3 strategies for killing AI slop in your email copy

Can you guess Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year? Yep, it’s slop — “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”

If you spend any time on LinkedIn, you’ve probably seen it everywhere. And you’ve definitely seen people complaining about it. But AI slop isn’t just a social media problem. It’s quietly hurting trust, engagement and conversions in the inbox.

Jay Schwedelson recently shared data suggesting that AI-sounding language negatively impacts email engagement rates. That’s the trade-off many teams are making right now. Use LLMs without strong editing and QA systems, and you risk damaging engagement, sender reputation and brand trust.

And if this feels like one of those “it won’t happen to us” scenarios, keep reading. Odds are you’ll find at least one fix you can apply immediately.

There are three strategies that can help teams eliminate AI slop without giving up speed. None of them is flashy, but they work.

1. Create better messaging briefs

The first step in improving and humanizing your email campaigns is a better brief. I’m serious.

Strong messaging briefs provide strategy, structure and a persuasive sales or marketing argument for every email you send. They help align the offer with the audience, the audience’s stage of awareness and the campaign’s business goals.

A solid brief supports stronger engagement and better results. It also helps humanize your content. That matters because one of the biggest reasons people dislike AI slop is that it feels thoughtless and irrelevant, relying on vague, generic claims and promises.

A good brief protects the intent, relevance and substance of every email. If you don’t already have an email messaging brief, you can use mine.

2. Better QA systems

Editing is a skill. It’s also a process you can and should train your team on, especially if you’re using LLMs to help produce email campaigns. A basic editing workflow would look like this:

Edit for strategy 

This is where a strong brief saves time and prevents adverse outcomes. A quick scan of the messaging brief helps confirm whether the copy meets its core objectives:

• Does it use the appropriate point of view and angle?
• Does it address the correct problems, solutions and outcomes based on the segment’s buyer journey or funnel stage?
• Are the style and content appropriate for the sender and the audience’s lead or deal status?
• Does the call to action support the intended conversion and align with the target landing page?

Edit for structure 

Next, confirm that each email uses a structure that supports the intended objective or target metric.

The core principle is simple. The copy structure should match the outcome you want the email to drive. If the target segment is in contact or lead status, or top of funnel, emails tend to perform better with an attention-interest-desire-action structure.

For mid-funnel segments, starting with the problem and using a problem-agitation-solution structure is often more effective. Ideally, structure guidance is built directly into your messaging brief and copy workflow.

I’ve previously covered the copy cascade of angles, hooks and copy structure in a MarTech article on event emails for readers who want to go deeper.

Edit for line 

Finally, it’s time to polish and humanize the copy at the individual line level using editing sweeps or editing passes. I’m pulling these sweeps from the outstanding work of Chris Silvestri and Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers (she’s done work for Intuit and Shopify, among others). The sweeps are: ​

• Rule of one: Is there one idea per sentence?
• You rule: Does the copy use reader-focused language?
• Clarity: Is the copy easy to read and understand? (Lots of marketers will talk about reading levels, but really, you want to aim for market sophistication levels, too.)
• Voice and tone: Is it consistent? Is it appropriate for the brand to the audience?
• So what?: Does every claim matter to the readers’ goals, beliefs and motivations? 
• Prove it: Is there ample evidence to back claims? Has anything been left out?
• Specificity: Are there concrete details instead of vague generalities?
• Heightened emotion: Is the emotion of the email appropriate for the stakes involved?
• Zero risk: Have you reduced friction near CTAs?
• Decision maker: Are you speaking to all four decision styles?

In this final step, you review the email copy to ensure it passes the sweeps outlined above. Yes, it’s a lot of steps. Yes, it’s rigorous. But that’s how excellent content is made. It doesn’t take as long as you think, either. Silvestri has a solid guide to turning this into a GPT if you’re interested.

3. Dedicated human in the loop 

If you can’t be the person creating briefs and running edits and sweeps, assign or train someone on your team to do it and build systems around the work. You can also outsource the job or the system building to an expert. 

No matter how you approach it, LLM-generated content needs a skilled human to review and vet every output before it goes live. When anyone can generate an email campaign in seconds, LLMs alone are not a differentiator. Making sure the offer, message and copy are positioned to perform in the inbox is.