Question about using AI to write email subject lines that actually get opened

I ran a test with 5,000 subscribers last month where I used ChatGPT to generate a subject line for a campaign and it was the worst open rate I have ever seen, so why are so many people acting like AI can just replace human copywriters for stuff like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

stone.thomas10d ago

Elizabeth's got a fair point about treating it like a junior assistant but even that misses something big. Those remixed subject lines still sound like they were written by a robot, all stiff and formal with weird word choices nobody uses in real life. Human copywriters know when to break grammar rules and write like actual people talk, which is what gets opens not some perfect soundin pseudo-english. Throwing data at AI and hope gets you a generic line that blends in with the other 50 AI generated emails people get every day, which is exactly why your numbers tanked.

elizabeth_williams10d ago

The trick is you gotta treat AI like a junior assistant, not a replacement - give it your best subject lines as examples first, then have it remix them.

pat_murray1610d ago

Exactly. @stone.thomas nailed it with the stiff robot thing. That's the real problem right there. AI doesn't know how to sound human because it doesn't actually live our lives. It never got burned by a bad subject line at 2am or learned the hard way that "Hey" works better than "Exclusive Offer." So when people feed it examples and hope for gold, they get polished garbage instead. You can't fake the instincts a real copywriter builds from years of trial and error.