The 80 20 Blueprint: Exactly What to Automate in Marketing—and What You Must Write Yourself

The One-Minute Test: If it needs heart or nuance, you write it

Think of the one-minute test as your marketing triage: set a 60-second timer and read the piece. If it makes you pause, smile, frown, or want to change the tone, it needs a human touch. It's not about elitist gatekeeping; it's about ROI — spend people's time on what moves emotions or decisions, not on rote copyediting.

Start the minute by asking three quick, dumb questions: would this land differently in person, does it risk sounding hollow or generic, and does the audience need empathy, personality, or a precise voice to act? Add a fourth if you like: is there legal or reputational sensitivity? If you answer yes to any, you write it. If not, hand it to templates, rules-based engines, or scheduled flows and save the human hours.

Real examples: the apology after a shipment snafu, the founder anecdote that turns prospects into advocates, or a support reply that must triangulate context, intent and mood — those are human jobs and deserve craft. Routine items like delivery confirmations, weekly digests, and A/B test variants are perfect automation wins. If you want faster amplification or a plug-and-play campaign, check buy cheap reach for distribution options you can automate without losing voice.

Make the test habitual: every morning scan your queue for anything that would change meaning with one creative word or a softer tone, flag those for human drafting, and batch them into focused 20-minute writing sprints. Create short guardrail templates for the rest and a small swipe file of lines that work — you'll protect your brand's heart while letting automation do the heavy lifting.

Set-It-and-Win-It: Welcome, nurture, and re-engage flows to automate today

Think of your lifecycle messages as a clever assembly line: automate the repetitive, predictable steps so humans can focus on the creative punches that move people. Set up the skeleton once — triggers, timing, segmentation — and let the machine do the heavy lifting. You'll capture most of the wins while saving time for the high-impact copy.

Automate the mechanics: welcome acknowledgements, onboarding checkpoints, cart abandonment, behavior-based drip sequences, and tiered re-engagement after 30/60/90 days. Use dynamic blocks and personalization tokens to keep messages feeling bespoke without writing every variation. Build subject-line variants and automated A/B tests so the system learns which hooks work across segments.

Keep the parts that need a human: the first welcome that defines your voice, long-form nurture emails that tell a story, special offers for high-value customers, and any outreach that requires negotiation or empathy. Those are the moments where a crafted subject line, an unusual anecdote, or a tailored CTA will outperform templated content every time.

Measure and guard your gains. Track opens, clicks, conversion rate, and re-engagement lift, plus frequency caps so you don't annoy warm leads. Review flows monthly, iterate subject lines and timing, and retire underperforming branches. Small tweaks compound quickly when the rest is automated.

Quick action plan: pick one flow (welcome, nurture, or win-back), map the trigger and journey, write the hero message yourself, template the rest, set KPIs, and let it run for four weeks before optimizing. Do that, and you'll automate the busywork without losing the brand magic.

Words to Handcraft: Brand voice, flagship pages, and the tough emails

Words are slow-burning assets you should never hand off to a faceless script. Brand voice is how people remember you, flagship pages are where promises convert into action, and the tough emails—onboarding, re‑engagement, apologies—decide whether someone stays. Handcraft those corners so automation has something true to amplify.

Make a triage and focus with surgical precision:

• 🚀 Voice: a 300‑word core that shows personality, power words, and three forbidden phrases.
• 💥 Flagship: headline, subhead, single value proposition, social proof and a 2‑sentence use case for your hero.
• 💁 Tough Emails: subject + opener + one proof point + clear next step for onboarding, winbacks and crisis replies.

Work method: write the originals yourself, create short templates for variants, then codify decision rules (when to send, which tone to pick). Use automation to A/B obvious lines, not to invent your identity. Add a human approval check before any new automated sequence ships.

Practical next step: pick three assets this week, write the 300‑word voice brief, rewrite the homepage hero, and draft the five toughest emails. After that, automate the easy swaps and measure—your handcrafted words will be the lever that makes automation actually profitable.

Human + Machine: Prompts, drafts, and edits that keep your copy sounding human

Think of the machine as your apprentice and you as the head writer. Use AI to do the repetitive heavy lifting—idea clustering, headline variants, and A/B subject lines—so you free human energy for the three things machines cannot reliably fake: perspective, nuance, and empathy. Set constraints and a voice guide before you ever ask for a draft.

Start prompts with outcomes not features. Tell the model the audience, the emotion to evoke, and a forbidden word list, then iterate quickly on tone. If you need a reference link or a toolkit, point to a reliable hub like best social media promotion service for examples of concise CTAs and social proofs you can adapt.

For drafts, ask for an outline first, then a 3‑step expansion, then a short version and a long version. That gives you modular pieces to deploy across channels. Use short, specific prompts: "45 words, benefit-led, friendly voice, one sensory detail, close with a question." Keep prompts consistent so the model learns your default voice.

Edit in passes: clarity, credibility, and character. First pass chases clarity and removes vagueness. Second pass adds proof points and specifics. Final pass injects personality and checks pronouns, idioms, and rhythm so sentences sound like they were spoken, not generated. Always read aloud before publishing.

Make automation handle 80 percent of routine variants and testing, but reserve the last 20 percent for humans to tune meaning and moral judgment. Build a short playbook of prompts, tone anchors, and red flags so every team member can produce copy that feels alive, not algorithmic.

Receipts, Please: KPIs to Track So You Know Automation Is Actually Working

Think of automation as a fast cashier that rings up orders while you craft the menu. If the till only prints vanity metrics, your 80/20 bets will fail. Track the signals that actually move the business — revenue uplift, time saved, and creative lift. Pick a north star KPI, then two satellites that prove automation is paying rent.

• 🚀 Conversions: Track cost per acquisition and revenue per campaign to confirm automation drives real business outcomes.
• 🤖 Engagement: Measure quality actions like comment depth or watch time, not just raw likes, to catch audience resonance.
• ⚙️ Operational Time: Log hours saved and number of manual tasks eliminated so you can justify automation spend.

Pair each KPI with a baseline and a guardrail. Use A/B tests or holdout groups to prove causation instead of chasing correlation. Watch quality signals like lead to sale rate, churn, and content decay so automation does not quietly erode long term value. When a KPI slides, pause the flow and diagnose.

Action steps: pick one north star KPI, wire up dashboards and alerts, set weekly check ins, and keep human checkpoints for anything creative. Run short experiments, compare to manual benchmarks, and kill or scale fast. That is how automation earns its 80 percent — by doing the repeatable heavy lifting while humans keep the soul.