Themes Configuration

Themes are tags that categorize variant content by messaging strategy or tone. Unlike attributes (which describe your users), themes describe your content — the approach, angle, or voice a variant takes.

Why Themes Matter

Themes serve three purposes in JustAI:

Organization — Group variants by strategy so you can quickly scan what’s being tested (e.g. all “urgency” variants vs. all “social proof” variants)
AI generation — Guide the Studio to produce variants with a specific angle. Ask for “3 variants with a benefit-focused theme” and the AI generates copy that emphasizes value and outcomes.
Analytics and learnings — See which messaging strategies resonate with which audiences. Over time, JustAI builds insights like “urgency themes outperform for churned users” that inform future variant creation.

Common Theme Examples

Theme	Description	Example Subject Line
`short-punchy`	Brief, high-impact copy	”Your cart. Your move.”
`urgency`	Time pressure and scarcity	”Last chance: offer ends tonight”
`benefit-focused`	Emphasizes what the user gains	”Save 3 hours a week with smart templates”
`social-proof`	Leverages others’ behavior	”Join 10,000+ teams already using Acme”
`curiosity`	Creates intrigue to drive opens	”We noticed something about your account”
`friendly`	Warm, conversational tone	”Hey — just checking in on your progress”
`data-driven`	Uses numbers and specifics	”Your click rate is up 23% this month”

Themes are fully customizable. Define whatever categories make sense for your brand and messaging strategy.

Creating and Managing Themes

Add themes at the org level

Navigate to Settings > General
Scroll to the Themes section
Add a new theme with a name and optional description
Optionally add suggested values — these appear as options when tagging variants

Org-level themes are available to all templates. When creating a new template, you can select from your org defaults or create template-specific themes.

Theme structure

Each theme has:

Field	Purpose
Name	The theme key (e.g. `tone`, `strategy`, `angle`)
Values	The specific options within that theme (e.g. `urgent`, `calm`, `persuasive`)

A single template can use multiple theme keys. For example, you might tag a variant with both tone: friendly and strategy: social-proof.

How Themes Are Used

In the Studio

When generating new variants, you can select themes to guide the AI. The Studio uses the theme as context to produce copy that matches the desired strategy. For example, selecting the urgency theme produces variants that emphasize deadlines, scarcity, and immediate action.

You can also tag existing variants with themes after the fact — useful when you’ve written copy manually and want to categorize it for analysis.

In Analytics

The template dashboard shows theme-level performance breakdowns. You can see which themes outperform for different audience segments, helping you decide which strategies to double down on and which to retire.

In Theme Continuity

When you have a multi-step journey (like a 3-email onboarding series), theme continuity ensures users see consistent messaging across the sequence. If a user received a “friendly” variant in email 1, they’ll see a “friendly” variant in email 2.

Best Practices

Keep themes distinct. Each theme value should represent a meaningfully different messaging approach. If two values produce similar copy, consolidate them.

Use themes for strategy, not format. Themes like “urgency” or “social-proof” describe the messaging angle. Formatting concerns like “short” or “long” are better handled as additional context in the variant generation prompt.

Review theme performance regularly. If a theme consistently underperforms across templates, consider retiring it and testing new approaches.

Core Concepts: Themes — What themes are and how they categorize variants
Theme Continuity — Keep themes consistent across related templates in a flow
Create Variants — How to tag variants with themes during generation