With Merlin power, you can use AI to write emails now

Sunil Saxena

6 months ago

Query: Can AI be used to craft subject lines and email text?

Background: Content Marketers struggle to draft the perfect email with a subject with a high open rate, and body that can motivate customers to click. Even office mails can be tricky and require several iterations. That holds true for most interactions where individuals struggle to find the right word and the right tone.

Experiment: Two experiments were conducted to check how effective AI is in composing emails on Google’s popular email app – Gmail. The AI integration has been done by Merlin, which ironically is a browser extension powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The first screen that opens on seeking AI assistance has an inviting welcome message, “We will draft a nice mail for you, just write something and press enter.”

Prompt 1: To start you off, the first screen also has two prompt buttons: Introduce yourself and Cold EMail. On pressing the Introduce yourself button, Gmail immediately became active, and crafted a perfect introductory message.

This was a full-length message and fairly detailed. However, the writing was clean and the flow was smooth.

That was not all. On the bottom of the message there were four follow up prompts: Shorten, Improve Writing Lengthen, Simplify. On pressing the Shorten button, the mail was shortened to less than 50 words. Once again, the text needed no modifications. It was ready to go.

The next step was to enter the message in the text field. Merlin has made this task easier too. All that the sender needs to do is to click the Insert button, enter the email address, and the mail is ready to go.

Prompt 2: The second experiment would make most content marketers happy. AI was asked to craft an invitation inviting participants to a free webinar on the use of AI to create content. AI not only crafted the mail but also entered a smart subject line.

AI was then asked to shorten the mail, and it promptly reduced the wordage to less than 50 without diluting the message.

Next the AI was asked to enter the webinar date and time, which it did.

Finally, the AI was asked to enter the speaker’s name. Once again AI was on the mark. It revised the content putting the speaker’s name in the first paragraph. The message was now complete.

My Findings:

There is no need to struggle to craft emails. The Gmail AI powered by Merlin’s browser extension is a great asset. It works like a versatile email Assistant. It has made life easier for all email writers, especially content marketers.
However, senders should still be cautious. They cannot rely fully on AI. They must revise the text carefully, before mailing it.
Now the bad news. The Free Merlin AI assistant powers only a few mails. You have to subscribe to the Pro version which starts at $19 a month. But it is an investment worth making.