AI in Marketing: Smarter Strategies, Better Results

5 - Curious how AI is reshaping marketing?

In this episode, we discuss how to use AI for smarter customer insights to faster, sharper copywriting.

Whether you’re just getting started or already testing AI, you’ll walk away with clear, actionable ideas you can try today. 

Watch a full episode here! 

About Today’s Guest

Robbie Fitzwater is the founder of MKTG Rhythm, an email marketing agency focusing on retention. He prides himself on teaching his clients to be better email marketers themselves. MKTG Rhythm aims to help clients build out and optimize their email ecosystem. He’s been making waves in the digital marketing world since 2008. He also teaches digital marketing and social media strategy as part of the Clemson MBA program as a side gig.

You’ll Learn About…

• How to use AI in marketing effectively
• Which AI tools are best for different tasks
• Prompts that actually work (and save you time)
• Creative ways to use AI for customer research
• Using AI as a thought partner for proposals, campaigns, and important emails
• How AI in marketing automation boosts performance
• Ways AI can help check your emails for tone and typos

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review and we will send you a Flowium gift.

Transcript

Vira: 0:40

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast where we brake down the house behind brilliant email marketing and behind brilliant e commerce practices. Today's gonna be just me because my co host, Andriy, has some parenting duties. It's very sad that he's not here because I know he's very pumped about this topic. But you guys, today, we're gonna be talking about AI. I know you must be tired of hearing, like, AI that and AI this. But, hey, today we brought a very special guest to the podcast. You probably know him because if you've been with us long enough, I think it's his third time on our podcast. So please welcome one and only Robbie Fitzwater. Robbie, we're so happy to have you back. Say hi.

Robbie Fitzwater: 1:30

It is great to be back, Vera. And, yeah, I think pulling the hat trick for the for Email Einstein podcast is is an honor. So hopefully, we'll have some we'll have some fun today and get it make the AI side a little bit more accessible and hopefully have some fun along the way. Right. Right. And I'm very

Vira: 1:46

excited to have you today on this podcast because I know AI is such a, like, a buzzword, but I took a quick pick on your presentation and I love that it's going to be very like, how do I use this in my life and in my business kind of presentation? So just like a spoiler alert to you guys. But Robbie, before we go there, I have a quick question to you. Are you one of those people who are, like, super polite in in like, when you're talking to Chat GPT or, like, Perplexity or AI models?

Robbie Fitzwater: 2:18

So I that's another question where it depends. Uh-huh. Most of the time, no. I'm honestly kind of I have generally I I'm from the Midwest Of The US, and, like, my default nature is, like, absurdly polite, normally, like, all at all times. Like, it's really hard for me to be, like, unpolite, and I've gotta kinda get out of my own comfort zone sometimes. But in a lot of cases, like, I'm kind of a not not the nicest, not the best friend to some of the AI tools. Just like when you want to get something back from them Mhmm. And you you can be very abrupt and a little more stern than normal. And typically, you may get a better response.

Vira: 2:54

Right. Well, good for you, Robbie, because I don't know if you follow this, like, x drama, but few days ago or, like, a week ago, someone posted, like, I wonder how much does it cost to OpenAI? All of our, like, politeness are like hello and thank yous. And I was shocked by the numbers. I, like, didn't realize first of all, I didn't realize that models like this or anything, they spend so much, like, water, just like regular, spring water to, kinda cool down their data centers and everything. So I never thought about it this way that every thank you and hello caused them something, but you were onto something before we all knew Robbie. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 3:37

and and that's it's really kinda crazy, but I so I'm kind of a not always the best setup. Like, typically, if you do respond to them with a little bit more, like, abrupt and, like, that wasn't good enough for me, I'd really like you to take another pass at that, please. Mhmm. It'll actually put together better results. Like, a lot of research done on it on the actual models say, like, you actually get better results sometimes if you are, like, a little more harsh. And even, like, if you offer, early days, like, if you offer it money, like, I'll tip you if you do well. It'll actually give you better results. And it's really kind of crazy how we're still kind of, like, figuring out how these things work on the back end, and we don't fully understand it as individuals to realize

Vira: 4:19

that. So Wow. And you know what? I've also noticed like, do you ever use perplexity? Like or are you not a perplexity person? Because there are, like, two big camps, you know, like, when it comes to language models. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 4:33

