Email is one of the most cost-effective channels for promoting your events. According to industry experts, the ROI (return on investment) is 42:1, meaning that for every $100 invested in preparing and sending emails, you can expect a return of up to $4,200.

Sounds incredible, doesn't it? You'd be hard-pressed to find an investment that delivers that kind of return. But beware — we're talking about the average. If you're sending plain text without any visual design, the results are usually far worse. In this guide, we'll walk you through how you can create a professionally designed HTML email for your association with minimal effort using ChatGPT, and send it via Gmail.

Step 1: Create an HTML Template with ChatGPT

The first step is very straightforward. If you're already familiar with ChatGPT, you know it can create almost anything — including a professionally designed HTML email. Type something like this into ChatGPT:

This type of prompt is called a zero-shot approach (without providing an example). You can get even better results by showing ChatGPT an example of an existing email that you like. Simply attach it and ask it to create something similar for your event.

Step 2: Save the HTML Code

Now open a simple text editor — on Windows, that's Notepad, and on macOS, it's TextEdit (set to plain text mode). If you have a code editor like Visual Studio Code installed, even better. Create a new empty file, paste in the HTML code that ChatGPT generated, and save it (for example, in your association's folder) with the name invitation.html.

Step 3: Open in a Browser

In your file explorer (Windows Explorer or Finder), locate the saved file and double-click it. It will open in your default browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari...). If it doesn't open automatically, right-click the file, select Open with, and choose your preferred browser.

Step 4: Copy the Content

The browser will display a nicely formatted email template. If something doesn't look right, go back to ChatGPT, tell it what you'd like to change, and repeat steps 2 and 3 (it's best to update the existing file). Once you're happy with the design, select all the content in the browser window (use Ctrl+A on Windows or Cmd+A on macOS) and copy it (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C). Make sure you capture the entire email from start to finish.

Step 5: Paste into Gmail

Open Gmail and click the Compose button. Paste the previously copied content into the body of the message (not the subject line!) using Ctrl+V or Cmd+V. The HTML template will appear exactly as you saw it in the browser — with all the colors, images, and formatting intact.

Step 6: Test and Send

Before sending the email to all your members, send it to yourself first as a test. This way you can verify that the layout is correct and that the email looks good on your mobile phone as well. Once you've confirmed everything is in order, you can confidently send the invitation to all the members of your association.