Everyone’s got an opinion on how AI is changing marketing.
Some of it’s insightful, some of it’s hype, and a lot of it is just… ChatGPT writing ChatGPT posts about ChatGPT.
Personally I’m not interested in using AI to create posts for AI to comment on. I’m interested in how it can help marketers solve real problems, fast, without waiting on dev tickets or bi-weekly sprints.
So here are two genuinely useful things I’ve built recently with ChatGPT, both small and a bit rough around the edges, but both very effective.
1. The Postcode Eligibility Checker
We were recently awarded some funded places for our part-time JavaScript full stack bootcamp at Northcoders.
Great news. But there was a catch — they were only available to learners living in specific postcodes. And not just a few.
We were given a spreadsheet with over 56,000 postcodes.
We couldn’t exactly publish that and say, “Have a scroll and see if you’re eligible.”
So the challenge: how can we let someone check their postcode quickly without giving them a migraine?
Using ChatGPT, I managed to:
- Convert the spreadsheet into a JSON file
- Write a simple JavaScript lookup function
- Style it up to match our site
- Make sure it handled weird postcode formats
- Upload it all to our HubSpot file hosting
- And get the tool live, all in under 10 minutes
No dev time. No sprint planning. No waiting.
Just a quick fix that helped people help themselves.
This is where I think AI starts to get interesting: the ability for marketers to spin up micro tools that actually serve users, without needing to constantly lean on product or engineering.
2. The Email Footer Generator
Here’s another one. Much smaller, but equally useful.
Every time a new starter joined the business, we’d get the same question:
“Where do I get the email footer from?”
Which usually meant someone copying someone else’s.
Which led to around 17 random versions floating around, including one using a logo we said goodbye to in 2022.
As the CMO and brand guardian, it kept me awake at night.
So again, using ChatGPT, I built a 3-step Email Footer Generator:
- You enter your name, job title and contact details
- Choose your department or function
- Click generate → copy → paste into Gmail
It’s not flashy, but now:
Everyone has a consistent footer
No expired logos or Comic Sans
No need to ask around
And I get to stop being grumpy about the wrong shade of red
Again, it’s a micro tool. It took no time. But it fixed a real problem.
I don’t see either of these things as disruption, or the future of work.
They’re just examples of how AI, when used right, can give us marketers the ability to move faster, be more helpful, and solve annoying little problems before they become big ones.