Writing Impactful Email Headers Using Gen AI
Creating snappy and eye-catching email headers for marketing campaigns can often be difficult. In today’s digital landscape, customers are inundated with offers and announcements, which may feel overwhelming. Standing out from the crowd is essential, and can mean the difference between an email being opened and read or ignored altogether. Starting in the September 2024 CI360 release, there is a new feature available to customers: Gen AI email headers.
How it works
When a user creates an email header, there is now a button available which can suggest Gen AI alternatives. When this is selected, a call is made behind the scenes to the AWS Bedrock API, which is used to run the Anthropic LLM and return a suitable subject header.
In this example, the user starts with their own user-written header: “Now 25% off all sunglasses”. When they click the “Create Gen AI Alternatives” button, it brings up a list of suggested options created by Gen-AI.
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If a user didn’t like any of them, they could select “refresh subject line options”, which would re-run the API call and bring back different results.
However, they liked the "Sunny Days Ahead..." suggestion. So it was selected and now becomes the new header. There is also a magic wand symbol next to it to highlight that it has been Gen-AI generated.
Note that, as well as being flagged in the UI, it is also flagged in the underlying data. The field “variant_source_NM” in the “MD_Task_X_Variant” table denotes whether it is a header produced by the user or Gen AI.
A user can also provide instructions to the LLM to help guide the results. For example, to set a certain tone or be targeted to a specific audience.
In the examples above, the user has added the free text instructions in orange. This has then been factored into what the LLM has generated.
Once selected, the Gen AI created header is used in the same way that a human generated header would be. The remainder of the email creation process is exactly the same.
Best Practice
- Getting the best results is sometimes an iterative process. The first prompt might not get the best results. If you are not happy with the first set of results, then refresh the list. The new suggestions are still based on your original subject.
- It is important to be as specific as possible. If there are key words or messages required in your heading, make sure they are provided in the original prompt.
- Be intentional with the tone of your original subject. Unless tone guidance has been provided, the AI-generated suggestions will match the tone in the original subject.
Merge Tags
Merge tags are supported in this feature, with the following caveats:
- If you include a merge tag in the original subject, make sure that the merge tags that the Gen AI produces match your original one.
- You get better suggestions when the name of your merge tag describes what it represents. GenAI uses merge tags for context clues when suggesting replies.
- You can use a sample value instead of a merge tag in the original subject. After you select the generated subject to use, you can replace the sample value with the appropriate merge tag.
- Conditional merge tags are supported. For best results, do not use more than one conditional merge tag in a subject.
- Ensure that there is enough content preceding and following the merge tag for GenAI to use when figuring out how to place the merge tag in the suggestions.
Language support
The language is automatically detected based on what the user types in. The results are generated based on the language of the input header, and the results can often be quite different due to language nuances and communication differences. This is completely independent of the language settings of the browser or CI360. Most Latin scripted languages are supported as well as Japanese. For example, if the same text is entered in Italian, the following results are produced:
A/B testing support
In addition to being available for standard emails, it can also be used in A/B testing of email campaigns. In this way, you can attempt to beat the computer!
User oversight
We all know that Gen AI can sometimes produce some unusual results! Because of this, a user must manually approve, modify, or reject any AI generated. Note that any modifications to a Gen AI header will result in the header being considered a user generated header rather than a Gen AI one.
Admin settings
If you don't see the Gen AI button, and definitely have the version which supports it (Sept 2024 onwards), you may need to enable it. This is not enabled by default, as the terms and conditions for use must first be accepted. This can be done under general settings.
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