The AI playbook helping top brands ship 10x faster

It’s becoming more important than ever to leverage any little thing that can make your business more efficient, and allow you to do more, with less.

Brands are getting sucker punched from every direction. In the past few years it was COVID, then iOS changes.

Now it’s tariffs.

Getting ahead is no longer about getting ahead. It’s about breathing room that lets you withstand whatever big thing hits ecom next.

Let’s get this straight. AI alone won’t save you. But used right, it can multiply your output without tanking your brand.

AI is not a shortcut to better marketing. It’s a creative steroid – use it wrong and you’ll bloat your brand with junk.

But use it with precision, and you’ll move faster, test more, and make sharper decisions, all with no incremental costs.

The biggest lie in AI marketing right now is that AI does the work for you.

It doesn’t. It won’t. It shouldn’t.

What AI can do is help you scale your best thinking. Think of it like this:

AI is your co-pilot… not the captain.

You set the direction. You know the customer. You carry the nuance. AI is there to make you faster and sharper – not to think for you.

You get what you give: the prompt is the strategy

Garbage in, garbage out.

Most AI failures are user errors disguised as tech failures. People throw in lazy prompts like:

“Write an email for our new product.”

And then complain when they get back generic, lifeless copy that screams ChatGPT.

Instead, give it context, direction, and specificity:

“Write a punchy launch email for a $60 skincare product. Target 28-40 y/o women who care about results but hate marketing BS. Hook should stop the scroll, explain these 3 benefits, and push to our quiz.”

The more detail you give AI, the less editing and backtracking you need. Treat your prompt like a creative brief. Great input = usable output.

A 5-step framework for strong AI prompts

Here’s the right way to prompt your AI co-pilot.

1. Start with the goal: What outcome are you trying to achieve?

2. Define the audience: Who’s this for? What do they care about?

3. Set the tone and structure: How should it read? What should it include?

4. Provide examples: Show the AI what “good” looks like – past emails, brand voice docs, customer reviews.

5. Iterate in rounds: Don’t settle on the first draft. Push for alt versions, edit, refine. Play GPT/Claude/Grok/Gemini off each other to improve results.

You’ve got to give it context, examples of what you want to see, and work with it until it’s right.

Problem is, most people want to skip all of this.

That’s not how it works.

Understand that AI is amazing, it’s super efficient… but it’s also lazy.

It’ll take the path of least resistance. If you provide no guard rails, it’ll pump out generic slop.

Where AI actually delivers for ecommerce

Think AI’s all a lot of hype, without clear use cases for your biz?

Hype, yes. But substance, also yes, if you use it for the right tasks.

Here’s where AI punches above its weight right now (if guided well):

• Retention copy: Emails, SMS, post-purchase flows, winbacks

• Ad creative: Concepting hooks, writing body copy, generating visual prompts

• UGC briefs & scripts: AI can format solid briefs if you feed it past winners and audience intel

• Customer personas: Use transcripts/reviews to build hyper-specific audience profiles

• Content recycling: Turn long-form into short-form, repurpose bestsellers into new formats

• Testing ideation: Brainstorm A/B hooks, angles, subject lines, and pain-point messaging

Deep Research changed the game, letting you do the kind of customer research that used to take a day or two in just 15 minutes.

AI image creation isn’t quite there yet (but by the time you get my next email, it might be).

Things move so fast in AI, the limits of what’s possible are constantly being extended.

Yet there are still so many slow on the uptake. If you learn to use AI the right way, you’ll be ahead of the curve.

How to “train” AI to work for your brand

For a while, I wasn’t on board with AI as a serious marketing tool.

I thought it was cool, but the responses were always so generic.

Then I discovered that it doesn’t have to just regurgitate what’s already been said 1000 times.

If you want output that feels unique, and speaks the voice of your brand, you’ve got to preload context. Here’s the cheat code:

Custom GPTs/projects.

Feed it the context it needs to know your brand, know your customers, and know how you do things.

Feed it examples of what it should emulate, how to communicate, what to emphasize and what to avoid.

Build all of this into a custom AI (super easy to do with a Chat GPT pro sub) that’s built specifically to be your brand’s email marketer / ad copywriter / TikTok script writer etc…

AI enablement stack

Here are some things to feed your custom AI to teach it to put out amazing material every time.