I we go back and forth on our team. We use we use ChatGPT for a lot of nuts and bolts things on Uh-huh. Like, on how we do what we do. We also use Gemini and kinda rotate back and forth. As they evolve both those models, it kind of it helps with some of the work we do, some of the content we're producing. And then also, as a thought partner, I like Claude. Claude is, like, a thought partner tool, is actually a wonderful, like, being able to kind of, like, push ideas farther and get good feedback and responses around. That's actually kind of, like, the the suite I've been using the most. Cool. And I've played around with perplexity, but not, like, super I probably have further to more to learn there. But that's one of the things that kind of makes this space cool is like, there's no one way to do it. And like everybody has their own like suite of tools they like to use and how to use them best for them. Exactly. And

Vira: 5:28

I like, when I have to work with some, like, language model, like Chudgy Pity or something, I always go for Chudgy Pity just because, like, the tone and empathy that it has. I don't know. I just love it. It's like your cheer cheerleader, you know, when, like, models like perplexity AI, I don't know. It has some, like, German vibes. You know, it's very efficient, very to the point. It tells you what to do. Like, it prioritizes, like, facts and accurate information, but, hey, I need some, like, cheerleading too. You know? So but no. They are they are great. I'm learning a lot about them every day. German

Robbie Fitzwater: 6:04

vibes are a good way to describe that. I think that's, like, the best way to the best way to put it. You know, as a person

Vira: 6:09

who, like, used to drive, like, exclusively German cars, I have nothing against German wipe. It's just sometimes I need that, like, humanness that, that ChargeGPT can provide. But, hey, I know you have this like really fun way of thinking and how you can apply all of this exciting AI tools into your work and life. So let's see what you have for us, Robbie. I'm very excited. Okay. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 6:36

so this is actually a presentation I gave at a conference in the in the fall, and it kinda goes through, definitely kind of basically the stages of how to kind of adopt this in different ways. And I think there's, like, kind of a process where everybody's going through right now where we're all just trying to figure out how to use the tools, what are they, and how to think about them in a little bit different ways, and then trying to get a sense for what's the most effective way, how do I maximize my my effort and kind of maximize my opportunities with this. And so I think there's, like, four distinct stages that, like, we've I've gone through as a person and then, like, our business has gone through to kind of, like, get to a place where using these tools to to make everybody more effective. Like, at the end of the day, like, this is I want I always think about this as, like, kind of, like, trying to upgrade from, like, riding a bicycle to, like, driving a car in terms of efficiency. So, like, you can just go a lot more places a lot faster. Where you could get there before, we can do a lot more now and wanting to kind of like lean into it as much as possible. And I've seen this from the perspective of like somebody running a business, but also I see my students using this too in my MBA classes of, like, data AI is part of their life and definitely, like, very much ingrained in everything they're using now. So, trying to understand it from a few different angles and trying to be ahead of trying to stay ahead of the curve. And it's my Yeah. For the most part. And I never thought about

Vira: 8:04

it, but actually now I kinda take pride in the fact that I graduated from university without any, like, tools like Tag GPT or, like, Gemini or Perplexity or something. Feels good. I know it's like, it's a different kind of different kind of knowledge that you need to know to use them. And a lot of our listeners, I'm sure they are like using AI in their everyday lives for summaries, for, like, fixing clunky emails and stuff. But, like, tell us more about the way someone, like, can push themselves to explore more and to experiment a little bit more. So let's let's see what you have for us.

