Why AI still can't do your ethical email marketing strategy

Every few months, I run an experiment to see if AI tools have gotten any better at coming up with an email strategy from scratch.

This time, I gave Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT the exact same prompt:

"Let's say that I'm a CEO of a B Corp-certified B2B company in the US. We have a marketing department that does social media, some paid ads, SEO/regularly-updated blog on our website, and our team members also attend relevant events at least once a month - either in-person or online. We know that we need to add email marketing to our marketing mix this year and have some basic knowledge of how to run an email marketing program. We also have a small list already, and have sent a handful of emails to our subscribers in the past few years, but haven't seen any results. We know we still have a lot to learn. Considering this information, can you create an email strategy for us?"

This prompt is more detailed than what most CEOs would write: I gave specific context about the company, their current marketing mix, their email situation, and their knowledge level.

And yet - even with that detail - here's what happened:

I was curious if they'd gotten better at pushing back, asking questions, or at least acknowledging what's missing.

Some suggestions were decent. But I want to show you what all three said about automations - specifically, about a potential welcome sequence.

ChatGPT suggested I build the following flow:

Gemini instructed me to send 3 emails instead:

Claude was the only tool that didn't spit out a preliminary strategy for me to consider:

That being said, Claude is a tool I've been using and "training" on ethical email marketing regularly, so I believe this pushback is a direct result of that.

The advice I got from ChatGPT and Gemini isn't anchored in a deep understanding of the business, its values, its offers, its audience, or what success actually looks like for them.

So yes, these tools might be cheaper and faster than getting specialized help, but implementing any of these suggested welcome sequences may very well result in lost opportunities and subscribers who feel like they're being talked at rather than communicated with.

The information is out there, and a lot of it is good. 

But without knowing what to ask or how to use these tools, you'll get the same "best practices" you're trying to avoid - because AI can't replace strategy built around your business: your values, your offers, your audience.

This is exactly why automation is so tricky. 

Whether it's AI-generated sequences or templated flows, they can't replace a strategy built around what makes your business different - what makes your clients choose you.

Building email automation that works for your specific business takes strategic work. If you're trying to systematize email without it feeling generic or robotic, or lose brand trust in the process, let’s have a chat about what it could look like: Book a call here