This is a cautionary tale from my inbox. I’m a fan of AI, I use AI, I even train others on how to use AI. But you can’t just assign AI a task and assume it will be completed correctly. Let me explain what’s driven me to write this post – along with a few suggestions to avoid this issue with your brand.
Last month, when I was reviewing a newsletter on email marketing that I receive regularly, I came across a couple issues.
Newsletter Issues
1. What Language Is This?
I am familiar with Zembula; I have a few industry friends who work there. And there was an item about or by Zembula in the newsletter – screenshot below.
Now, the rest of the newsletter was in English – which is good, since that’s the only language that I’m fluent in. But this… is not a language that I able to read. On the one hand, my bad. But on the other hand, it’s a waste to send someone content that they aren’t able to read because it’s not in a language they know. This was just one of the 9 items in the newsletter, so just over 10% of the content. But still.
So, what does this have to do with AI? In case you didn’t guess, this newsletter is generated using AI. I reached out to the brand behind the newsletter, to alert them to the issue and gather more information.
The brand is using a third-party service, which is where the AI comes in. The AI gathers information related to the newsletter topic on the Internet. It’s automatically pulled into the brand’s email newsletter template. Then the third-party service sends it to the brand’s subscribers.
There is an option for the brand to review the content before it’s sent. Apparently, in the case of this newsletter, this step was missed.
Note: I’m pretty sure I clicked through last month went I got the newsletter – but I can’t remember where I landed. But when I went back today to get a screen shot… I landed here:
I can’t image what this has to do with Zembula and email marketing – and that’s French, right? Pretty sure the newsletter blurb was not French. The URL reads altselection.com – and I’ve spared you all the pop-ups I got upon entering the site (some in English, some not).
Was this link redirected after the send? No idea. But this newsletter is only about 2 weeks old, so the links should still resolve to the correct landing pages.
But that’s not all that was amiss with this newsletter…
2. Sorry, You’ve Been Blocked
Here’s another article from this newsletter. Not only do I have industry friends who work at Braze, I have clients that use the platform. So this article looked like it was worth reading…
Most of the copy appears to be in English, although we usually say ‘platform’ instead of ‘plataforma’ – but still…
But when I clicked-through I landed here:
I couldn’t read the article. So that’s 2 of 9 items that are unreadable – 22% of the newsletter.
If someone had reviewed the content items and clicked through to the full text, this should have been caught. But it wasn’t. An over-reliance on AI is the cause.
How to Avoid These Issues: Do the Review
So how do you keep this from happening with your email newsletter? There are a couple ways…
Both the brand and the vendor blamed user error for these issues. The brand is responsible for reviewing the content before it’s sent – that’s not the vendor’s job.
I have a newsletter editor (shout out to Content by Janet Roberts) who provides me articles to consider for inclusion in the three newsletters (three newsletters but two titles; the Email Optimization Shop newsletter is published once a week; we publish the Only Influencers newsletter twice a week) I am responsible for each week. I review the content and then provide details on which items go in which newsletters. Then I review each newsletter after it’s put together but before it’s sent, as a final set of eyes.
It all takes some time, but it’s not onerous.
But here’s the thing – my newsletters have about 6 items each, and some content appears in more than one newsletter. So my list of content to review isn’t long – usually 12 to 18 items.
But the vendor personalizes each individual’s newsletter to include content they’ve determined is of interest to them (my understanding is that this is done based on past clicks). So, although my newsletter had 9 items, the total number of items that need to be reviewed and clicked could be a multiple of that. As a result, it will take a lot more time to review all possible content for this one newsletter than it takes me to review all possible content for the three newsletters I manage.
Bottomline: You need to review the content and check all the links before the send, whether or not you’re using AI for content. Use of AI doesn’t allow you to skip this step – it may require more time to review content if you’re using AI.
Until next time,
jj
Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash
