How To Actually Use AI For Email Marketing

Hey it's Max from The Inbox Newsletter.

Today, I want to talk about how to actually use AI for email marketing the right way,

Most brands are letting AI plan their entire campaign calendar in 2026…

The worst part is they're just prompting ChatGPT with "make me a calendar," taking whatever it spits out, and shipping 15 emails that all sound the same.

And your email marketing results suck as a result…

Let’s break it down.

The 4 Part Calendar Strategy Process

Every monthly calendar planning session starts with four steps… in this order:

1. Past winners

2. Winning ad angles / landing page angles

3. Competitor swipes

4. AI ideation last.

Past winners are emails that already crushed in your account. All you need to do is resend them with some because if they worked once, they'll work again. This alone usually fills 3-5 spots in the calendar.

Winning ad angles come next. Take the top-converting angles from your paid acquisition and turn them into emails. Your ads team has already validated what messaging works on your audience, so use those too.

Then competitor swipes. Pull ideas from milled.com and the brands you actually follow. You're looking for what's working in your category right now.

ONLY after all of that do you bring in AI. By the time it gets involved, your calendar already has its strongest ideas locked in. AI just fills the remaining gaps and suggests send dates.

Here's what the flywheel actually looks like:

The 5 Pillars

Now that you've got your inputs lined up, the next step is making sure every idea fits one of five content pillars: educational, social proof, community, product highlights, and sales.

A balanced calendar runs across all five every month so the list never feels like you're just hitting them with sales.

The Prompt

Once you've pulled your past winners, ad angles, and competitor swipes, drop them into ChatGPT or Claude with this:

"Here are the angles I've already pulled from past winners, ads, and competitors. Help me round out the rest of the month across the 5 pillars, suggest dates, and flag gaps."

You'll have a balanced 15-email calendar built around what's already proven to work for your brand.

The Bigger System

Aside from calendars, we also use AI for analysis, copy writing, and flow briefs.

Which is why I built two AI resources trained on everything we do across 100+ brands and $250M+ in email data at my agency:

1. Email Marketing Brain (Free)

This ChatGPT bot pumps out campaign calendars, email copy, flow strategies, and email audits, all trained on our frameworks. And it's free.

Get the Custom GPT here »

2. MX Claude Skill File (In My Paid Community)

This is the more advanced version. The output is on another level when it comes to writing copy, especially compared to the GPT. These are the actual skill and context files we use internally at our 100+ client agency. It forces you to give proper brand context before it writes anything and QAs against itself so nothing gets made up.

I dropped this in our Skool community a bit ago and the response has been insane:

If you want in, it lives inside the community alongside 30+ course modules, 250+ templates, and two live calls a week with me 😉 

Access the Claude Skill + community here »

Email Inspiration Of The Day

Brand:
SureFire CPR

Email Design:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QHyl1Y1CPyrmKo-vvzR1Fj1JSgE_mHKF/view?usp=sharing

Notes:
Father's Day email where the hero is a kid's crayon drawing of dad. I’m not crying you are…

Reply to this email if you have any questions or further content you want covered.

Cheers,

Max Sturtevant

P.S
Here’s how I can help you further…

• Email Marketing Mastery Course/Community:
  A full 30+ module email course that comes with weekly calls with me, 250+ editable email templates, and a community for daily Q&A from myself and other members. Learn More Here »

• Work With My Agency:
  At Well Copy, we’ve done $250M in email sales across 200+ brands in the past 2 years. We’re the best in the game at managing email. Learn More & Book A Call Here »

• Free Resources:
  10+ free guides and resources for you to learn email marketing for free from my content. Access Resources Here »