Robbie Fitzwater: 8:42

Okay. So looking at the presentation, like, I have a cute slide of, like, like, this is what we do, like connecting businesses and customers. Always trying to have some trying to make it a little bit more a little bit more lighthearted and and irreverent. But, like, right now, there are so many people like, AI is a buzzword. Like, you can't throw a marketer down the stairs without AI coming out at least once. And it's just, like, it's everywhere where it's everywhere. And, like, you add the term AI to the end of a business and it's, like, valued valued at a higher rate. It's just becoming a little bit, like, overdone in some cases, but, like, so many people will talk about so many abstract things. Like, it's challenging for almost intimidating for some people to kinda start to get into. But I think, like, trying to go through a few stages of, like, adopting it and really using it in effective ways. So I try to think about this from this perspective of, like, every time we use AI to do something new, we're choosing to not do it the old way. So, like, every time we have a a chance to pivot and do something different, we're choosing not to do it the way we've done it in the past, and that is a distinct decision we have to make every time every time we try something new there. But it gives us a really unique opportunity to try to experiment and explore and where, hopefully, again, sometimes this can take more time on the front end for some of these things to kind of like understand how they work. It's a really great opportunity for us to kind of grow as individuals and understand how we can do better work, do more work more effectively. And then also kind of like there's there's a lot of great use cases that aren't as are a little bit more non obvious than we would expect, but I think are really kind of wonderful in the ways that we can use it, not just, like, making summaries or doing, like, kind of, like, the stuff you you know it should be able to do, but stuff that you wouldn't necessarily expect. It's a really great tool for. So the first stage is kinda, like, using it, like, personally and then professionally. Like, so just kind of having some fun with it and playing around with it. So I, like, my brain works in, like, bad analogies typically, and so, like, I've gotta have, like, an analogy for this. So, like, the dry like, AI is a driver or AI is riding with you. This is like Mhmm. I'm learning how to use it as personally and professionally. Like, AI is in the back seat. AI is, like, working with me. AI will help me if I need it, but I it's not doing everything for me yet. But I can I can call in the back seat and ask it if ask it if I have a question? So AI doing that for me. So personally or I mean, professionally, like, one time and everybody's done this. Like, we had a wrong link in an email. Like, this happens to everybody. Again, I've run a female marketing agency just like you guys do. And this is, like, the worst. And especially with this, we have a group that has, like, a a wholesale arm of their business along with the retail version, and we, like, duplicate an element across those different accounts. And, like, it something came went out with a wholesale link in it. It drove me crazy and got under my skin and, like, is, like, anybody who runs a business or operates a business, you're like there's lots of emotions that go along with that. And also you're like, wait. This is gonna cost us money. Like, oh my gosh. Like, this is the worst. So, like, a lot of internal churning that happens. So one of the ways we decided to one of the ways I was like, hey. I don't wanna deal with this anymore. I wanna try and find a way that we can avoid this avoid this, like, anguish. Can I do some can I use a tool to do this? So, basically, I worked created a custom chat JPG module to basically take an email and check the links. Like, render each link in the email. Tell me if it's a button, if it's a text if it's a hyperlink. Tell me if it's a image, what that link is, where it lands, and give me a description of what it's doing. And I can do that for every email where, like, as opposed to checking each individual hyperlink, like like, clicking on each of individual link to make sure it's going where it's going, we can do that through this tool. And it's it's really easy to do because, like, I just grab I download the email file from from Gmail, and then I upload it here, and it'll do everything for me from there. And Wow. That's so

Vira: 13:05

clever. I love it. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 13:09

so, like, again, this, like, thorn on my side, it's like a deep pain point is something that is, like, turns into turns into a great opportunity because suddenly can try this for different things. And

Vira: 13:21

that's and that's so clever. And it would have saved us so much, like, efforts and even money because I remember, like, one time we sent this email with the typo in the link that created some issues for the client. And very often, we'd not very often. Most of the cases, we do catch them. But I remember one time we were sending this email for a very, like high end client in like furniture industry or something. And our designer by mistake inserted the link to like a Colombian marketplace of the cars. We caught it. We caught it in time. But can you imagine? Can you imagine the impact? But this is super clever, Robbie. I I love what you've done here. Yeah. That that

Robbie Fitzwater: 14:02

this is one that's again, like, there's so much when you're publishing so much and you're and you're, like, creating so much, doing everything perfectly is, like, virtually impossible. Like, you're I always joke, like, we wanna be, like, a good school bus driver between, like we can have, like, between three and four, but no more than five accidents per year, and we're good.

Vira: 14:23

That's a sad joke, but

Robbie Fitzwater: 14:27

So so, like, we things are gonna happen, but the more we can minimize those, like, that's where, like, it saves us time and effort. And just, like, it I sleep better and I and it's wonderful. And, like, it's small things. Like, we normally catch things, but, like, when you're working at a at a fast pace, especially on the holidays, like, going into November, like, things can happen. So this is a like, again, I'll get to it later, but, like, this is in a way that it can hopefully save save you some head headache. Another way, like, this is where I think the personal side of things really helps us to kind of understand, okay. I can do this different in a different way. So we about a little while ago, we were naming our our our second child. Like, our first first our our firstborn, his name is August, and it's hard to find a name that kind of, like, matches that. So, like, if we have August, like, it'd be hard to, like, name him like like Gary. It just wouldn't necessarily, like, match. So we're like, okay. How do we kind of, like, make this work? So we used, like, LLMs, like, hey. What's a what's, like, a classic name that matches kind of the context of August, for for a boy to be named in 2023? It in the top 800. So, like, there's some context for the name, but not in the top 200, not to be, like, overused. And, like, basically, what what are some options that would be appropriate? And where we have, like, such a broad list at first, it helps us, like, narrow those down, and it takes thing it took things from, like, really, really abstract, and it helped us kind of, like, understand some of the context behind some of those names and really helped us hone in on exactly kind of, like, what we wanted in a name that would be, like, his own and also, like, in the same, like, kind of, like, level as August where it's not just, like, as much of a common name. Or I guess it's August is super super curious now. I'm,

