Human vs. AI: The Battle of Email Copy

I recently prompted AI for an email copy targeting new and free users for a subscription service, and pitched that against a human-written email version (I'll dub it Human Intelligence, HI). The results: AI version lost - by a lot. HI's Open Rate was 2x of AI's, +109% in Clickthru, both with significance. HI's Conversion Rate, however, was +40% without stat sig.

In a world where AI seems to triumph in efficiency and productivity, I was joyful to find an AI weakness, or maybe I didn't do a good job at prompting. My hypothesis is, maybe AI hasn't learned email best practices targeting Free users where short and concise copy is desireable, or that AI output still needs the finishing touches of a human who understand branding, voice and email marketing best practices.

Here are the key takeaways: AI is undeniable, but at this point, it's a co-pilot, and it's up to us to test and learn not only to satisfy our curiosity, but also to drive conversion and user delight. The proof is in the metrics.