AI is making marketers lazy.... Meanwhile I just spent 2 hours making AI rewrite the same subject line 14 different ways because version 13 still wasn't right. Here's what people don't get about AI in email marketing: The lazy marketers were already lazy. They were lazy before ChatGPT. They were lazy with templates. They were lazy with "best practices." They were lazy copying their competitors' welcome series. AI didn't make them lazy. It just made their laziness faster. The marketers actually getting results with AI are doing the opposite of lazy: - Iterating on copy 20 times until it hits - Stress-testing segmentation logic against real data - Running it against past winners to spot patterns - Asking it to poke holes in their own strategy - Using it to do the work they used to skip The tool didn't change the operator. It just amplified whoever was already holding it. If your AI workflow is one prompt and a copy-paste, that's not AI making you lazy. That's just you. And if you want to learn more on how to apply AI in your email marketing, you should join us this week and next in a city near you for our Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow. NYC, Miami, LA and Austin Shoot me a dm if you want in.
100%. I’ve seen people blame AI for generic emails when the real issue was generic thinking. AI can generate 20 subject lines in seconds, but it still can’t tell you which one fits your audience without strategy and testing. 🔥
Tools don't make operators. They reveal them. Same truth in paid media: the best accounts come from people who already knew how to iterate, test, and think critically before automation existed. AI just lets you do more of what you were already willing to do.
Let's normalise spending 2 hours upfront to create an audit document that shows AI what you want and what you don't want from each output. Put in the work once, and avoid the 14 back and forth on each output 🔥
What makes AI powerful is the range of ideas it can generate when given the right context. It’s less about making marketers lazy and more about how we choose to use and guide it as a tool.
In the right hands, AI can be a great tool. It helps with a lot of stuff except thinking. You cannot lend it your thinking, but lot of us are wasting time on the useless use cases or would just not put effort into the qualitative input so we can have the output we are looking for in the first place.
Does AI amplify discipline or just make existing bad habits 10x faster?
I won’t dare admit how many hours I’ve spent in the last three weeks building ONE sales page with Claude. I could have (and absolutely should have) spent that time learning HTML coding instead. Now I’m an HTML-lite dabbler at best and have zero hard skills. A real glimpse into the future!
Was the prompt here for the LLM to create an image of a grand wizard being tied up?
AI amplifies your work ethic.