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Generate an email campaign with AI

Describe the email you want and AI generation writes a draft design: one email built from the email blocks, with three subject lines and three preheaders to choose between. Ask for a campaign instead and it writes the same design plus the draft campaign that would send it.

Both are drafts. Nothing is sent, scheduled or queued, and the campaign is aimed at nobody until you pick an audience yourself.

Where to start it​

  • An email design: on a site's Emails page, open Templates and press Create with AI, beside New template (or beside Create your first template while the list is empty). Write the brief, optionally pick the kind of email, and press Plan the email. A plan comes first: review it in the dialog or in AI jobs, and confirm it to build. Tick Also draft a campaign that sends it to get the campaign too (the button then reads Plan the campaign).
  • A campaign: on Marketing → Campaigns, press Create with AI beside Create campaign (or on the list while it is empty) — on a site's Marketing page, or on your organization's, where it asks which site the campaign is placed on. Describe it and press Write the campaign. When your plan sends no campaign email, the same button writes the email design on its own. See Marketing with AI.

Nothing is sent, and nothing is aimed at anybody, until you choose. The organization-wide Emails page has no Create with AI, because an email design belongs to one site.

What you get​

An email design. It appears on the site's Emails page, under Templates, beside the templates you made by hand, and opens in the besigner exactly as those do. Every block is an email block — sections, text, buttons, images, dividers, spacers and product cards — so it renders the same way in every mail client.

Three subject lines and three preheaders. They are stored with the design, the strongest as the subject and the preheader, the rest as alternatives. Change which one leads at any time, or write your own.

A campaign, when you asked for one. A draft campaign holding that one email, with the subject and preheader already filled in. Open it from Marketing → Campaigns, or from the finished job.

Write the brief​

Say what the email is for, who it speaks to, and what you want the reader to do. The more the brief gives, the less the email guesses.

Announce the autumn menu to the regulars. Mention that the Tuesday bread class is running again, and point people at the class page to book.

A few things are worth knowing:

  • Pick the kind of email — a welcome, a newsletter, a launch, a cart reminder or an event reminder — and the email is written in that shape.
  • Name a page and it gets linked. A button pointing at one of your pages is written as that page's address and completed with your domain when the email is sent.
  • A fact the brief does not give — a date, a price, a place — arrives in square brackets for you to fill, rather than invented.
  • No unsubscribe link is written. Every campaign email gets one added when it is sent.

Products​

An email can carry product cards, which fill in each product's current name, price and picture at the moment the email is sent, so a rename or a price change never leaves a stale email behind.

Pick the products for the job, or name them in the brief exactly as they are named in your catalog. The generated email places one card for each, in the order you gave them, and binds each card to its product by id. No product's details are sent for the email to be written — only how many cards to place.

Who receives it​

Choosing the audience is yours. A drafted campaign has no list, no segment and no schedule.

When your brief names one of your lists, the campaign's note says which one it is, and — if that list has enough history on this site — the day and hour its past campaigns were opened most, with how many sends that reading is taken from. Pick the list on the campaign, check the send time, and schedule it when you are ready.

Your lists, contacts and past send figures are read on the server to work that out. None of them is sent for the email to be written.

Merge tokens​

Generated copy greets the reader with the merge tokens every campaign fills: {{contact.firstName}}, {{contact.name}} and {{contact.email}}, and only in text — never in a link, a subject line or a preheader, where they are not filled. Add any other token yourself in the besigner.

What it will not do​

  • It will not send, schedule or queue anything.
  • It will not publish an email design or mark a template live.
  • It will not pick who receives a campaign.
  • It will not write raw HTML into an email. Add the Email custom HTML block yourself if you need it.

Where it runs​

Email generation needs AI generation switched on for your workspace and for the site, the Email plugin switched on for the site, and permission to generate. Without them, Create with AI does not appear. Drafting a campaign also needs the Marketing plugin on for the site and a plan that sends campaign email — the dialog says so if either is missing — see Billing & Plans. Without that, you can still generate email designs.