Tell us about yourself. What are you working on right now?

I’m Tania Benade, managing director at Unstructured. I’m responsible for ensuring that we grow our company, hit our targets, [and bring] new products to market. Our business has two parts: first, we’re a partner of Monday.com, focusing on small businesses to help them grow and scale; second is our data analytics, working with small businesses and marketing agencies to automate their data and do market research. It’s all about automation, integration, and using technology to make your life easier.

How do you use AI for work?

I use it multiple times every day. I start my day by looking at our sales funnel email—we use Apollo to see how our emails are performing and sequence our sales prospect emails. Then, I use ChatGPT to rewrite the subject lines or content to aim it at different stakeholder groups. If we’re targeting large organizations, I’ll go to their websites, try to find articles about them, and then use that data to create a sequence based on pain points that they’re having in their business. That’s how I use it from a sales perspective.

From a marketing perspective, I use it extensively for our website. Writing blog posts, creating content on LinkedIn, and building out our new website. I didn’t write one piece of content; I let ChatGPT write all of our pages, including building the structure of the website. I asked, “What is the best practice for building a website for people who are partners of software technology companies? What pages should I include? What should be in my headers? How many words should I use?”

How did you identify GPT as a tool for these projects? What kinds of prompts do you use?

I’m not a salesperson, so I don't know how to even start our email sequences. I needed some help, and that’s why I used ChatGPT. First, I went to sites like gong.io. They have a couple of sales templates and have done data analysis on good things to include. I fed that information in and then took content from our current website about what we do as a business. Then I said, “Based on the information that I gave you, here is my target persona. Create me four email sequences that I want to send in three days to sell this product at this price. These are the features I want to highlight.” That is how I created my sequences. I also asked it to write me ten subject lines, a long email, and a short email. Suggest ways that I can include products, GIFs, images, or videos. Use case studies from Monday’s website that are relevant. It actually pulled case studies from the website referencing actual data points to be included in our email.

Did you test that prompt before you put it into action?

I refine it. If I see it’s not what I want, then I rewrite the prompt. I do a lot of unstructured data analytics and have some experience in understanding how to ask the question to get the answer that you want. Understanding the language people use and how they express themselves helps me write prompts in an effective way.

Speak to it like it’s a person and see what happens. If it doesn’t understand, then change your prompt. Say, “I want to write a blog post. I want to send it to a social media manager at an influencer agency. I want to sell them this. Please, write me this.” I don't know why I say please, but in every prompt that I write, I say please. I think it probably learns your tone of voice as well. So, if you’re going to be rude, maybe it’s going to be rude.

What guidance can you share for how best to structure a prompt?

Write a problem statement and then write some assumptions or hypotheses and potential solutions or outcomes. Say: “This is the problem that I’m facing. I need you to create this for me. Here’s additional information and things that you should consider.” And then let [ChatGPT] write it for me. That’s the format that I follow and it seems to work quite well.

What sorts of adjustments do you find yourself making most frequently?

For emails, I test different subject lines and I’ll include personalization like day of the week, something that’s recently in the news, or about the industry. Then, I’ll play around with longer emails versus shorter emails to see if any of them resonate more. I’ll test things like using different types of words, being more aggressive in my selling versus being more informative. I’ll create emails where every second sequence is an information sequence and every third sequence is selling. I play around with the approach and the email sequence as well.

How do you know if the adjustments you’re making are getting you closer to your goal?

I use a sample of 1,000 people every week to send emails to. If they don’t perform, I’ll rewrite them. Then, I’ll write a brand new one and add it as a new split test into my sales tool.

Do you ever share prompts with your team?

I share it with them on an as-needed basis rather than in a formalized way. If they’re trying to do something and they get stuck, I’ll ask them if they're using ChatGPT. If not, I’ll write the prompt for them and give them a task to do.

My [project manager] has been a fast learner and is now recording herself using AI technology, taking the script and putting it into ChatGPT, and writing action items and statements of work. She has gone full AI on me. Everyone is figuring out their own ways based on the roles that they have.

How would you describe the value GPT has for you in running this business?

We have been able to scale our business a lot quicker without adding more headcount. We are hiring more solution specialists without having to hire salespeople or a marketing manager. We have been able to create a whole website in four-to-six weeks. If I had to write all the content myself, we wouldn’t even be close to launching it. Cash flow is always a problem, so [we’re able to] scale faster and save time and money [on content creation and sales copy].

Do you have a hot take on generative AI?

Employees are scared to say that they are using it because they think their jobs are going to be replaced. Unfortunately, leaders at large businesses are not using it themselves. Until [that] happens at the highest level of the organization, people are going to use it without telling us, and that’s going to slow down adoption. People are scared of the unknown, and unfortunately the people who have the power to make decisions [to use ChatGPT at scale] are not going to. It is likely small business owners and people in more entry-level roles will be open to adopting and implementing AI, and as a result, we might even see the rise of more entrepreneurs and 30-year-old millionaires because they see the value of it.

Can you share an example prompt that you've used successfully?

Please write a blog post for our website about the common pain points [stakeholder] (i.e. marketing manager) at [industry] face when dealing with technology and how automation software like monday.com can help them overcome these problems. Include how this will impact employees, cashflow, productivity and user experience. Write it concisely in British English. Consider referencing online statistics that will support the impact of change when adopting automation software for this specific stakeholder. Include a strong call to action at the end.