August 26, 2024 – The Blog Pros

August 26, 2024September 9, 2024

Understanding Gutenberg Blocks, Patterns, and Templates

Developers suffer in the great multitudes whom their sacred block-based websites cannot reach.
Johannes Gutenberg (probably)

Long time WordPresser, first time Gutenberger here. I’m a fan even though I’m still anchored to a classic/block hybrid setup. I believe Johanes himself would be, too, trading feather pens for blocks. He was a forward-thinking 15th-century inventor, after all.

My enthusiasm for Gutenberg-ness is curbed at the theming level. I’ll sling blocks all day long in the Block Editor, but please, oh please, let me keep my classic PHP templates and the Template Hierarchy that comes with it. The separation between theming and editing is one I cherish. It’s not that the Site Editor and its full-site editing capabilities scare me. It’s more that I fail to see the architectural connection between the Site and Block Editors. There’s a connection for sure, so the failure of not understanding it is more on me than WordPress.

The WP Minute published a guide that clearly — and succinctly — describes the relationships between WordPress blocks, patterns, and templates. There are plenty of other places that do the same, but this guide is organized nicely in that it starts with the blocks as the lowest-level common denominator, then builds on top of it to show how patterns are comprised of blocks used for content layout, synced patterns are the same but are one of many that are edited together, and templates are full page layouts cobbled from different patterns and a sprinkle of other “theme blocks” that are the equivalent of global components in a design system, say a main nav or a post loop.

The guide outlines it much better, of course:

Gutenberg Blocks: The smallest unit of content
Patterns: Collections of blocks for reuse across your site
Synced Patterns: Creating “master patterns” for site-wide updates
Synced Pattern Overrides: Locking patterns while allowing specific edits
Templates: The structural framework of your WordPress site

That “overrides” enhancement to the synced patterns feature is new to me. I’m familiar with synced patterns (with a giant nod to Ganesh Dahal) but must’ve missed that in the WordPress 6.6 release earlier this summer.

I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever go with a truly modern WordPress full-site editing setup wholesale, out-of-the-box. I don’t feel pressured to, and I believe WordPress doesn’t care one way or another. WordPress’s ultimate selling point has always been its flexibility (driven, of course, by the massive and supportive open-source community behind it). It’s still the “right” tool for many types of projects and likely will remain so as long as it maintains its support for classic, block, and hybrid architectures.

Understanding Gutenberg Blocks, Patterns, and Templates originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

August 26, 2024

Quick Hit #13

Happy birthday, Chris Coyier — and thank you for CSS-Tricks as well as everything you do at CodePen, ShopTalk, Boost, and even your personal blog!

Quick Hit #13 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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August 26, 2024September 9, 2024

Generating Unique Random Numbers In JavaScript Using Sets

JavaScript comes with a lot of built-in functions that allow you to carry out so many different operations. One of these built-in functions is the Math.random() method, which generates a random floating-point number that can then be manipulated into integers.

However, if you wish to generate a series of unique random numbers and create more random effects in your code, you will need to come up with a custom solution for yourself because the Math.random() method on its own cannot do that for you.

In this article, we’re going to be learning how to circumvent this issue and generate a series of unique random numbers using the Set object in JavaScript, which we can then use to create more randomized effects in our code.

Note: This article assumes that you know how to generate random numbers in JavaScript, as well as how to work with sets and arrays.

Generating a Unique Series of Random Numbers

One of the ways to generate a unique series of random numbers in JavaScript is by using Set objects. The reason why we’re making use of sets is because the elements of a set are unique. We can iteratively generate and insert random integers into sets until we get the number of integers we want.

And since sets do not allow duplicate elements, they are going to serve as a filter to remove all of the duplicate numbers that are generated and inserted into them so that we get a set of unique integers.

Here’s how we are going to approach the work:

Create a Set object.
Define how many random numbers to produce and what range of numbers to use.
Generate each random number and immediately insert the numbers into the Set until the Set is filled with a certain number of them.

The following is a quick example of how the code comes together:

function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  // 1: Create a Set object
  let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
  while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
    // 2: Generate each random number
    uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
  }
  // 3: Immediately insert them numbers into the Set...
  return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
}
// ...set how many numbers to generate from a given range
console.log(generateRandomNumbers(5, 5, 10));

What the code does is create a new Set object and then generate and add the random numbers to the set until our desired number of integers has been included in the set. The reason why we’re returning an array is because they are easier to work with.

