How to Create a Newsletter Using AI

I think we've all seen stories circulating around the newsletter business model and why it's so awesome.

Email is a channel I'm intimately familiar with, but the model of the recurring email newsletter is something I've been experimenting with only recently, and even though I haven't been experimenting with it for too long, I'm already in love with it.

The caveat with most digital attention channels is that you're at the mercy of whatever platform you're using.

If you have an audience online, it can be ripped away from you at any moment if you're communicating with them through most of the social media platforms.

Algorithm changes, rising ad costs, shadow bans and even hard bans are all things we have to wrestle with on a daily basis if we want to stay afloat on most of the "traditional" customer acquisition channels.

On these channels you're really just renting a platform and don't actually own the audience you've worked so hard to grow.

With an email newsletter, you own the audience you grow and don't have to worry about the problems and the volatility associated with hosting an audience on other types of platforms.

Not to mention the fact that newsletters are sellable assets that you could cash out on when you eventually decide to exit.

But, what if you're not prepared to write a newsletter issue every week - at the bare minimum? You still have to routinely serve up high quality content to your audience, that's why they subscribed to you in the first place.

AI can help you write your newsletter and do it in a way that doesn't suck.

With some clever prompts, you could craft a high quality email newsletter in a fraction of the time it would take to make one without AI.

To do this, you take a top-down approach. You provide ChatGPT with samples of real content to give it some inspiration, get it to come up with a general idea for the newsletter based on these samples, have it produce an outline of a newsletter based on this general idea, and you have it flesh out each component of the outline piece by piece.

I generally use the same few prompts to do this and I'll actually share them with you right now. Depending on the context of the emails I'm sending at the time, I tweak componentsof the prompt to adjust tone, length, etc.

Here's what the process looks like:

The process starts with a general idea and a subject line that will determine what the main contents of the newsletter are. To get the general idea/subject line of the newsletter, use this prompt which uses competitor subject lines and your niche:

"You are an expert email newsletter copywriter who writes subject lines, headlines and subheadings for sections of the newsletter, and comes up with high value content ideas for our readers. You have a friendly, yet informative tone of voice. You have a conversational writing style. Write 20 attention grabbing headlines/subject lines for the next edition of our newsletter that will catch our readers' attention with high deliverability and CTR. The topics of our newsletter are: "TOPICS/NEWSLETTER NICHE". The subject lines/titles should draw inspiration from these 5 successful subject lines from competitors in the niche: "5 NEWSLETTER SUBJECT LINES". The titles should be less than 90 characters. Do not self referenece, do not explain what you are doing."

Next, come up with the potential segment ideas in the newsletter by supplying it with your niche/topics of interest, your subject line, competitor subject lines, and an excerpt from a competitor:

"Remember that you are an expert email newsletter copywriter that comes up with high value, viral, high retention, and high conversion content ideas for business and entrepreneurship newsletters. You have a friendly tone of voice. You have a conversational writing style. Come up with 20 potential content ideas for the 3-5 segments of our next monthly 1k-3k word newsletter edition with the title and subject line of: "SUBJECT LINE". This edition will have 3-5 segments covering something within or adjacent to the following topics: "TOPICS". The ideas should draw inspiration from these 5 successful subject lines from competitors in the niche: "5 SUBJECT LINES" and also draw inspiration from this excerpt of a highly successful competing newsletter: "COMPETITOR NEWSLETTER EXCERPT" "

Next, get an outline of your newsletter by providing ai with your subject line and segments:

"Remember that you are an expert email newsletter copywriter that produces content outlines for monthly email newsletters. You have a friendly tone of voice. You have a conversational writing style. Create a content outline for the contents of our next monthly 1k-3k word newsletter edition with the title and subject line of: "SUBJECT LINE". This edition will have the following segments "3-5 SEGMENTS". The content outline should include a minimum of 12 headings and subheadings. The outline should be extensive and it should cover the entire topic. Create detailed subheadings that are engaging and catchy. Do not write out the newsletter, please only write the outline for it. Please add a newline space between headings and subheadings. Do not self reference. Do not explain what you are doing."

Next, get it to come up with the intro:

"You are an expert email copywriter for a popular email newsletter who writes detailed and compelling monthly newsletters that provide value, retain viewership throughout, convert, and follow deliverability guidelines to get into people's inboxes and away from spam. Write a compelling email newsletter introduction of around 100-500 words for the first edition of our newsletter titled "SUBJECT LINE". Please use the AIDA copywriting framework to hook and grab the attention of the newsletter readers. Hook the reader's attention immediately. Introduce the segments disclosed in the outline above, but do not reveal the exact contents of those segments. We want readers to understand the topics that will be covered, but still be interested in reading further to understand the topics. Please intersperse short and long sentences. Utilize uncommon terminology to enhance the originality of the content. Please format the content in a professional format. Do not self reference. Do not explain what you are doing."

From here, iterate out the rest of the newsletter with this prompt template:

"Remember that you are an expert email newsletter content writer that writes out detailed and compelling monthly email newsletters that provide value, retain viewership throughout, convert, and follow deliverability guidelines so that the email will show up in readers' inbox and not in spam. You have a friendly tone of voice. You have a conversational writing style. Please continue the newsletter, leaving off from the last point. Remember, you are leaving off from the last point in the email, so you do not need to greet the reader again. You are now writing for segment #1: "SEGMENT NAME FROM OUTLINE", with the topics of "LIST TOPICS FROM OUTLINE" for this segment. Please intersperse long and short sentences/Utilize uncommon terminology to enhance the originality of the content. Please format the content in a professional format. Do not self reference. Do not explain what you are doing. Please only write the actual content of the newsletter and nothing else."

Can you see how this workflow could save you a lot of time and be very helpful overall?

Well, imagine if this system got even more simple, more helpful, and took less time.

I made an AI newsletter writing assistant that applies the concepts of this guide to write your newsletter for you. Just answer its questions and let it do the work for you.

I'm going to be giving this tool a lot of love over the next few weeks, tweaking it and updating it so that it provides high quality results.

This is a free tool I'm giving away to all subscribers of my Ingeniosity newsletter.

Go here to use the tool.

To get access, you must be an Ingeniosity subscriber. 

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See you inside.