• Voice guide: Upload your brand’s tone, writing style, do’s/don’ts

• Product briefs: Feed in your bestsellers, feature/benefit breakdowns, and competitive angles

• Customer data: Past reviews, NPS verbatims, support chat logs

• Winning examples: Ads, emails, SMS, landing pages that crushed – use these as source material

Whether you’re using a custom GPT or regular ChatGPT/Claude, treat it like onboarding a junior copywriter. You wouldn’t hand them a blank brief and say “just write it.”

So why do that with AI?

Why AI will raise the bar (not lower it)

Right now, AI lets everyone look “good enough.” Which means looking good no longer stands out.

Creative volume is getting commoditized. Hook quality, originality, and execution are the new edge.

The real winners? Brands that use AI to test 10x more, but apply human strategic thinking to pick winners and iterate on what works.

So yes, AI will save you time. But if you don’t reinvest that time into creative strategy, testing, and customer understanding? You’ll just ship more mediocrity, faster.

The barrier for entry is higher. Anyone with a $20 GPT subscription can create amazing ads (or turn Giblify their team photo) in just a few minutes.

But there’s always going to be room to stand out. And it’s going to be those who maintain human control (while executing at AI pace) who will win.

Bottom line

AI doesn’t eliminate the need for good marketers. It just lets good marketers move faster and faster, and opens the gap between them and lazy marketers.

Want to ship better creative? Be the captain, not a spectator. Use AI to do what it does best: accelerate execution. But keep your hands on the wheel.

Because in 2025, everyone has a creative team in their pocket. The difference is whether yours is flying the plane – or just riding in the back.

The Retention Edge Podcast

In case you missed it, we just launched the first episode of our new podcast.

We’re talking with CX & retention marketing leaders at top brands, to hear what’s actually working and driving growth.

In the first episode, Nihal talked with Henry Martinez from Mack Weldon, where we learned how they use strategic product direction to keep customers hooked on their brand.

Henry had some incredible insights — I highly recommend checking it out.

Get the rundown of what we talked about with Henry here, or go straight to YouTube or Spotify to watch and listen (don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to get new episodes).

Quick Hits

Here’s what‘s worth your attention from around the ecom & DTC world this week.

Tariffs Update

The latest twist in the tariff saga; country-specific tariffs have now been suspended (with the exception of China).

Good news for some — but no comfort for the many brands manufacturing in China.

Read more →

The Tariff Content You Need

You’re definitely not alone if you’re wondering how you’re going to survive right now.

The latest operators newsletter has some excellent insights, from Mehtab Bhogal, Mike Beckham and Matthew Bertulli (also Sean Frank in the previous edition), on how to survive.

Hopefully something in there helps you weather the storm.

Read more →

How Tariffs Are Impacting Brands

The DTC Newsletter put together a snap survey of DTC brands to see the real impact, first-hand, of the new tariffs on ecom brands.

Among the results from the 500 respondents:

• ~11% of brands feel tariffs could put them out of business

• ~22% are already feeling the impact of tariffs on margins

• ~71% plan to raise prices in response

Read more →

Shopify Makes AI Proficiency Mandatory

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke rocked us this week by sharing an internal memo regarding the company’s stance on AI use by employees.

In a nutshell, it’s now expected of their employees to use AI effectively. If you thought using AI for work was cheating, or that companies would start to shy away from it… here’s the evidence to the contrary.

Read more →

Amazon Just Did Something Wild

Customers might now be able to find your brand in the Amazon app… even if you don’t sell on Amazon.

That’s what their new “Buy for Me” feature offers.

They show products sold on retailers’ sites, that aren’t on Amazon. Amazon pulls the info, places the order on the customer’s behalf, and shows it in their Amazon order history, while the brand handles fulfillment and support.

Good for brands? It’s a plus for visibility… but your retention potential for these sales is slashed (Amazon owns the customer — not you).

Read more →

That’s all for now.

Same time next week, I’ll be back with more to help you level up your retention marketing and CX game.

Remember to check out (and like and subscribe!) our new podcast on Spotify and YouTube.

If you’ve got any thoughts about what we discussed in this email, takeaways you loved from Henry’s interview, or topics you’d love to see deep-dived in a future newsletter (or podcast!), just go ahead and reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team