Vira: 16:25

like, super curious now. What did you pick? Please don't say it's September. Please don't say it's September because it would be very

Robbie Fitzwater: 16:32

So so August was born in June. Okay. Our second son was born in August. I really wanted to name him June naturally. But his name is Emery. So

Vira: 16:45

it's Amazing. Yeah.

Robbie Fitzwater: 16:47

So it's wonderful. And like, we we we love it, but we would have it would have been harder to find that name if we weren't like using this as a as an option. And like, I learned a lot about names. I didn't know, like Sebastian is like the the Latin, the Latin version of the Greek August or, like, vice versa. Right.

Vira: 17:09

Oh, that's fascinating. And I love how how you apply AI literally to everything, even, like, naming your kid. It was to you, Robbie. It's so funny.

Robbie Fitzwater: 17:20

So, So, yeah, like, trying did an

Vira: 17:21

amazing job. I mean, the name the name is awesome.

Robbie Fitzwater: 17:25

It's hopefully it's hopefully a win. He can hopefully, he doesn't hate me for it too much later on in life. So, like, other ways, like, professionally, like, can you make this more concise? Yes. That's easy. For me, like, teaching, hey. Can you please take this table of student responses, like, to 12 questions and put it into rows and columns? Like, hey. Can you just organize data for me? Like, I don't wanna do this. I could do this, but I'd love for you to do this for me. Those are ways that, like, hey. Like, it's kind of like an intern. Like, you wanna use it as a again, to do a job for you, do a task for you where it you're going from, like, zero to one, and it's wonderful because, like, it can help you, like, do that task and and effectively, like, do what you need. Or, like, personally, like, hey, can you help me communicate to my five year old son why, like, eating too many cookies can be bad for him? Like, those are those are helpful tools.

Vira: 18:18

Love that. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 18:20

second stage, this is where I think, like, I'm trying to, again, constantly push the way we I think about it and kinda like our team does it. Like, how do we use it as a thought partner? And that's where, like, pushing the pushing the ideas we have a little bit farther and doing a little bit, like, diving a little bit deeper and using it to kinda, like, poke holes in some ways. So this is kinda where, like, AI is kinda riding in the passenger seat with you. And, again, it's right there with you. You're at equal equal playing field, and you, like, are looking at it like a, hey. This is a trusted partner. I wanna use this as a as a great way to, like, make make what I already have much better. So, hey. I am writing a proposal. Like, I wanna know, does this proposal have everything I need? And and, like, is this is this, like, pricing right? And, like, is if somebody who owns, like, a like, an email agency, like, that can be challenging sometimes. Like, depending on your pricing model and depending on your business model, like, that can be, like, a stressful situation, and you wanna make sure that you're not missing anything, especially when there's, like, different context you may be working with. So, hey. Can you help me, like, understand, like, what is this proposal missing, and am I charging enough? And there are lots of people who have used tools like this to proofread their proposals on the free model and a lot of proposals that they can kinda, like, understand, like, hey. This is what a proposal may look like, what may include. This is what you couldn't this is additional content you could include. This is kind of, like, what what pricing could look like around those ranges. And Mhmm. It's really wonderful. And we got some really great feedback and really great results, and we've, like, kind of evolved our our, like, proposal proposal structure because of this now. So it's a really it's a tool that I didn't think I would ever use in that capacity, but it was really, really nice to kind of, like, kick like, push push what we have farther and feel really confident with what the work feel really confident with what we put put across the line. This is something where, like, I wouldn't just, like, grab what it says and dump it into anything ever, but, like Mhmm. Is, like, poking holes. And as a critical observer or a, like, piece of good feedback, I wanna use it to enhance what I'm already doing and make that much make it that much better, but also make sure I make it my own too. No.

