putilov_denis - stock.adobe.com
6 generative AI tools to consider for marketing and sales
Generative AI tools can write marketing content, score leads and personalize sales emails. Explore six generative AI tools for marketing and sales, such as Jasper and Flick.
ChatGPT's 2022 launch created an influx of marketing-focused AI products.
The marketing industry has been one of the fastest-growing adopters of generative AI tools. Marketing and sales teams can use these tools to automate business processes, such as lead scoring, marketing optimization and sales coaching. These tools can also personalize outreach and create dynamic website content and marketing collateral.
However, generative AI tools bring many challenges. For instance, privacy concerns have caused companies like Samsung to ban these tools for internal use. Other challenges include legal liability and copyright concerns. Despite these obstacles, however, generative AI tools can improve marketing and sales efforts.
Explore six tools that can automate marketing and sales tasks.
These products were selected based on reports from leading analyst firms, such as Gartner and Forrester, and user reviews on G2 and Capterra, plus additional research by TechTarget editors.
1. ChatGPT
OpenAI launched ChatGPT -- a free generative AI chatbot -- in November 2022. The tool, which the vendor trained on a large language model (LLM) known as GPT 3.5, offers a straightforward UI, like a search engine. Users can submit questions or prompts, and ChatGPT responds with answers. Marketing and sales teams can use the tool to write emails, social media posts and blog content. It can also generate marketing surveys and perform keyword research for search engine optimization (SEO).
However, the tool's knowledge cutoff date is late 2023, so at least the free version has no knowledge of the world after that date and may generate outdated information. This can negatively affect the quality of SEO keyword research and blog content. Additionally, ChatGPT often locks users out of the service at peak times due to overburdened servers.
The paid versions of ChatGPT -- ChatGPT Plus and Team -- run on the GPT-4 LLM. GPT-4 can generate more accurate responses than its predecessors, GPT-3 and GPT 3.5. They also have access to GPT-4o. ChatGPT Plus and Team also experience less downtime than the free version.
ChatGPT comes in four pricing tiers: Free, Plus, Team and Enterprise. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month, while Team -- suited for SMBs or small teams -- starts at $25 per user monthly on an annual plan. Pricing information about the Enterprise tier isn't available on the vendor's website.
2. Jasper
Formerly known as Jarvis, Jasper is an AI-powered writing assistant and content creation platform for marketers. Jasper can learn to generate content in a brand's voice and style, create consistent messaging, translate content into over 30 languages, generate AI art and create marketing campaigns.
Jasper offers a template library with over 50 options that let users summarize text, generate blog post ideas and write SEO-optimized title tags and meta descriptions. This tool can help marketers overcome writer's block and ensure a consistent brand voice across different pieces of marketing collateral.
Additionally, Jasper can generate both long- and short-form content. However, its long-form content -- responses that exceed a few hundred words -- often sound repetitive and unnatural.
Jasper offers three pricing tiers: Creator, Pro and Business. The creator plan costs $39 per seat monthly, and the Pro plan costs $59 per seat monthly. These two tiers offer 7-day free trials. Pricing information for the Business plan isn't available on the vendor's website.
3. Einstein Copilot
Salesforce introduced Einstein Copilot in March 2023 -- which was then referred to as Einstein GPT -- as a generative AI tool for marketing and sales teams. Users can prompt the tool to create personalized emails, generate visual and text-based content for lead generation landing pages, input data into a CRM system and write knowledge articles from case notes.
Einstein Copilot also lets marketing and sales teams create workflows. For example, a sales manager could input the prompt, "Create a workflow to send reps a congratulatory email when they close a deal." Additionally, users can prompt the tool to automate analytics dashboards and data models in Tableau, Salesforce's data visualization platform. Einstein Copilot also integrates with OpenAI and supports both public and private AI models.
Einstein Copilot comes as a feature within Salesforce's Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, App Cloud, Analytics Cloud and Community Cloud. The tool's native integration with these products benefits existing Salesforce users, but it makes Einstein Copilot inaccessible to organizations that don't use Salesforce. Additionally, as with all AI-generated content, marketers and sales reps must check responses for accuracy and correct potential errors.
Pricing is available upon request.
4. Rapidely
Rapidely is a content creation tool for social media that runs on GPT-4. The tool offers a centralized hub from which users can manage multiple social media accounts from various platforms, including Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Rapidely populates content calendars with posts and offers templates to help users design carousels, which are social media posts that contain multiple elements, such as images and videos. The tool also gathers the top trending sounds for Instagram Reels to help users create effective social media content.
Users can feed the tool keywords, which Rapidely then uses to generate multiple posts that users can choose among. The tool offers an intuitive UI, but the wording of posts can lack creativity. Also, some users prefer to post directly on Instagram rather than work in Rapidely.
Rapidely offers five pricing tiers: Lite, Creator, Social Pro, Agency and Business, and the company's pricing page uses euros. When billed monthly, the approximate costs, converted into U.S. dollars, are as follows: Lite for $9, Creator for $31, Social Pro for $74 and Agency for $139. The pricing for Business is not available on the vendor's website. All tiers except Agency and Business offer free trials.
5. Manychat
Manychat is a generative AI chatbot tool for text messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messages. The tool uses GPT-4 to automate conversations with customers and leads. It also lets users build automations with a drag-and-drop interface and captures email and phone numbers in conversations so marketing teams can easily follow up with customers or send them promotions. Manychat can also integrate with Mailchimp, HubSpot, Google Sheets and Zapier.
Manychat helps organizations streamline conversations, quickly deploy chatbots and offer consistent answers to customer questions. The tool can also reduce lead generation costs. However, the pricing structure lacks flexibility and users can't fully customize conversation templates to their brand's tone and voice. Additionally, the product's customer support needs improvement.
Manychat offers three pricing tiers: Free, Pro and Premium. The Pro option costs $15 monthly. Pricing information for the Premium plan isn't available on the vendor's website.
6. Flick
Flick is a social media tool that helps users create posts, tailor hashtags to their target audience and schedule posts at optimal times. The tool also lets users quickly transform long-form marketing content into smaller social media posts.
Flick offers a drag-and-drop scheduling function, and its hashtag research feature helps marketers reach more people on social media. However, the auto-publish function doesn't always work and the tool's mobile app has limited capabilities.
The vendor offers three pricing tiers -- Solo, Pro and Agency -- and the company's pricing page uses British Pounds. When billed annually, the Solo plan costs approximately $14 per month, whereas the Pro plan cost about $31 per month. Pricing information about the Agency plan isn't available on the vendor's website.
Editor's note: This article was originally published in 2023 and updated to reflect changes in product names and pricing information.
Christine Campbell is a freelance writer specializing in business and B2B technology.