One thing to note, however, is that the number of integers you want to generate (represented by count in the code) should be less than the upper limit of your range plus one (represented by max + 1 in the code). Otherwise, the code will run forever. You can add an if statement to the code to ensure that this is always the case:

function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  // if statement checks that count is less than max + 1
  if (count > max + 1) {
    return "count cannot be greater than the upper limit of range";
  } else {
    let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
    while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
      uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
    }
    return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
  }
}
console.log(generateRandomNumbers(5, 5, 10));

Using the Series of Unique Random Numbers as Array Indexes

It is one thing to generate a series of random numbers. It’s another thing to use them.

Being able to use a series of random numbers with arrays unlocks so many possibilities: you can use them in shuffling playlists in a music app, randomly sampling data for analysis, or, as I did, shuffling the tiles in a memory game.

Let’s take the code from the last example and work off of it to return random letters of the alphabet. First, we’ll construct an array of letters:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// rest of code

Then we map the letters in the range of numbers:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);

In the original code, the generateRandomNumbers() function is logged to the console. This time, we’ll construct a new variable that calls the function so it can be consumed by randomAlphabets:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);

Now we can log the output to the console like we did before to see the results:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];

// generateRandomNumbers()

const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);
console.log(randomAlphabets);

And, when we put the generateRandomNumbers`()` function definition back in, we get the final code:

const englishAlphabets = [
  'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 
  'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'
];
function generateRandomNumbers(count, min, max) {
  if (count > max + 1) {
    return "count cannot be greater than the upper limit of range";
  } else {
    let uniqueNumbers = new Set();
    while (uniqueNumbers.size < count) {
      uniqueNumbers.add(Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) + min);
    }
    return Array.from(uniqueNumbers);
  }
}
const randomIndexes = generateRandomNumbers(5, 0, 25);
const randomAlphabets = randomIndexes.map((index) => englishAlphabets[index]);
console.log(randomAlphabets);

So, in this example, we created a new array of alphabets by randomly selecting some letters in our englishAlphabets array.

You can pass in a count argument of englishAlphabets.length to the generateRandomNumbers function if you desire to shuffle the elements in the englishAlphabets array instead. This is what I mean:

generateRandomNumbers(englishAlphabets.length, 0, 25);

Wrapping Up

In this article, we’ve discussed how to create randomization in JavaScript by covering how to generate a series of unique random numbers, how to use these random numbers as indexes for arrays, and also some practical applications of randomization.

The best way to learn anything in software development is by consuming content and reinforcing whatever knowledge you’ve gotten from that content by practicing. So, don’t stop here. Run the examples in this tutorial (if you haven’t done so), play around with them, come up with your own unique solutions, and also don’t forget to share your good work. Ciao!

August 26, 2024

The Top 4 Roadblocks to Your Team’s Productivity and How AI Can Solve Them, According to Asana’s Head of Corporate Marketing

You open your computer on a Monday morning, and you have a few Slack messages about a campaign you're launching on Tuesday.

After you‘ve answered those, you check your inbox and see you’ve been tagged in some slides for that same campaign.

Once you're done responding, you hop on a Zoom call to chat with stakeholders about last-minute tasks that need to be completed for launch. A few of the stakeholders would like you to email a follow-up from the meeting, so you do.

But others would rather you tag them in the appropriate Google docs, so you do that, too.

Suddenly it‘s 1pm, and you’ve done nothing substantial on your to-do list to get this project launched. Your entire day has been hopping in and out of various messaging apps, slide decks, and Zoom calls, just trying to get everyone aligned.

Sound familiar?

I spoke with Jake Cerf, Head of Corporate Marketing at Asana, to untangle the biggest challenges most teams face when it comes to productivity in 2024 – and how you can solve them.

What Teams Get Wrong When It Comes to Productivity

Jake empathizes with the chaos that can ensue when you don't focus on creating efficient processes for team-wide productivity.

“It can get chaotic,” he told me, adding, “Before I joined Asana, I reflected back on how I spent my time coordinating with folks — and it was a mess. We would be on email, Slack, and Google docs, and slides. And you never really knew who was doing what, and when, and it was too easy to lose sight of the objective we were all after.”