Vira: 21:10

It's it sounds powerful. I never thought about it, like using it this way as a critical thinker. I I love it. So

Robbie Fitzwater: 21:20

this is another area where I think it's kind of cool, and our creative team has been able to use it in some unique ways. So Mhmm. This is kind of where, like, it's taking something and making it better. We have, like so one of our clients is a coffee brand, and they're wonderful group. They're, again, kind of, like, keep they keep kind of, like, evolving and getting bigger and bigger. But one thing is, like, a lot of times, like, some of their coffee, like, they don't have a they can't do a lot of, like, cool creative sometimes because it's, like, maybe seasonal, maybe, like, different context. And it's just, like, hard to do it when they're releasing coffees over and over. So they have a seasonal coffee they release every year, and, like, we have a pretty ambitious piece of content we really wanted to create. And we, like actually, that doesn't really make sense. Okay. We wanted to create, like, something really cool here. So

Vira: 22:14

Mhmm. We brainstormed and talked through,

Robbie Fitzwater: 22:16

like, what this would could look like, what we it would do. The coffee is called Christmas Vacation. We wanted to kinda, like, evoke nostalgia around, like, the movie Christmas Vacation. And our creative director was like, hey. I wanna play with this. I wanna have some fun with this. Like, can you create like, we started with just an image. Can you create put this against the snowy landscape? And so, like, use one tool to kind of get it against the snowy landscape. And then can you create a house in the background with flickering lights of in the background? So, like, using multiple layers and multiple different AI tools in this one piece of creative they turned this into something that this brought to brought to life a gift that kind of, like, brings to life the kind of, like, the context around Christmas vacation and has that life that that house lighting up, like, in kind of that, like, bright shine like, kind of cool experience. And then for the introduction, we we had the house lighting up. And then the last chance, we had the house turning off. And so we used it twice, but it was a really great way that, hey. This pushes what we could have ever done so much farther, and, like, we ended up with a piece that we would have never been able to produce if we didn't have these tools. Because it looks like I don't know. I I I look at them like like, was it it looks like Pixar put it together. It's really

Vira: 23:31

It looks like a It looks like a professional photo shoot was done specifically for this one. And this just like shows you how creative AI, images can look. Because I remember, especially like few years ago when we first started working or like exploring the stools, a lot of our creatives, they were like, they were worried that this would make their work less original, but it's just like a great example of how you can still deliver something that is very unique. That is like very yours, very on brand while using AI tools. Great example. And

Robbie Fitzwater: 24:09

and that's where, again, I don't think we need that creative on the front end to, like, be able to think through how we wanna bring that to life. But Mhmm. Once we have that, it just, like, supercharges what they're able to do. Like, this would have taken somebody, like, going out and, like, filming in the cold, in the place where it's snowy and, like, getting that all right, like, is basically, like, virtually impossible. Like, we're in the Southeast. Like, that's not gonna happen for us. So Right.

Vira: 24:34

No. I think at this point, like, the prompting will become the art or the creative process of its own. Right? Yeah. Where we are. And then, like,

Robbie Fitzwater: 24:43

even asking like, using a prompt and then asking it, like, hey. Can you do that again? Can you do this a little bit different? And that's where that's where you can be a little bit less than less than courteous to it. That's where you can be like, I'm not I'm not I'm not okay with that. You could do better.

Vira: 24:59

Feel bad for it. Because it's like CHAT GPT is like one, you know, how they say that you become like similar to the top five people around you. Like CHAT GPT is definitely in that five people circle for me. So I try to be nice to it. Okay.

Robbie Fitzwater: 25:13

So I'm gonna have to pay for CHAT GPT CHET GPT therapy. The paid one the paid one

Vira: 25:18

is the next level. Yeah.

Robbie Fitzwater: 25:21

Yeah. And I actually read something that people are using it using the tools as, like, therapists, like feedback for therapy. And I I thought I think it's amazing. They

Vira: 25:30

do. One of my friends, no, I use it as a therapy and it's like, it's up there. It's amazing. Like, I didn't expect it to be this amazing. And there is this prompt that is called three hard questions. Like, what are some things that are like overlook or like, what are some things for me to focus on? I tell you, it knows me better than my therapist because I give my deepest and darkest thoughts to ChargeGPD. So it's pretty amazing. I I love that.

Robbie Fitzwater: 26:00

Good on you. Because I I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to look into that. Like, three three hard three hard questions is? I can

Vira: 26:06

send them to you. I can send them to you. It's

Robbie Fitzwater: 26:08

really it's that's what I

Vira: 26:10

learned in TikTok University. You know? You know? And that's like all of my where all of my knowledge is coming from these days. But, no, I I I really like this example that you guys have created. It looks like a professional photoshoot. Like, it's amazing.

