What AI-generated emails are doing to your brand identity

When Emil Linde, Team Lead Account Manager at Apsis, stepped on stage at The MarTech Summit Stockholm earlier this month, his slide read simply: "There is no framework." It was a deliberate provocation for a room full of marketers looking for one. His lightning talk explored what happens when every brand reaches for the same AI tools and ends up sounding the same, and what the brands getting it right are doing differently. This post is based on that presentation.

There is no framework

AI writing tools have made email content faster to produce. Most marketing teams use them in some form, and the results are often fine. Subject lines get written in seconds so emails can go out on time.

But something is happening across inboxes everywhere. When every brand reaches for the same tools with the same brief, the output starts to look familiar. Readers are noticing this and once your emails start to blur into the background, it becomes very difficult to stand out again.

The answer isn't to stop using AI. It's to understand what AI cannot do for you, and to make sure those things are in place before you reach for the tools. Two things in particular: a brand voice your audience recognises, and audience data specific enough to make every send feel relevant. Neither works well without the other, and both are explored in this post.

Why AI is making it harder for your emails to stand out

No brand sets out to be forgettable. It happens gradually, until a brand that once had a clear identity ends up sounding like everyone else in the inbox.

The brands that avoid this aren't necessarily the loudest or the most creative. What they share is consistency. They know exactly who they are, and they show up that way across everything they send. That's a deliberate decision that must be made and maintained.

WWF Norway is a good example of what this looks like in practice. Their communications span everything from petition campaigns to fundraising appeals, yet every message carries the same sense of purpose and the same distinctive voice. As their team puts it, maintaining the authenticity that makes their voice distinctive is their marketing strategy. 

"Our MarTech strategy is closely aligned with our mission by using data and automated communication to build long-term relationships with supporters, provide relevant and trust-building information, and mobilise action in a respectful and effective way," explains Marianne Gustafson, Team Lead for Fundraising at WWF-Norway.  

When that foundation is in place, AI becomes a useful tool for producing content at scale. Without it, a tool given a vague brief produces something vague. Give it something specific and it helps you move faster without losing what makes the brand recognisable.

Why the creative work still needs a human behind it

There is a version of AI adoption that works well, and a version that quietly costs you. AI is useful for the boring stuff: the knowledge bases, FAQs, and operational content that needs to exist but doesn't need to move anyone. But the moment you're trying to make someone feel something, to capture attention, build trust, or earn a click - don't delegate that. That's the work that requires a human voice behind it. No prompt replaces knowing what your brand stands for.

There’s no risk in using AI to do the repetitive work. It frees up the time and headspace to do the creative work properly. The risk is using AI in the places where a real voice is the only thing that makes the message land.  

Why your automated emails matter more than campaigns

Most marketing campaigns get the budget and the attention. And then automated emails like the welcome message and the re-engagement flow get the minimum effort needed to get them ‘out the door’. But those are the emails landing in someone's inbox every single day, at the exact moments when they are most likely to pay attention.

Filmweb, the Norwegian film portal, built a series of automated winback flows targeting churning and former members. The results speak to just how much these quiet, behind-the-scenes emails can do:

"After we started the winback flows in May 2024, we were able to save or reactivate 2.5% of the total churn that year. Halfway through 2025, we've saved 3.2%. These are hundreds of members that we otherwise would have lost."
Elisabeth Brinch, Head of Kinoklubb, Filmweb Norway.

Part of what makes automated emails work is the control they give you over timing. As Kost1's marketing team puts it:

"With SMS and emails, you can plan exactly when the information reaches the customer. On social media, you don't know when they're going to see it. With email and SMS, you know it's going to be within 24 hours so you have more control over your promotions."
Siren Lunde Figved, Marketing & Product Developer at Kost1.

How audience data makes email personalisation work

Brand voice gets a brand recognised, but recognition alone doesn't earn the ‘open’. What makes an email worth opening is relevance, and that comes from knowing your audience well enough to say the right thing to them at the right time.

Filmweb understood this early. By tracking which films members had already watched, they could shape each email around what that member had done rather than what the brand assumed they might want:

"This helps us avoid sending reminder emails to members who have already seen a movie, which can otherwise be perceived as annoying."
Elisabeth Brinch, Head of Kinoklubb, Filmweb Norway.

Clean, well-maintained data is what makes this possible. Voice without data produces consistent but generic emails. Data without voice produces targeted but forgettable ones. The two working together is where email makes the reader feel like the brand knows them.

The question every email marketer should be able to answer

If you removed your logo from every email you send, would your audience know it was you?

It's worth answering honestly. Pull up your welcome email, your re-engagement flow, and your last campaign. Do they sound like the same brand, and do they sound like your brand?

The inbox is getting noisier, but that's an argument for email done well, not against it. When everyone else sounds the same, sounding like yourself is one of the most effective things a brand can do. The question is whether you've done enough work to know what that sounds like, and whether your data is good enough to say something specific to the right person once you do.

Email is still one of the highest-ROI channels in marketing. The brands making the most of it are the ones sending with the most intention. When the right voice meets the right message at the right moment, it shows.

Apsis brings email marketing, automation, personalisation, and an AI writing assistant into one platform, so your team can move faster without losing what makes your brand worth reading. Find out more at apsis.com