Please enjoy the last part of our 3-part series written by Mary Charleson, a marketing consultant and speaker at www.fiveminutemarketing.com. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

How to NOT use AI for newsletters

Generative AI is a useful tool. But not in the case of those first drafts where the writer matters (She said in bold with an elevated voice).

Using AI for first drafts is great for how-to information, lists, and general information heavy pieces. But that first draft is still going to need personality added, some additional fact checking, and story examples only you could give.

Personally, I don’t use AI to create newsletters – ever. Because I strive for a personable tone and think of this missive of marketing tips as “writing a letter to a friend” every week, it just feels weird to ask an AI prompt to churn something out. Do I use AI to track trends or check to see what I might be missing on a topic? You bet. But that’s informing my existing thoughts with additional information to consider.

When the writer matters a lot – when the goal is to be personable, memorable, perhaps persuasive offering advice, AI is potentially useful for research. But even that will need to be fact checked. See above.

I can hear you saying, “But what if I prompt it to write something in the voice of (insert your name here), and I know I have enough published content online for the AI to write the way I do?” Or what if I feed it a bunch of my content to train on. Wouldn’t AI then generate something comparable? Perhaps. But I would never use it for more than a first draft. Your voice adds personal experience and stories. It adds spice to the words. And I’ve yet to see AI deal well with comic inference, or anything requiring emotional intelligence in order to interpret a nuanced meaning.

Own your own stories with your own words

AI will never be able to generate the stories that are truly yours. The personal examples you can share, the insights you have gained through trial and error – where you can share the actual story with others. That is where the magic will lie, in being able to stand out from AI generated vanilla content. And most importantly, when you do that it helps form a connection with a real human, and saves your newsletter content from being filtered to the promotions folder. You want to be in a recipients PRIMARY folder on Apple iOS 18 mobile phones.

A storytelling example

I shared the story about traveling to Lillooet to write a travel article for the Vancouver Sun in a recent blog post, and how meeting the vintner, who was a master marketer, was the unexpected surprise. That story, first used in my weekly newsletter, was a classic example of storytelling to make a point. You can read that article here.

Travel advisors have a wealth of storytelling experience to draw from. Own your stories to make that personal connection with readers. It’s one of the best ways to AI proof your email opens, and that coveted position of having a 1:1 list of clients you can nurture for future business.

Mary Charleson is a marketing consultant and speaker at www.fiveminutemarketing.com where she advises members of the travel industry on marketing trends and strategy. She is also a travel writer and content creator at www.carryonqueen.com  Subscribe to her weekly Five-minute marketing tips newsletter, delivered fresh every Sunday morning here.