Robbie Fitzwater: 26:25

So yeah. And, like, again, it goes into goes into an email. It looks wonderful and, like yeah. It was a it was cool to cool to see that come to life. And, like, again, I this is, like, the version where the lights go out and, like, it's Mhmm. That's the last chance version. So, again, like, how can it help you make your work better? This is another kind of way I've used it where I was we were like, talking with our talking with our office, like, to to a group we we rent an office from. And, again, negotiation's always one of those things. It's like so some people love it. Some people, like, you just wanna, like, approach it in a smart way. And, like, the going back and forth via email, like, hey. How can I how can you help me frame an email to not get a yes, no response? Like Mhmm. Like,

Vira: 27:11

in the style of Chris Voss. I've I've, like,

Robbie Fitzwater: 27:13

never split the differences, like, a book I read and, like, apply that stuff all the time. But, like, can you help me do this and, like, frame this in a way that's gonna be help me do it better? Because I just wanna make sure that I can put the burden of proof on them in this case. So it's really wonderful because, like, again, the Midwestern in me hates that. And I hate it. I need some help sometimes. So this was just another way to just, like, help push my thought process a little bit farther. And so, like, once we've done this and once I've kind of, like, gotten used to kinda, like, take putting it through its paces and, again, these things evolve. Like, you use it, again, for, like, again, internal, like, feedback like that. Like, I'm I need to try this too. Like, that's where kind of, like, that experimentation internally, like, the experimentation over time, like, we get to figure out how to use these completely differently because, like, we're it's not gonna look like it to today is, like, the slowest day of technological change for the rest of our lives. And like, this is not gonna look the same a year from now than it does today. So we keep evolving in how we're doing it and how we're using these tools. And we're gonna hopefully be ahead of that. But how can we bake it into our processes? The next step is like, how do I, like, create something in more systematized way of doing this? So this is kind of where AI is driving for you in a lot of cases where I can, again, offload some of that mental cognitive load to AI, and they can start to handle some of those things for me where I'm not as worried about, hey. I don't need to write this, like, follow-up email. This is the, like, output of an output of a meeting. Can you put together, like, a follow-up email with, like, next steps, action items, and put those for individual people. So it's doing a lot of work for you. So one thing we do a lot, especially on the onboarding side with new clients, we have we do a lot of surveying, a lot of, like, asking asking things. And, also, we also wanna ask their audiences and their customers questions so we can know them a little bit better to understand use cases, to understand value propositions, and, like, get to know their customers. Like, the voice of the customer research is really important on the front end, we think. And but when we have surveys with, like, hundreds and hundreds of answers, like, it can be overwhelming. So, like, we creating like, we have a tool that we use, like, hey. Can you help me identify common themes in the survey? And we use the same tool every time we do a like, have a survey from from a group. Like, we're putting it into there, and it's helping us find common themes. And then it's also helping us categorize those themes based on demographics or, like, psychographics that we're seeing. So if there's themes within a within a, cohort in there, it'll help us find those. Like, for, like, a given product, it may be like, hey. This is some people like this for, like like, rest and relaxation. Some people like this to, like, hang out with their friends. But for an older group, like, they may like it because it helps them sleep. So a lot of different products may have a lot of different use cases, and we it helps us identify the use cases and then also the the benefits or the the reason people are purchasing it from each specific category so we can communicate to them more effectively as an individual. Yeah. We do

Vira: 30:28

use it for, survey analysis quite a lot. Just like you said, it's perfect to unpack that complex information. And I remember at the beginning when we first started using it, people were worried, like what's left for us marketers prompt that we can master, but actually it helps you to analyze big data better. And that's what we use it for as well. Yeah. So like,

Robbie Fitzwater: 30:54

again, this is like where, if we could we could hire people to do this or we could do this, but this is, like, not the most valuable use of anybody's of of, like, as marketers, like like, Vera, you're a pretty smart, intelligent person. Like, I I don't want you, like, manually categorizing a survey. Like, I would like, your time's like you using your strategic brain. Like, that's where you're gonna be the most valuable. And that's, like, where we get more time to use the strategic side if we kind of outsource some of the, like, the the heavy lifting or, like, the, like, more manual tasks. And it's makes things just a little bit easier.

Vira: 31:29

Mhmm. Definitely.

