on your article with no scope for wavering. The very first prompt does not often lead to the perfect outline of your newsletter. AI will try to gather as much in-depth analysis as possible. This is exactly what you should avoid.
- Once you have a general skeleton of your topic, prompt AI with headings and even subheadings. You will find that AI produces a seamless breakup of your text into specific titled paragraphs. Here, you can modify the size of the paragraphs and even modify long-worded headings and subheadings. In fact, this is where you can make modifications to suit your style and control the quality of the entire article.
- In case you run out of ideas for the subtopics, you can direct AI to generate them for you. Yes, it is as simple as that!
- The best part is that AI-driven text can be edited to preserve the desired personal tone and style of communication with the audience. It is important to weed out the robotic nature of certain statements and replace them with something with a personal touch. Change the framing of any sentences you are dissatisfied with.
- It goes without saying that, as the last step, you have to manually edit what the AI has generated. Unless fine tuned repeatedly, the format is mechanical, to say the least. And if you skip editing this, you are losing the personal touch with the audience. Yes, AI is the one providing the framework and ideas, but it is you who decides how much is too much.
- AI, too, is prone to making grammatical and punctuation errors, which is a big turn-off. Framing of sentences. Do not assume that if it is generated by AI, it will be factually correct all the time. Double checking data and facts never hurts anyone.
Strategies for generating newsletters using AI
Having a strategy ready helps us tackle a situation faster and more efficiently. Let us then look at some key strategies to keep in mind while generating a newsletter using AI.
- Before setting out to market any product or service, the business has to feel the pulse of the target audience. Firstly, analyse the requirements of the customer and cater to these specific needs. This could be done through surveys, interviews, polls or some other basic research. The more channelled your feed is, the more controlled the AI output will be, as you will see.
- AI should be utilised to create a brand name for the business.
- The newsletter, despite being AI-generated, must, and there are no buts about it, build a personal connection with the audience. You must retain the core essence of your business, which can be accomplished with the style and presentation of your newsletter. At no time should the content come across as dispassionate.
- There are a plethora of AI tools at your disposal. Use them to your advantage. Experiment with different newsletter formats before zeroing in on one template. Customising AI templates maintains consistency across the newsletter series. This makes for impactful personalisation.
- Use an AI image generator. There are a whole lot of elements that you can incorporate into the newsletter that can make it interactive. Try including poll reviews, videos and social media links, stories and anecdotes, graphics and images that will engage the audience, and, very importantly, a CTA that encourages the customer to take the next step.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AI can be our greatest ally or our greatest enemy, depending on how we use it. Technology may be taking over our lives, but we are still able to retain that human touch that separates man and machine. If you let AI generate content without interfering with suggestions and guidelines, the content ends up being nothing but robotic and unemotional. We must cleverly manipulate AI to sing our tunes. Like commanding to deliver text in a light-hearted and friendly tone or peppering the text with moving stories and relatable anecdotes. AI has a lot to offer, so pick and use it wisely.
References
- https://mailchimp.com/landers/newsletters
- https://www.beehiiv.com/features/artificial-intelligence
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-use-ai-create-newsletter-few-minutes-easy-peasy-ai-0n7lc