13 AI Tools to Transform Your Newsletter

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Running a newsletter used to mean juggling a million tasks at once — from writing and editing to managing emails and monitoring key metrics. But thanks to AI, newsletter creators now have some pretty amazing tools that make their lives way easier and their content better than ever.

Think of these AI tools as your behind-the-scenes team, helping with everything from writing catchy copy to creating cool images. Whether you need help coming up with fresh content ideas, finding new subscribers, or just keeping your inbox under control, there’s probably an AI tool for that. These tools are changing the game for newsletter creators, letting them spend less time on the boring stuff and more time connecting with their readers and growing their audience.

Over the past few months, we’ve tested dozens of different AI tools — some here on Inbox Collective, and others with our clients — and identified 13 that we think can make a difference in your newsletter strategy. (Of note: None of the AI tools in this list are Inbox Collective affiliates — we won’t receive any sort of commission or fee if you purchase them. You can see a full list of our affiliates at this link.)

We also chose to leave off several tools, like this list of our favorite email platforms, many of which have AI tools built into their platform. The goal with this piece was to identify AI-specific tools you can add to your personal tech stack to help you get more out of your newsletter strategy.

In this list, you’ll find tools that cover a wide range of emails needs, from content generation to design to audience analysis. Using these tools might transform several key aspects of your newsletter strategy. Let’s dive in! 

AI Mail Assistant

What it’s good for: Writing emails faster

Ever feel like you spend way too much time writing emails? AI Mail Assistant, a tool from Klart AI, is like having a super-smart sidekick in your inbox. It plugs right into Google Workspace and uses an AI tool known as GPT-4 to help you write better emails in less time.

AI Mail Assistant can write email replies for you that actually make sense, translate your messages into 13 different languages with just one click, and break down long email threads into simple bullet points so you don’t have to read through everything. Plus, it’s like having a really good editor -—it fixes your spelling mistakes, makes your writing clearer, and helps you sound professional without trying too hard.

AI Mail Assistant offers a free plan to get you started. You can upgrade to the Pro version for about $160 per year.

Try AI Mail Assistant via this link. 

Campaign Assistant

What it’s good for: Writing email copy

If you’re looking for a way to make your marketing content sound amazing, HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant is your new best friend. This AI tool helps you write catchy copy for your emails, web pages, and ads — and yes, it’s completely free!

It gets you and your vision. Just tell it what you’re interested in and who you’re trying to reach, and it’ll whip up content that actually speaks to your audience. Plus, it’s super organized — everything you create gets saved in one spot, so you can easily find and reuse your best copy. One other thing we liked? It knows the difference between writing for email versus social media versus ads, so your message always fits the platform perfectly.

Campaign Assistant is completely free to use.

Try Campaign Assistant via this link. 

ChatBot

What it’s good for: Generating new leads

Running customer service for your newsletter can be a real headache, but ChatBot makes it feel like you’ve got a super-smart team who never sleeps and always knows what to say to your customers. The best part? You don’t need to be a tech wizard to set it up!

All you have to do is feed it your business info and watch it work its magic — answering questions, recommending products, and helping customers 24/7. It plays nice with all the popular platforms you probably already use (like Facebook Messenger, Shopify, and Slack), and you can easily make it follow any conversation flow you want using their simple drag-and-drop builder. It even collects info from interested customers, so your sales team can follow up with the hot leads. If you have a suite of products to offer, like an ebook or digital course, you could also use it to drive readers towards those products after a reader asks ChatBot a question.

Pricing is based on how many chat conversations you’ll need to handle per year. Their Starter plan offers 12,000 chats per year for $624 per year. The Pro plan offers 60,000 chats per year for $1,704 per year. Their Business plan offers 300,000 chats per year for $5,088 per year.

Try ChatBot via this link. 

Claude

What it’s good for: Generating and refining content

Using Claude feels more like chatting with a smart friend than a robot. This AI assistant from Anthropic is built differently — it’s super sharp, pays attention to ethics, and gives you answers you can actually trust. 

Need help with coding? Claude speaks all the major programming languages and can help you write code, fix bugs, or explain what’s going on in that confusing chunk of code. But that’s just the start. It can take a super long article and give you the key points in seconds, look at images and tell you what’s in them (even break down complex charts!), and it’s amazing for bouncing around ideas. (An underrated feature of AI tools is that you can ask it questions and see what it has to say about a topic. Using a tool like Claude might help you get unstuck if you’re in a bit of a rut while writing your newsletter.). Whether you’re writing in English or another language, Claude’s got your back.

