AWeber's AI Newsletter Assistant: does it save time?

The thing that kills a weekly newsletter usually isn't the software. It's week three, when you sit down to write and have nothing. AWeber's Newsletter Assistant is aimed at exactly that moment: give it a topic or a link and it writes a draft in your business's voice, which you then edit in a chat or in the normal editor before sending. It's available on all AWeber plans, and it can also email you a draft every week without being asked.

Our verdict after using it: it reliably gets you past the blank page, and the chat-based editing is quicker than fixing a draft by hand. It doesn't replace your judgement. The drafts are competent and generic until you add a real story, and anything that sounds like a fact or a statistic needs checking. Below are the setup steps, the edit routine that makes the output sound like you, and the mistakes worth avoiding.

Before you start: give it your website

The assistant learns your voice and your offers from your website, so it needs the URL first. Open the list you send from, go to its List Settings, and make sure your website address is filled in. If you run several lists for different businesses or shows, set the right URL on each; the assistant works per list. A site with a few pages of real copy, an about page and a services or products page gives it far more to work with than a one-page placeholder.

Step 1: open the Newsletter Assistant and pick a topic

In your AWeber account, open the Newsletter Assistant. You'll see a field for the topic. You have three ways in:

• Type an idea. A sentence works: "why local shops should start holiday promotions in October," or "three things we learned from this month's client projects."
• Paste a link. A blog post, a product page or a service you want to promote. The assistant pulls the main points from it.
• Use a suggestion. If you have nothing, it offers three topics based on your business. They're a useful prompt even when you don't use them as written.

Step 2: write the draft and edit it in the chat

Click Write My Draft. The assistant reads your site and the topic and produces a full newsletter: subject line, opening, sections and a call to action. You can edit the text inline, but the faster route is the chat beside it. Ask for changes the way you'd brief a colleague: "make the opening shorter," "change the product we're promoting to the spring workshop," "cut the last section," "make the subject line less salesy." Each request rewrites the draft in place.

Two or three rounds of chat usually get the structure right. What's left is the part only you can do, covered below.

Step 3: finish it in the editor and send

When the draft is close, move it into AWeber's message editor, where it behaves like any other broadcast. Check the template and images, set the list and segment, then use Save Draft to come back to it or Schedule Newsletter to send it at a set time. Send yourself a test first and read it on a phone, which is where most subscribers will see it.

Step 4 (optional): get a draft every week by email

On the Newsletter Assistant's settings page, switch on Automatically email drafts each week. From then on the assistant emails you a draft for review each week. You can reply to that email with changes, the same way you'd use the chat, and each list has its own assistant address if you'd rather start a draft by emailing it an idea. Nothing goes to subscribers until you finalise and send it in AWeber, so a busy week can't produce an unreviewed newsletter.

The edit that makes it sound like you

The output reads fine, but it also reads like software wrote it if you send it unchanged. Readers notice faster than people expect, and a newsletter that feels automated gets skimmed and then ignored. Do these every time:

• Write the opening yourself. One real moment from your week, a client question, a mistake, something you noticed in the shop, does more for open and reply rates than anything generated.
• Check every fact, number and claim. The assistant sometimes states things with more confidence than they've earned, especially statistics and dates. Delete what you can't confirm.
• Fix the call to action. Make sure the button points at one specific thing: book a call, read the post, buy the product. Generated versions tend to be vague or offer three things at once.
• Cut by a third. AI drafts run long. A newsletter that takes two minutes to read gets finished; one that takes six doesn't.

Common mistakes, and what to do when it misbehaves

If drafts keep coming out generic or describe a business that isn't quite yours, the website URL in List Settings is usually missing, wrong or pointing to a page with little copy. Fix the URL and write a new draft rather than editing the old one.

If the assistant promotes an old offer, it's reading an outdated page on your site. Tell it in the chat which offer to feature, and update the page so future drafts get it right.

Don't let the weekly email drafts become the plan. They're useful as a starting point, but a newsletter written entirely from suggestions drifts away from what your readers signed up for. Keep a running list of real topics, questions customers asked, projects you finished, things you changed your mind about, and feed those in.

How it compares with using a general chatbot

You can get a similar first draft from ChatGPT or Claude. The difference is where the work happens. The AWeber assistant already knows your website and list, the draft lands in your email template, and the weekly email workflow means you don't have to remember to start. A general chatbot is more flexible for unusual formats; the built-in assistant is quicker for the regular weekly send. Kit and Mailchimp offer AI writing help too, so it isn't a reason on its own to switch platforms, but if you're already on AWeber it's worth switching on.

Used this way, writing the newsletter shrinks from a two-hour slog to a short edit, and the habit of sending every week survives the weeks when you have nothing to say. If you're new to AWeber, pair it with an automated welcome sequence so new subscribers hear from you before the first weekly issue arrives.