Which sounds painfully relatable. Fortunately, he has some tried-and-true tips for cleaning up your team's processes and creating more scalable options to improve cross-functional collaboration.

1. Each team leader needs to know how their work ladders up to corporate objectives — and they need to make it clear in their workflows.

People always want to know how their work connects to broader strategic initiatives. They want to feel seen, valued, and know they are making an impact. So much of a leader's job is about making sure people are working on the right priorities, and aligning to goals that move the needle.

That’s what makes a product like Asana so crucial. Jake has an easy time ensuring he isn‘t micro-managing his team on specific tasks, and that’s because in Asana he can see how each sub-task his team is responsible for ladders up to the company's key objectives for 2024.

Additionally, to solve for conflicting cross-department goals, it can be helpful to use one centralized productivity tool that highlights the top-down priorities for the company.

“As a leader, so much of our job is making sure people are working on the right things, helping unblock team members and enabling them to have a North star. It's good for productivity because when folks feel like they're working on things that matter, they do better work,” Jake says.

He adds, “You don't have to be as in-the-weeds on the details. You can tell team members the what and the why, and they can figure the rest out. But being clear about big picture objectives unlocks productivity up, down, and across the organization.”

If you‘re dealing with productivity issues, start by ensuring each leader is aligned on the major company objectives for 2024 – and then task them with demonstrating how all of their team’s projects ladder up to that ultimate goal. If a task doesn‘t fit, it’s time to consider re-focusing on the activities that do.

2. Assign your AI a "role" to uplevel your team's productivity.

There's been plenty of conversation surrounding AI over the past two years, but people are still skeptical about the improvements it can make to their daily lives.

In fact, 62% of marketers globally believe people should use some AI in their roles. For Jake, AI has proven much more useful as a teammate rather than just a tool.

"My life changed drastically when I stopped prompting AI with generic requests like, 'Please write this blog post‘, and instead honed in on who I wanted AI to be: ’Please write this blog post as if you're a tech writer at a large-scale SaaS company.'"

Jake highly recommends assigning AI a “role” when leveraging AI for productivity.

“When teams are working on an important initiative, and you give each AI bot its own specific role, the output is much greater. Let's say you're writing a blog post — you can assign AI to be the editor, the fact-checker, or the content strategist.”

“Or,” He adds, “if you use tools like Asana, you’ll have access to AI that is one of the world's greatest project managers. It can help you unblock issues and triage requests and make sure people are working on the right things.”

Ideally, the productivity tools you leverage already have AI capabilities built-in. If not, look into which plug-ins or external tools you might use to increase efficiency.

3. Leverage AI to minimize busywork.

The antithesis of productivity is busywork.

If your team is bogged down by menial tasks, they likely don‘t have the energy or time to focus on the big picture objectives that account for most of your team’s impact.

That's a major roadblock – and one that can be solved with AI.

Jake offers the example of repurposing content as one opportunity for increased productivity. He says, “With AI, you can take a keynote presentation and ask AI to draft a blog post on the keynote. Or, you can take your keynote script and ask AI to design the presentation itself.”

He continues, “Finding new avenues to increase the longevity and impact of your content is one of the best ways to use AI.”

Additionally, Jake encourages marketers to leverage AI for content creation, as well as more creative outputs like manager reviews, sending feedback to teammates, riffing on ideas, role playing scenarios, and more.

4. Have one centralized workspace for teams to work cross-functionally.

Finally, none of this is possible without creating a strong foundation for efficient, scalable cross-functional collaboration.

Remember those slide decks and Google docs and Slack messages and emails I mentioned earlier? Why not try to put more of your work in one centralized place?

“Productivity comes down to visibility,” Jake says. “Your team needs to be rowing in the same direction. Having a tool like Asana has been super helpful for our team productivity — you need a place where you can set your goals and then track all of the team's work and hold people accountable.”

“Plus,” he adds, “It's crucial you use the same centralized workspace when you're setting strategy so that you have alignment around the tasks and initiatives that will help you achieve your goals.”

In other words – jumping between 30 different messaging and content creation apps and tools isn‘t conducive to long-term productivity. As a leader, it’s your job to figure out how to centralize as much as you can in one place – and then use AI to supercharge it all.

