One reason why email marketing consistently delivers results is its targeted approach. While it’s cost-effective and enjoys high open rates, personalization, and timely delivery are the keys to its success.
Now, what if you had an assistant who knew exactly what to say, when to say it, and to whom?
Enter Artificial Intelligence.
AI email marketing facilitates meaningful conversations. It optimizes every facet of email campaigns with data analysis, predictive algorithms, and machine learning.
This article will cover the basics of AI email marketing. We’ll explore its key components, how this technology can elevate your marketing efforts.
Let’s get started.
Understanding AI email marketing
AI email marketing uses artificial intelligence tools to optimize email campaigns. These tools help email teams determine the right emails to send, to whom, when, and how frequently.
AI technology in email marketing incorporates:
- Machine learning: It analyzes customer data for trends and predictions. Features include predictive lead scoring, personalized recommendations, and automated segmentation.
- Big data and analytics: Email marketing AI analytics provide real-time insights into campaign performance metrics like open rates and conversions. This allows marketers to optimize campaigns.
- Natural language processing: NLP technology interprets email content for sentiment and intent analysis. It helps optimize email effectiveness by understanding customer perceptions.
The benefits of AI email marketing
AI email marketing offers two key advantages: it saves time and boosts performance. Besides, it eliminates guesswork from your strategy, enabling precise messaging.
Here’s a closer look at its capabilities and offerings:
- Data analysis: The AI analyzes past email campaign data, including open rates, click-through rates, and purchase behavior. It can also evaluate customer data from online interactions beyond your site or store.
- Predictive marketing: It identifies data patterns. For example, it might find that customers who bought certain products are more likely to respond to similar emails.
- Advanced segmentation: Using these insights, AI can segment the customer base. This can facilitate hyper-personalization by presenting the most relevant emails based on each segment’s preferences.
- Automated workflows: AI email automation enhances the accuracy of creating, managing, and optimizing automated workflows. For instance, it identifies the best times to trigger email communications.
- Cost-effectiveness: AI email marketing can lead to increased efficiency, thus saving costs. According to a 2022 Statista report, 51% saw service operations costs decrease by over 20% with AI integrated into email marketing.
In essence, AI email marketing can enhance customer relationships, increase revenue, and save time and costs simultaneously.
Six ways to use AI for better email campaigns
Thanks to AI, creating better emails is now simpler than ever. Here are the top ways to leverage AI email marketing.
- Personalize email content
It’s no surprise that more than 53% of marketers use the subscriber’s name for email personalization. But AI tools can go beyond this basic approach to deliver deeper personalization.
With the help of machine learning, you can analyze purchase history, demographics, interactions on the internet, preferences, and so on. The result is the hyper-personalization of email content.
Data-driven emails can not only establish better communication, it can also enhance customer experience greatly to help your business grow.
- Improve subject lines
Subject lines are crucial for grabbing your reader’s attention. AI uses data insights to create subject lines that resonate with your audience.
Some tools generate subject lines based on your inputs. Others analyze subject lines for factors like length, sentiment, and urgency. They then suggest improvements to boost open rates.
Omnisend, for instance, offers a free AI-powered subject line generator. Simply provide details about your email’s theme and objective, and the platform will generate creative subject lines.
- Use text assistance
Although in its initial stage, many AI-powered tools and email marketing platforms now offer robust text assistance capabilities.
If churning out high-quality content for your emails is overwhelming, Al has got your back. With smart prompts, you can generate unique email copies, campaign content, social media posts, and more.
With such quality assistance, marketers can use AI to generate different kinds of content on autopilot while executing more complex tasks.
- Segment your lists for better results
Segmenting customers can be challenging and time-consuming. AI simplifies this by analyzing customer data such as engagement levels and tenure.
For instance, a fashion retailer could use AI to segment customers based on shopping habits. They can then send personalized emails featuring relevant products. This is likely to enhance conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
- Use automated workflows
Email flows are predefined sequences of emails triggered by user actions. AI steps in to determine optimal send times and personalize email content based on data analysis.
For instance, a travel agency using AI-powered workflows might:
- Begin with a personalized welcome email
- Recommend destinations based on browsing history
- Educate about the brand’s packages and highlight offers
This makes sure each email is more targeted and aimed at conversion.
- Streamline A/B testing
Predicting subscriber reactions can be challenging. A/B testing addresses this by experimenting with email elements such as subject lines and layouts.
AI makes A/B testing easier by automating the creation, execution, and analysis of these tests. It handles multiple variations simultaneously, quickly figuring out which elements work best.
- Implement product recommendations
Today’s consumers expect personalized shopping experiences. In ecommerce, product recommendations are a great way to achieve this.
AI can automatically suggest the most relevant items to each customer. This means you don’t have to guess when adding recommended products to emails.
In this product recommendation email, Dollar Shave Club prompts the buyer to customize their subscription box. The tailored suggestions based on customers’ past engagement and purchases make the email more compelling.
Wrap up
AI email marketing may appear daunting due to its novelty. However, it’s designed to simplify rather than complicate the process.
Here are some key takeaways:
- It can utilize data to enhance campaign effectiveness and personalization
- Through automation, AI email marketing enables a more targeted approach and saves time
- With predictive analysis, AI can strengthen customer relationships and boost conversions
All in all, AI email marketing can give marketers more power to create targeted campaigns and reap better ROI.
Author:
Stacy Kimbell is a digital nomad and a co-founder of Email Tools Guide. She brings ten years of hands-on experience in email marketing to the table. For many years Stacy has been building email marketing strategies and campaigns for a diverse range of businesses, both online and offline.
