Overview

The key to taking your email campaigns to the next level is training your GPT to understand the art of a 'good' email. Creating an authentic and captivating email with AI is tricky. While AI is great at churning out content, it needs to work on consistently creating captivating and resonating emails. Understanding the proper context - campaign goals, audience, current events - can take time and effort. The most common issue is the human touch, which resonates with the audience. 

But here is an elegant solution to ensure that your GPT is effective and scalable when writing your next email campaign: rubric. Consider it a blueprint for 'good' emails tailored to your marketing goals. It acts as a pre-defined framework, outlining precisely what constitutes a good email in the context of your specific marketing goals. By incorporating a rubric into training your GPT, you can guide it towards understanding the nuances of effective email communication and generate content that resonates with the target audience. This article will teach you how to write an effective rubric to scale your email creation and tailor it specifically for your campaign.

What Makes a 'Good' Email?

First and foremost, you need to establish what makes an email 'good' and effective at communicating your message in the context of your campaign. Like our verbal communication, it relies on a delicate balance between various factors, which we will discuss below. It may be a subconscious process, but currently, AI needs to be told whether tone, for instance, should be informative or conversational. 

Context is essential. For example, writing an email for a product launch requires a different approach than a re-engagement campaign aimed at dormant subscribers. Content tailored to resonate with millennials will likely miss the market with a demographic seeking more formal communication. Unfortunately, current AI email generation methods often struggle to navigate these complexities. That is why you need to establish a set of qualities that apply to a particular context.

What Is a 'Rubric'?

The effectiveness of AI-powered content generation relies on clear communication of desired outcomes - what qualities your email should possess. A rubric guides your custom GPT, outlining what makes a good email within the context of your campaign and marketing goals. It translates subjective concepts like tone and clarity into objective and measurable elements. 

A custom rubric can be crafted to align with the unique context of your marketing campaign and target audience. Imagine you are launching a campaign to promote a new product aimed at a Gen Z demographic. Your rubric would prioritize a more informal and conversational tone, potentially incorporating popular cultural references to foster connection. The rubric can be tailored to include specific evaluation criteria to align with the objectives directly, and by crafting the rubric to capture these nuances, you can train your GPT to understand how to generate emails that will resonate with your target audience.

Here's a quick breakdown of how to build an effective rubric:

1. Define Your Goals:  Start by outlining the specific marketing objectives for your email campaign (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation).
2. Identify Your Audience:  Who are you targeting? Understanding demographics, interests, and communication preferences is crucial.
3. Break Down "Good":  What does "good" look like in this context? Consider elements like tone (formal vs. playful), content structure, and CTAs. (Reference your example rubric here for further illustration).
4. Assign Weighting:  Not all elements are equal. Prioritize key aspects by assigning weights to different sections of your rubric.
5. Define Evaluation Levels:  Establish explicit descriptors for each evaluation level (e.g., "Exceeds Expectations," "Meets Expectations," "Needs Improvement") within each rubric section.

Here is an example of a rubric and how it can look.

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Training Your Model

Once the rubric is finalized, gather a starting point—say, 100 GPT-generated emails. Now, incorporate an extra step: Task your GPT to rank these emails against the pre-defined characteristics outlined in your rubric. Assign a score (true/false) based on how well each email aligns with your criteria. This self-assessment helps your GPT learn from its creations and become a finely tuned "factory" for effective emails, consistently generating content that resonates with your target audience.

Beyond the Rubric

Crafting consistently impactful marketing emails through AI has taken a significant leap forward with introducing the custom rubric. This approach provides a structured framework for training your GPT, ensuring it grasps the subtle art of effective communication. By translating subjective concepts like tone and clarity into objective criteria, the rubric empowers your AI to generate emails that resonate deeply with your target audience and achieve your marketing goals.

Thank you for reading this article. For more on this topic, we invite you to watch Episode 13 of our Growth Llama podcast, “Advanced Strategies for ChatGPT Prompt Engineering,” where we discuss prompt chaining in more detail.

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Link to Episode 13

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