To learn more about how HubSpot and Asana are helping marketers drive productivity, take a look at the HubSpot and Asana integration available today.

August 26, 2024

AI Email Marketing: How to Use It Effectively [Research + Tools]

Email marketing is integral to any marketing strategy because it’s a great way to generate leads and convert audiences.

Whether you’re creating your first strategy or looking to modify your process, AI email marketing tools can help you save time, optimize your strategy, and meet your email goals.

In this piece, I’ll go over how AI email marketing tools work, new data about how marketers currently use AI for email marketing, and a list of tools you can leverage in your role.

Table of Contents

What is AI email marketing?
Why should you use AI email marketing?
What are the challenges of AI in email marketing?
How Marketers Are Using AI in Email Marketing [New Research]
15 AI Email Marketing Tools

What is AI email marketing?

AI email marketing is a machine-learning-powered process that helps marketers create email campaigns that reach the right audiences at the right time with the right messages.

AI email marketing tools use data (like your historical performance data) to help you optimize your email strategy, automation to help you save time on repetitive tasks (like triggering an email workflow), and generative AI to help you create email content.

When using AI in email marketing, you can do things like:

Analyze past email performance to identify how to optimize your email strategies, like the best time to send your emails or the subject lines that get the most clicks.
Compile email analytics so you understand the health of your campaigns.
Trigger email workflows after people take a specific action.
Clean up your email lists to improve deliverability.
Write compelling copy that speaks to your audience.
Personalize email content to specific audience segments.

Some tools have one specific function, like a generative AI email tool, while others offer multiple features.

Why should you use AI in email marketing?

I've found that the most significant benefit of using AI in email marketing is that it saves time while improving performance. The routine processes you spend time on can happen instantly, and you can launch your optimized campaigns faster.

Most AI email marketing tools are also powered by machine learning, meaning that they use data points (from your business and sometimes your industry) to help you optimize your email strategy.

You won’t be left to guess what works best because the AI can look at your past emails, and you can benchmark your performance against competitors to see where you can improve.

If you’re interested in learning more about the impact of AI on marketing, check out this Marketing Against The Grain episode about marketing opportunities that AI unlocks for business.

Click here to listen to the full episode.

What are the challenges with AI in email marketing?

Of course, using AI in email marketing is not without its challenges. AI tools are still relatively new in terms of technology, so they’re not perfect.

Here are a few challenges marketers face when using AI in email marketing and how they solve those issues.

Tone

Anyone who’s asked ChatGPT to write an email for them knows the first output will usually sound formal. Tone is undoubtedly the biggest challenge marketers face when using generative AI for email marketing.

Most AI tools need to be trained to match your brand’s voice and tone, and even then, you’ll probably still need to edit it to sound exactly how you want.

Meg O'Neill, co-founder of Intuitive Marketing Collective, gets around this challenge by using clear and specific prompts.

“I want [my emails] to sound like I’m talking to a friend,” says O’Neill. “I’ve added this requirement to my prompt, and it’s helped a lot. Sometimes, I’ll give [the AI tool] the name of a famous business person and ask it to write in a similar tone.”

Quality

Whether you use AI to write the body copy of your email, generate subject line ideas, or outline an email funnel structure, the quality of the overall content isn’t going to be perfect the first time around.

“The quality is not always there,” says Jeanne Jennings, Founder and Chief Strategist for Email Optimization Shop, an email marketing consultancy.

To overcome this challenge, Jennings takes a collaborative approach by “micro-managing the AI tool at each stage to get the quality content I need. Without my collaborative approach, the output is usually junk,” she states.

Data Accuracy

Ben Schreiber, Head of ecommerce at Latico Leathers, says the biggest challenge he’s faced using AI in email marketing is data accuracy and integration.

“Good quality data is paramount to the success of using AI systems since any inaccuracies may lead to wrong output results,” says Schreiber.

“We have had issues with outdated or incomplete data, which directly affects how well or poorly our campaigns perform.”

How Marketers Are Using AI in Email Marketing [New Research]

Our State of AI in Marketing report surveyed 1,062 U.S. marketing and advertising professionals about how they’re currently using AI.

