To get objective feedback on email marketing tactics, take a screenshot of your inbox with tiny font to capture many subject lines. Upload this image to ChatGPT and ask it to identify the top five and bottom five emails most likely to be opened, along with an explanation of the tactics used in each.

AI makes it easy to send mass emails, but they often sound robotic. Buyers now recognize and block this "sycophantic crap," making personalized, human-written emails more crucial than ever for standing out and avoiding domain-level blocks.

To stand out from polished, AI-generated emails, use unconventional formatting. Tactics like extremely long subject lines, starting with an ellipsis, or using all lowercase letters grab attention by looking distinctly human and breaking patterns.

Instead of using AI to write final copy, leverage it as a brainstorming partner. Dave Gerhardt uses ChatGPT to generate 15 variations of a subject line. This process allows him to cherry-pick words and phrases, combining them into a superior, human-crafted final version.

A counterintuitive tactic suggests beginning email subject lines with conjunctions like 'and,' 'but,' or 'plus'. This grammatically incorrect but novel approach disrupts reader expectations, sparking curiosity and leading to a claimed 15% lift in open rates, especially when the starting word is capitalized.

Instead of asking an AI tool for creative ideas, instruct it to predict how 100,000 people would respond to your copy. This shifts the AI from a creative to a statistical mode, leveraging deeper analysis and resulting in marketing assets (like subject lines and CTAs) that perform significantly better in A/B tests.

AI-generated subject lines often use title case. Writing your subject line in all lowercase makes it feel more human and less automated, helping it stand out. This tactic can counter the generic feel of AI content and, according to World Data Research, can lift open rates by around 14%.

Instead of guessing why open rates are low, the first diagnostic step should be a disciplined A/B test. Experiment with two different subject lines to gather data on what captures your audience's attention before changing anything else.

Switching from clear but safe subject lines (e.g., '3 ways to...') to provocative, curiosity-piquing ones dramatically improved open rates. The speaker notes that if a subject line feels slightly uncomfortable to send, it's probably a good sign.