You can try Claude for free to start. Their Pro plan gives you access to new features and more sophisticated models that can handle more complex tasks, and it costs $240 per year. If you have a team of more than 5 people, you can get on the Team plan for $300 per year per team member.

Try Claude via this link. 

ContentShake AI 

What it’s good for: Generating and refining content

SEMRUSH’s ContentShake AI is your personal content wizard that knows exactly what your audience wants to read. This tool doesn’t just write copy — it creates content that’s ready to go live and could actually bring in traffic or new leads for your business.

It keeps you ahead of the game by serving up hot trending topics in your area every week. Plus, it’s got SEO superpowers built right in, so everything you publish is already optimized to rank well on Google. Want to know what your competitors are up to? ContentShake AI keeps tabs on them and shows you exactly where you stand. The best part? It works with any website or platform you’re using — though it does work most effectively with WordPress.

ContentShake AI offers a 7-day free trial, and after that, it costs $720 per year. 

Try ContentShake AI via this link.

INK 

What it’s good for: Improving your SEO

INK is your all-in-one writing buddy that helps your content climb to the top of Google searches. As you write, it watches your SEO score in real-time and gives you smart tips to make your content more search-friendly – kind of like having an SEO expert looking over your shoulder.

INK does a few things we really like. For one, it protects your work and reputation. It lets you know if someone’s copied your stuff or if any content looks AI-generated. When you’re ready to write about something new, just tell INK your topic, who you’re writing for, and what you want them to do, and it’ll dig up all the right keywords to help you rank better. It gets even better with its keyword clustering feature. Whether you’ve got your own keyword list or data from SEO tools like ahrefs or Semrush, INK automatically groups similar keywords together, making it super easy to plan your content. 

You can get started with the Professional plan at $468 per year. Their Enterprise plan includes access for two additional team members for $1,188 per year.

Try INK via this link. 

Lex 

What it’s good for: Writing copy for your newsletter

Lex is an AI writing and editing tool that acts as a unique word processor. It’s a lot like Google Docs — but with a sophisticated AI tool built in.

With a simple interface to focus on your writing and AI features that help you brainstorm ideas, Lex can help a newsletter operator generate subject lines, improve your copy, highlight areas that have errors or repetitions, and even fill in the gaps when you are stuck with writing the next section of your newsletter. 

Lex offers a free tier, which includes basic AI features and unlimited documents. If you want unlimited AI usage and premium editing capabilities, you can upgrade to Pro for $144 a year. 

Try Lex via this link. 

NotebookLM

What it’s good for: Generating and refining content

NotebookLM is an AI tool, powered by Google’s Gemini AI platform, that helps you understand information and do more with your content. It can generate summaries, explanations, and answers based on the content you upload. They have an audio feature that converts your content into a podcast-like discussion between two hosts. The quality is impressive — when we ran an Inbox Collective story about Common Mark Certificates through the tool, it not only discussed it in great detail but also added new ideas about the story to the mix.

NotebookLM is at its best when you’re using it to store and search through a database of content. You could take dozens of pieces of content on a theme — like URLs from published stories, Google Docs, or Google Slides — and store them in one central knowledge base. So let’s say you’re trying to identify a few next steps based on all that content. Instead of searching through everything yourself, you could ask NotebookLM to read everything and suggest action items. It could even generate FAQs or briefing docs based on the resources you upload.

NotebookLM is still in a public testing phase and is free to use. 

Try NotebookLM via this link. 

Otter.ai 

What it’s good for: Transcribing interviews and meetings

Otter’s AI assistant is like having a super-efficient note-taker who never misses a beat — it writes down everything from your meetings in real-time, captures slides, and even makes a to-do list while you focus on the actual conversation

If you can’t make a meeting, Otter’s got you covered. Just tell it to join your Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams call, and it’ll bring you up to speed afterward. It even writes your follow-up emails and creates summaries with clear action items, all neatly organized with links to the full meeting notes.

If you interview people for your newsletter like we do at Inbox Collective, Otter’s also great for that. We feed the audio file from the interview into Otter, and a few minutes later, it’s transcribed the entire thing for us. There’s usually a bit of work to do cleaning up the transcript, but a task that often used to take hours now only takes a few minutes.