For starters, AI usage for marketing has increased significantly since 2023.

74% of marketers who responded to the survey said they use at least one AI marketing tool.

While chatbots are the most popular marketing tool used by marketers, 25% of marketers use AI through existing CRM and marketing tools with AI-enhanced features.

Here are a few specific ways marketers are using AI for email marketing.

Content Creation

By far, the most common use case for AI tools among marketers is content creation. Of respondents who report using AI, 43% say they use it for content creation.

While marketers use AI for everything from creating images to creating outlines, the most popular type of content to create is written content.

There’s no denying AI’s ability to generate text — both long-form and short-form — in an instant, making it a great tool for email campaigns.

In fact, 47% of marketers use AI to create email marketing content such as newsletters or campaigns.

Testing

From subject lines to body copy to design elements, testing is essential to increase engagement and ultimately improve your email marketing performance.

Of marketers, 27% say they use AI tools for brainstorming, and it’s safe to say testing email content falls into that category.

Not sure how to use AI for experimenting or brainstorming?

“Ask AI to provide you with specific testing ideas so you always have a fantastic list to choose from to continue improving your email performance,” recommends email marketer Bethany Fiocchi Root, CEO and founder of Oceanview Marketing.

Data Collection

Email marketing relies on data, but data collection can be a time-consuming process for busy marketers. That’s where AI comes in.

Not only can AI tools help automate data collection — decreasing time spent on these tasks significantly — they can be more precise with the information.

A majority of marketers (including those who don’t currently use AI) agree that AI can help their organizations share data more effectively.

From a leadership standpoint, 39% of marketing directors agree that AI and automation tools help employees make data-driven decisions.

And the more data you have, the more you can personalize your email marketing.

In fact, 69% of marketers agree that AI tools can help them personalize the experience their customers get.

Automation

Finally, marketers use generative AI to automate their processes. With AI, everything from scheduling email campaigns to email data entry is taken care of.

Of the marketers surveyed, 75% say using AI for automation helps them reduce time spent on manual tasks and more time on critical or creative tasks.

In other words, AI helps them focus on the aspects of the job they enjoy rather than on administrative tasks.

15 AI Email Marketing Tools

1. HubSpot AI Tools

Click here to learn more about HubSpot AI tools.

HubSpot has multiple email marketing tools and features to leverage to drive clicks and conversions.

AI Features

Email Marketing Software that helps you easily create email workflows and triggers to reach your target audiences with the right messages at all stages of their journey.
Inbox automation tool that scans your emails and recommends tasks based on email content and can auto-populate contact properties (like name and phone number) from every first-time email to create a customer profile.
Content assistant uses generative AI to help you write high-quality email content, and you can ask ChatSpot to quickly write things like professional follow-up emails or thank you notes to prospects.

Price: Free tools are available. Starter plans cost $20 per month. Professional plans cost $890 per month. Enterprise plans cost $3,600 per month.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s email automation software helps ecommerce businesses create automated email workflows that reach audiences at the best possible time.

AI Features

Its Content Optimizer compares your email data to industry benchmarks to give you recommendations for optimizing your campaigns and email content.
You can choose from different versions of AI-generated content that match your intent and brand tone.
Its Creative Assistant leverages your brand assets to create unique email designs you can personalize to different contacts.

Price: Free forever plans are available. Essential plans cost $13 per month. Standard plans cost $20 per month. Premium plans cost $350 per month.

3. Sendgrid

Sendgrid helps you create an automated email marketing process with custom workflows and triggers.

AI Features

Its real-time API scans your email lists and removes junk or undeliverable email addresses to lower your bounce rate and ensure you reach more people.
Get data-driven insights and recommendations for improvement based on your historical metrics and email performance.
AI paces your email send and monitors your reputation with ISPs.

Price: Free trials are available. Basic plans cost $15 per month. Advanced plans cost $60 per month.

4. Phrasee

Phrasee uses AI to help you create effective email campaigns and content to share with your audience.

AI Features

Its deep learning model and language insights leverage your historical data to tell you what works best with your audience and what inspires clicks for an optimized campaign.
The Magic Button helps you generate email content (like subject lines or in-email CTAs) that will resonate with your audience.
It always uses your custom guidelines and messaging to ensure everything you create is on-brand.

