AI Assistant
Updated · By the Pigeon Perch team
Pigeon Perch's AI assistant drafts the content you'd otherwise write from a blank page — subject lines, SMS messages, full email templates, and segment filters from plain-English descriptions. Every suggestion is yours to edit before it goes anywhere near your audience.
The assistant is powered by Claude. It's not an autonomous agent that sends mail on your behalf; it drafts, you review, you send. Think of it as a senior copywriter who works instantly and never gets tired.
Why bother with AI drafts?
Writing marketing copy is the slowest part of running email for a lot of teams. Subject-line fatigue is real — by the third newsletter of the month, most people reach for a tired template. The assistant fixes the cold-start problem: you describe the email or audience you have in mind and get five on-brand starting points in seconds. You keep the one that fits and edit from there.
The assistant also helps people who aren't professional marketers — small-business owners, support teams running the occasional campaign, agencies spinning up new clients. You don't need to know what good looks like. Ask for it, pick a suggestion, refine.
Where the AI shows up
| Feature | Where to find it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Subject line AI | Campaigns — the “AI Suggest” link next to the Subject Line field, in both the Create and Edit dialogs | Five distinct subject line drafts tuned for length, spam avoidance, and the tone you pick |
| Email body AI | Templates — the “Generate with AI” button at the top of the templates list | A full drafted template (subject, preview text, HTML, plain-text alternative) that lands in the code editor ready to send |
| Segments AI | Segments — the “Describe your audience” card on any dynamic segment's detail page | Translates plain-English audience descriptions into structured filter conditions and previews the match count |
| SMS copy AI | Campaigns (SMS channel) — the “AI Suggest” link next to the SMS Body field | Three 160-character SMS drafts with optional brand prefix and the required opt-out footer |
Subject line generation
Open a campaign (or start a new one) and click AI Suggest next to the subject line field. You'll be asked:
- What's the email about? A short description of the campaign. Your campaign name is filled in automatically as a starting point.
- Audience (optional): who will receive this — e.g. “Returning customers who bought outdoor gear last year.”
- Tone: professional, friendly, playful, urgent, minimal, or luxury. Match your brand voice.
Hit Generate and you'll get five suggestions. Click any one to drop it into the subject line field. Want different options? Tweak the topic or tone and click Regenerate.
Best practices for subject lines
- Give the assistant concrete facts. “Spring sale, 20% off, ends Friday” beats “promotion.”
- Be specific about audience. A subject line for new subscribers reads differently from one for loyalty-program customers.
- Test the winners. Use A/B testing to send two AI suggestions head-to-head and let open rate decide.
Email body generation
On the Templates page, click Generate with AI. Describe:
- Template name — how you'll find it later in your template list
- Purpose — what the email should accomplish (e.g. “Welcome new subscribers and introduce our top three product categories”)
- Audience — optional, but helps tune the voice
- CTA label and URL — optional. If you provide a URL, the assistant adds a call-to-action button that points to it
The result is saved as a code-type template you can refine in the editor. Email clients are fussy — the assistant uses inline-styled HTML without <style> blocks or external CSS, so it renders everywhere from Gmail to Outlook.
What it includes
- Subject and preview text — pre-filled so the template is ready to use in a campaign immediately
- HTML body — inline-styled, 120 to 350 words, with headings, body copy, and your CTA
- Plain-text alternative — the deliverability-safe fallback mail clients fall back to
- Personalization tokens —
{{first_name}}in the greeting where it's natural
Natural-language segments
Segments are the most valuable place the AI saves time. Building a filter that says “customers in California with engagement score over 50 who joined in the last 90 days” means clicking through three dropdowns and picking three fields. Typing it instead takes five seconds.
From a dynamic segment's detail page, type your description in the Describe your audience card and click Generate filters. The assistant fills in the filter builder below and runs a preview so you see the match count immediately.
What the assistant knows
The assistant knows every field in your segment builder — contact properties, engagement score, tags, status, location fields, SMS consent, and date fields like subscribedAt and createdAt. It interprets common phrasing:
- “Engaged” →
engagementScore >= 50 - “Highly engaged” →
engagementScore >= 75 - “New customers” →
createdAt in_last_days 30 - Cities, states, countries → location filters with ILIKE semantics
If a description references something the segment builder doesn't support (“spent more than $500 in the last year” requires revenue attribution, for example), the assistant tells you so rather than silently fabricating a wrong filter.
SMS copy generation
On an SMS campaign, click AI Suggest next to the SMS Body field. Describe what the message should accomplish, optionally supply a brand name and link, and pick a tone. You'll get three drafts, each within the 160-character limit (including the opt-out footer).
Why the constraints matter
- 160 characters is the single-segment limit. Going over splits the message into multiple segments and doubles (or triples) your per-message cost with carriers.
- “Reply STOP to opt out” is required by US carriers for marketing SMS. The assistant includes it by default — you can disable the footer for transactional messages where opt-out language doesn't apply.
- GSM-7 encoding keeps messages cheap. The assistant avoids smart quotes, em-dashes, and other characters that force UCS-2 encoding and halve your segment budget.
Limits and fair use
AI requests count against your plan's daily quota. Each call to the assistant — one subject-line generation, one email draft, one segment, one SMS set — is one request.
| Plan | AI requests per day |
|---|---|
| Free | 3 |
| Starter | 20 |
| Growth | 100 |
| Scale | Unlimited |
The quota resets every 24 hours rolling. If you've used 20 requests in the last hour on Starter, you wait for the oldest one to roll off before the next request is allowed — you don't have to wait until midnight.
Privacy & data handling
The assistant sends your prompt (subject, audience, tone, and any text you've typed) to Anthropic to generate a response. It does not send your contact list, campaign history, or any subscriber data. If you want the assistant to tailor copy to a specific audience, describe the audience in the prompt — don't paste real contact details.
Generated content is yours. Pigeon Perch doesn't store AI prompts or use them to train models.
When the AI isn't the right tool
The assistant is a starting-point tool, not a rubber stamp. A few places to slow down:
- Regulated industries: healthcare, legal, and finance have compliance language the AI doesn't know your specific requirements for. Always have a compliance reviewer sign off.
- Brand-critical launches: for the one email you'll send this year about the rebrand or the funding round, write it yourself.
- Anything containing a specific promise: shipping dates, SLAs, contractual language. The AI doesn't know your operations.
Related docs
- Campaigns — where to use the subject line and SMS AI
- Templates — where to use the email body AI and the block-editor AI assistant
- Segments — the filter fields the segment AI can target
- A/B Testing — pit two AI drafts against each other and let data pick the winner