Andriy: 31:31

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Robbie Fitzwater: 32:03

And then the fourth step and, like, this is where, like, I'm we're always working on this as a team. Like, our team does communicate around, like, hey. How do we do this? How do we get better at this? How do we build more tools to kind of, like, make this process more seamless? And how do we, like, bake it into our team's process? And so this is where, like, hey. We have a fleet driving for us, and it's it's wonderful. And, again, this is a presentation about AI. I had to put some, like have AI create some, like, bad images in here. And I don't know why they're driving the same direction on both sides of the highway. But right now, you have to, like, leave the AI images to itself. But this is where, like, hey. You have an AI you have AI helping you drive a fleet for you, and that's where some real magic can happen because, like, we just have this built as into part of our processes and systems where everybody does this at different stages. So we have our tool suite of tools that we use on a consistent basis that our team has access to. We use individual tools for individual clients, as part of, like, our onboarding process now. And it helps us just know kind of like, hey, this is kind of the process we take to kind of, like, get to that end result. And we're using AI at multiple stages along the way. So, like, checking emails, like like I said, not the most valuable use of our strategist's time. So, like, checking every link in every email. So, like, when we're when they're doing that, like, I personally, I feel like I'm just, like, burning money, and I I don't like that. And also Taylor's this is 2025. Taylor Swift has to be in, like, every single presentation in some capacity. So, like, I I checked that box right here. It's

Vira: 33:40

a great so, yeah,

Robbie Fitzwater: 33:42

we wanna have our, like, link checker bot look through all the links in here. We may have our copy bot copy editor bot, like, copy edit the copy edit the each email to make sure that there's no typos, there's no issues. Like, we run it through Grammarly. We but we also wanna run it through, like, our copy editor bot because it may give helpful suggestions. And that's not like putting together copy. We use we use it on the front end to help us put together copy in the voice and tone of our clients. But the copy editor, like, functions like a copy editor would where it's, again, helping to make sure that it fits coherently and, like, it's tight as tight as it could be. And we use multiple different tools along the way for each individual email as part of our, like, checklist. And that's a really wonderful way that we can, like, get things done, get them done effectively, and, like, outsource some of that heavy lifting to the different tools we're using. Right.

Vira: 34:37

It's it's a tricky one, this, like, grammar checker and everything, because it's it's very tricky to maintain that, like, accountability in the team. Like, when part of the process is, like, AI driven, and, like, who owns the mistakes. So we're, like, still navigating this, this world for sure. But yeah, it's, it can be super helpful.

Robbie Fitzwater: 34:59

Yeah. Like we, like we've kind of started treating it like we do like email on acid, like, or like litmus, where it's like, it's just a step in the process and like, it's just a step we use to make sure that we have everything done. And but, yeah, it's like again, the accountability, it's harder to harder to do that. We normally like to have a checklist for everything we're doing and, like, making sure we're going through that process and then multiple eyes on it. But this is just, like, a way that we can minimize the time that even our, like, our editor, like, whoever's the second set of eyes on anything or the third set of eyes, like, they don't need to spend as much time on it. And so by the time it gets to a client for approval, like, it's plenty of, like, we we we feel really confident this is really good work across the line. And it's just, again, a a little bit of a a cushion to make sure that we're in a good place. Right. So you're tweeting it

Vira: 35:49

almost as an extra pair of eyes to take a look on your email.

Robbie Fitzwater: 35:53

Yeah. That's that's cool.

Vira: 35:55

Let's play the AI confessional because I know you you must have had some, like, AI fails as well or some of the things that AI totally missed or backfired. Like, did you have anything like this that didn't work for you guys? Okay. So so

Robbie Fitzwater: 36:13

I we we've we've had a few, like again, like, it'll hallucinate every once in a while. The worst one personally the worst one for me, like, I've built it up to be this, like, big thing for my my wife who's my wife who is a, an academic. And she was, like, using the tool for the first time. And I was like like like, hey. Log in to my my my chat GPT account. Like, you can dive in. Use it for use it for your research stuff. I think this would be really helpful for you. And she's like, five minutes in, I'm getting text messages like, oh my gosh. This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. This is amazing. This is amazing. And, like, ten minutes in, she's like, it just lied to me so bad. I hate this. I'm gonna touch on this. She's

Vira: 36:52

like, it was just

Robbie Fitzwater: 36:54

like like this, like, giant swing of emotions of, like, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that sit

Vira: 37:01

down, sir. Yeah. It had made

Robbie Fitzwater: 37:03

up it had it had made up all these new articles that didn't exist. It cited those articles. It brought up a bunch of random things and it can come up with a lot of a lot of tricky kind of like funny things. Recently, I've noticed it being a little bit. Recently, I've noticed it being, like, lazy in some cases. I use a lot now where I will use, like, the voice based version

Vira: 37:26

Uh-huh. Of ChargeGPT. So, like, I'll

Robbie Fitzwater: 37:27

use the like, talking into it. And when I ask it to do something, it'll it'll say, like, okay. I'll I'll follow-up when I have that done. And it just doesn't follow-up. And I was like, chat GPT. Like, what happened there? And there it's like Oh, no. It started Oh, I'm sorry. I let that through. And I was like I was like, you need to do better. Can I have that now? So I've had to start giving it more tight deadlines.