Price: Contact for pricing.

5. Drift

Drift offers an AI-powered inbox management tool that helps you clean up your email lists and improve deliverability.

AI Features

Its Email Bots leverage machine learning to interpret emails and help you reply with engaging, conversational emails that inspire responses.
AI can qualify a lead as ready for sales and automatically introduce the prospect to the right salesperson for seamless marketing to sales handoff.
Use different Email Bots for your unique business need, like the follow-up email bot, abandoned chat email bot, and webinar email bot.

Price: $2,500 per month.

6. GetResponse

Use Get Response to design behavior-based email workflows to engage with audiences at key moments with content personalized to their needs.

AI Features

Share keywords or phrases, email goals, and tone with the GPT-powered email generator that leverages industry data to produce emails most likely to increase your conversions.
Display different images, text, or AI-driven product recommendations in each email.
The AI subject line generator helps you test subject lines and learn what stands out in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Price: A free 30-day trial is available; paid plans start at $19 per month.

7. Levity

Levity’s software helps you manage your inbox, understand your email health, and save time.

AI Features

Build an AI tool unique to your business by uploading your data that it will learn from and use to make human-level decisions.
Create different AI blocks for every email workflow you want to run (like a workflow for responding to emails).
Share unique categorization criteria with your AI to automatically sort emails as soon as you receive them.

Price: A 30-day free trial is available. Startup plans cost $49 per month. Business plans cost $139 per month.

8. Superhuman

Superhuman is an AI-powered inbox management tool that helps you streamline your processes. Best for teams that use Gmail or Outlook.

AI Features

Immediately sort incoming emails into a split inbox based on your custom rules so you can sort spam from genuine humans and focus on what needs attention.
Use its Snippets tool to create pre-built templates for phrases, paragraphs, or entire emails that you can quickly add to emails to automate responses.
Set reminders for email tasks, like following up on unanswered emails or a reminder to respond to a message you snoozed for later.

Price: Starter plans cost $30 per month. Growth plans cost $45 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

Most of the tools listed above have multiple AI features, like email writing help to automated inbox sorting. Below, we’ll go over AI email marketing tools that only offer generative features.

9. Hive

Hive offers an easy-to-use and time-saving tool for your email marketing. Simply share a brief prompt of what you’re looking for with its Notes AI, and it’ll help you generate a perfect response.

Price: There is a free forever plan. Teams plans cost $12 per user a month. Enterprise pricing is available.

10. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that you can use to write your marketing emails, and all you have to do is enter a descriptive prompt into the chat. It’s a conversational tool, so you can ask it to rewrite the email until you’re satisfied.

Price: There is a free research preview. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month.

11. Zapier

Zapier runs on Zaps, automated workflows you can customize to your needs. You can create an email-based Zap to generate email copy with an API key from OpenAI.

Whenever you receive an email matching your Zaps rules, it’ll prompt GPT-3 to write an appropriate response.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Professional plans cost $19.99 per month. Team plans cost $69 per month. Contact Zapier for Enterprise pricing.

12. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is an email copywriting tool you can use to create high-converting emails. It can write email content for you, suggest subject lines, and help you stay on track with suggestions to improve email quality.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Starter plans cost $36 per month. Advanced plans cost $186 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

13. Compose.ai

Compose.ai is powered by GPT-3 and helps you write personalized and on-brand emails.

Its autocomplete feature suggests how you can finish what you’re writing, and its suggestions and generations are always tone- and brand-relevant because it learns your unique brand voice.

It’s an always-free Chrome extension, so you can easily use it on your favorite sites.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Premium plans cost $9.99 per month. Ultimate plans cost $29.99 per month. Enterprise pricing is available.

14. Grammarly

Grammarly’s machine-learning copy-editing tool recognizes in-text errors and suggests how to fix them. I use this feature all the time to assist in my content writing.

GrammarlyGo extracts the context from short prompts and helps you instantly generate appropriate email replies. Leverage the tools on its website, as a Chrome extension, or within your favorite email client.

Price: A free forever plan is available. Premium plans cost $12 per month. Business plans cost $15 per month.

15. Jasper

Jasper Commands helps you create effective marketing emails quickly with machine learning algorithms.