Want to try it out? Start with their free Basic plan. You can upgrade to  Pro for about $100 per year, which gives you up to 1,200 minutes of transcription per month, or per month, or their Business plan, which costs $240 per year and includes 6,000 minutes per month plus the ability to be on up to three virtual meetings per month.

Try Otter.ai via this link. 

Piktochart AI

What it’s good for: Generating visual content

Piktochart AI is like having a professional designer in your pocket who can turn your ideas into eye-catching visuals in seconds. No more staring at a blank screen or spending hours trying to make your content look pretty — just tell it what you want and it can make it! You’ll have beautiful infographics, banners, flyers, or posters ready to go.

Tools like Photoshop are great for more advanced designers, and Canva’s fine for those who need to create simple graphics quickly, but Piktochart AI is helpful if you need to create something complex really quickly. It takes your words and transforms them into stunning visuals. They’ve got tons of ready-made templates you can use, and you can easily tweak anything to match your brand’s style. 

The free plan lets you test the waters, but for more advanced users, try the Pro plan at $168 per year, which includes the ability to invite up to 10 team members to your plan.

Try Piktochart AI via this link. 

Satchel

What it’s good for: Turning transcripts into articles and content

Satchel was built specifically for newsrooms and publishers. While a tool like Otter is good for transcribing an interview, Satchel can go a little bit further — it can take a lot of information and actually create original content based on an audio file or a conversation.

Let’s say you’ve got the video from a city council meeting. You can feed that into Satchel, and it can do a few things with it: Write an entire article based on key points, identify a few key news angles worth diving into, or suggest headlines for the piece. (Like Otter, it can also handle a straightforward transcription.)

There’s no free tier, but you can pay $1,188 per year for a single user or $4,788 for a team account.

Try Satchel AI via this link. 

Shortwave

What it’s good for: Improving the way you manage your inbox

Shortwave transforms your inbox experience with an AI assistant to help you get more out of your inbox. The platform is built on top of Gmail, so you won’t need to get a new email address to use it. It reads through your emails and gives you quick summaries at the top of each one so you can instantly know what matters without reading the whole thing.

Finding anything in your emails becomes super simple — just ask Shortwave and it’ll search through all your messages and attachments to get what you need. Plus, it takes the hassle out of scheduling by checking your availability, writing emails, and setting up calendar events for you. You can even assign emails to teammates and track who’s working on what.

It’s free to use, though if you want Shortwave to be able to search back further in your history, or if you want to add additional team members to a plan, there is a cost. The Personal plan costs $84 per year. If you have a Google Workspace account or want to add in their AI writing tool, that’s available on the Pro plan for $168 per year.

Try Shortwave via this link. 

Zapier

What it’s good for: Automating workflows, Generating new leads, Automating tasks

Zapier offers several AI tools that might be useful to a newsletter operator. One is called Canvas, which takes all your complicated work processes and turns them into simple visuals that everyone can understand. You can give it instructions on what you’re trying to achieve, and it will suggest different ways to build out the process — and which tools you can connect (using Zapier, of course) to actually make that workflow a reality.

Another is Chatbots, an OpenAI-powered tool. You could use it to provide answers based on your own knowledge sources — for instance, giving readers on your site the chance to ask questions and be directed towards your best stories. It’s also helpful when talking with potential leads for your business. Let’s say you’ve got a page where potential advertisers can reach out to advertise with your newsletter. You can set up a bot to ask them questions, gather some data, and then follow up with personalized messages based on the data collected. Instead of wasting time on sales calls with companies that might not be a good fit for your newsletter, you can collect a lot of this data in advance and determine which companies you should spend time discussing next steps with.

Lastly, Zapier offers an experimental AI workspace called Central, where you can teach assistants to work across thousands of apps. The main focus when using Central is streamlining your newsletter operations. You can instruct these virtual assistants to take on specific tasks. When a new sales lead comes through, you could teach your AI assistant to automatically conduct research on that lead and send you a briefing. Or if a reader writes back to your newsletter, you could ask Zapier to draft a reply — and then you could review it before hitting send.

Zapier pricing is based on how many tasks, or zaps, you need to run per month. Many newsletters will pay as little as $240 per year, though tools like Chatbot come for an additional ($160 per year). If you’re running thousands of tasks via Central, you may need to pay $600 per year or more for those AI assistants.

Try Zapier via this link.

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