Vira: 37:51

Okay. It's funny that the chat GPT started having an attitude. I actually started playing recently with this tool, Runaway, it's called. Have you heard of it? It's like the tool that animates the the the images. And it actually has some, like, pretty impressive results. And I was thinking of, like, animated animating some of my books for social media. But the result actually, can I show you that? It's like Please

Robbie Fitzwater: 38:19

do. It's pretty funny.

Vira: 38:22

I probably just didn't do a good job with, like, prompting. But we have this little dinosaur, you know? And the prompt was like, he has to wave a hand and walk away, but it made it flat, you know. Like, you see me screaming. It made it, like, flat and two dimensional. It's, like, so weird. And I have quite a few, like, examples like this when it just, like, adds the third, the third arm to it, or it's just like it does all kinds of, like, weird stuff, you know? But it actually if you're doing the prompt right, it's the results are pretty decent, and that's my first time ever using this tool. So there is a bit of a learning curve, but, it's it's so worth it. We have this little, like, accountability in Flowium where we have to play with AI and try something new for at least like twenty minutes a day, every day. That's like the commitment that we have for our little group. And then we get together and share the results of what we learned. So, yeah, that's a little experiment that we're running. You know what? I

Robbie Fitzwater: 39:28

that's where that's where, like, again, was talking to Andre, like, recently at the Unspam conference. And, like, that's where you guys are gonna take this and run with it. And that's where, like, I'm just excited to hear, like, how you guys will use these tools and apply them because I'm curious. Like, everybody's brain works a little bit differently. And that's where I think, like, we just have so many cool things ahead of us for how these all work and what we can do with them. So Well, we'll report back,

Vira: 39:50

Robbie. We'll report back because we just started doing this. But honestly, it was so fun today. Like, I personally learned a lot of things. I might even, like, borrow a few of your ideas because I just, like, like the way your brain thinks. Like, seriously, some of this examples you've presented today, like, I'm like, why are we not doing this? It just, like, makes so much sense. So thank you so much. Learned a lot. Thank you. And, like, I'll

Robbie Fitzwater: 40:16

share the links to all of those. Like, all of those are live tools that you guys that anybody can use or you guys can use. And that's, like, hopefully helpful in some capacity. Because, like, again, the we're just getting we're just on the, like, start of of how so much of this works and it's, like, it should be really fun.

Vira: 40:35

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming back. Let's do this again. I feel like every every year or something, we've gotta have a little reunion. I I

Robbie Fitzwater: 40:45

love it. I love I love it. This is a treat. You guys are I I always joke like I met Andre at a conference. I heard him I heard him talking behind me and I was like, dude, I know your voice. You you you have an idea with Flowium? And he's like, yeah, I own it. I was yes, this is, we're good friends now. So he's like,

Vira: 41:04

as far as Darius, you guys have done amazing

Robbie Fitzwater: 41:06

things. You guys have done amazing things. Like our team listens to your podcast. You guys have done amazing things in the space and made so many marketers better. And this is an absolute treat to be, on the podcast and be able to say, bring some value to the world. Thank you so

Vira: 41:19

much. Let's reconnect, not the way ChargeGPT, like, follows up, but actually let's reconnect with what we learned about AI in a few months. Because I know, like you said, every day is something changing, and it will be very different few months from now.

Robbie Fitzwater: 41:39

Yeah. So but, yeah, it was a treat and look looking forward to that then. We'll have Thank you so much, Robbie. Yeah. Round two of this.

Vira: 41:47

Thank you so much. Take care. Bye. Bye

Robbie Fitzwater: 41:49

bye. Thanks for listening

Intro: 41:51

to Email Einstein. Can you feel that? Your marketing brain just got a little bit bigger. We ask that you please use it wisely. You've got all the theory you need to get out there and start boosting your sales because great emails equals revenue squared.