Use it to write entire emails or email subject lines, and its outputs always match your business’ unique writing style and tone for brand consistency.

Price: Free trial is available. Creator plans cost $39 per month. Pro plans cost $59 per month. Custom business pricing is available.

Leveling Up Your Emails With AI

From writing copy to generating subject lines and even collecting and organizing data to improve personalization, a majority of marketers agree that using AI for email marketing makes their job easier.

When AI tools are used as just that — tools — they can improve your email marketing campaigns and give you more time to spend on creative tasks that make you better at your job.

August 26, 2024

Marketing for the lulz

It often surprises people to learn just how unfunny making comedy can be. I worked with this week’s master of marketing some years ago out of The Onion’s HQ, so we’ve both been behind the scenes. A business is still a business, and marketing is still marketing.

Which isn’t to say it can’t be a helluva lot of fun.

I talked to Hassan S. Ali, the creative director of brand at Hootsuite, where he describes his job as “leading a team of creatives to ruffle B2B marketing feathers for an equally feather-ruffling product.”

Case in point: His team recently produced a (mostly) SFW commercial that promises to “uncover social media insights” by repositioning a local green space as a nudist park.

Lesson 1: Comedy begins with empathy.

Since I last saw him, Ali’s had stints as the brand creative director for Potbelly’s and now Hootsuite. At both places, he’s brought his sometimes wry, sometimes absurdist humor into play.

I ask him to spill his secrets. What can I tell our readers that will make them funnier marketers?

His answer is no joke: If you want to successfully use humor in marketing, start by building trust and practicing empathy. He gives me this example:

Say you’ve got an idea for a hilarious new ad campaign, but you keep hearing that the stakeholders “don’t want to have fun.” (Cyndi Lauper weeps.)

Ali asks, “Is it that, or is it that they’re kind of worried that they’re going to spend money on this,” and if it flops, they’ll be reprimanded — or worse?

“That’s a very human emotion. So if we go into these conversations with, ‘Listen, I hear this might be a little outside of your norm,’” you’re immediately showing empathy, even if the person hasn’t voiced their fears.

Lesson 2: Data can make you funnier.

“Data helps inform and persuade and build that trust,” Ali says. He’s “definitely gotten a CEO who’s shifted in their chair a little bit” during a pitch, so he knows something about persuading the risk-averse.

When you’re asking stakeholders to work outside their comfort zones, you “oftentimes need the data to show to them that this is actually what surveyed people want.” Ali points me to Hootsuite’s 2024 social media consumer report: 55% of the 6000+ respondents enjoy brand content that “makes me laugh.”

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A practical tip ties this all together: Ali will sometimes shoot a funny version and a straighter version of an ad, and test both. Building trust means showing “that you’re able to communicate the needs of the business in a way your audience cares about.”

Lesson 3: Use the peanut butter method.

“Everyone hates advertising, but they're okay being sold to,” Ali says.

It’s like using peanut butter to sneak your dog a pill. “If people are willing to be sold to, pitch the pill in something yummy. People will watch it.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that we are all the hapless dogs in this analogy.)

“I often think that the best ads are ones we can't measure, because they're shared in a group chat with friends.” I sincerely hope nobody is working on a pixel that can track my group chats, but it’s true that if somebody shares an ad, it’s because it’s both funny and emotionally resonant.

Maybe you see a funny ad for diapers. Your sister’s just had a baby, and you share the ad in the family group chat. “All of a sudden, there’s a bond formed through this piece of advertising.” And it goes beyond “here, buy this thing,” Ali says.

Without that (hopefully imaginary) group-chat tracking pixel, traditional marketing metrics won’t necessarily be of much use.

“But what did you solve for the customer?” Ali asks. “Those are the real results.” The more we can focus on that, “the better we’ll be as marketers.”

Lingering Questions

Each person we interview gives us a question for our next master of marketing. Last week, Wistia CEO Chris Savage asked:

What’s something you’re doing that’s working so well, you’re afraid to tell others about it?

Ali: I have to say that the creative brand team at Hootsuite is working so well that it‘s like a secret. Just to watch the collaboration and the teamwork that occurs here — it’s something I’ve never experienced before.

And Ali’s question for our next master in marketing:

What advice would you give yourself when you were first starting out?

Come back next Monday for the answer!