As the Content Manager and an Inbound Strategist for our company, I get to wear a lot of hats that take me away from the day-to-day copywriting that I experienced as a marketing professional fresh out of college. But those days and my very first title of "Copywriter" will always hold a special place in my heart.

As marketers in today's landscape we are fully embracing the benefits of technology and automation - and as a result we are seeing a lot of rapid change in the way things are done.

Despite being fully aware of and immersed in these trends, I was still jolted when I recently saw two stories that suggested we may be quickly transitioning from an era of human copywriting to one of copywriting automation.

2 Copywriting Automation Case Studies

Persado

The first story that brought this to my attention came from VentureBeat. I'll credit the author Barry Levine for crafting a heck of a hook: "If you’re a marketer with a knack for writing great copy, you may want to learn another job skill."

Barry's post introduces us to a company called Persado which recently secured $21 million in funds to support its mission of eliminating the guesswork from copywriting. Persado uses complex algorithms designed to produce the most effective and persuasive copy for their clients.

The software can be tailored to specific brand messaging, create "millions of variations of a marketing message", and discover which emotional messages will create the greatest positive impact. Persado specialises in email messaging but is already working to expand into many other facets.

Persado is so sure of its methods that it claims marketers can "double campaign response rates" using its software.

Automated Insights

The second story which further sparked my fascination with this blooming copywriting niche came from Business Insider. According to the article, The Associated Press recently partnered with the firm Automated Insights which specializes in what it calls "robot journalism."

The report states that, "AP produced roughly 3,000 articles on company earnings last quarter, 10X more than it used to, by using automated technology" combined with heavy data analysis.

Now of course with data-driven reports such as company earnings, it is very conceivable that a templatized system could take the reins and still maintain the human appearance. But the follow-up question is: what's next?

I can't help but think back to a few years ago when IBM's Watson took down one of (if not the) greatest Jeopardy contestants of all time, Ken Jennings. It was amazing to see that technological feat at work - but at the same time I could not help but feel a level of sadness from the situation.

Human copywriters - we have not met our Watson yet, but I suspect the day may come sooner than we think.

The Bottom Line

Persado, Automated Insights and their peers are helping to augment and streamline copywriting efforts - but the vast majority of copywriting is still done the old-fashioned way. While these technologies have a long way to go - the fact that they are making this big of a splash in their infancy is a sign of many innovative developments and applications to come.

In the meantime you human copywriters, check out these 5 copywriting tips to implement in your writing and also let us know what you think the impact of copywriting automation will be in the comments below!

I hope reading this blog post has been informative and inspired some curious questions about the future, but perhaps the most crucial question that you should now have is - did Alex Foley write this post, or is this actually the work of a clever program using first person language and self acknowledgement as tools for persuasion and human illusion? You may never know...