How AI Can Make Way for Your Email Marketing Success?

John Davier
John Davier

Last updated on

July 15, 2023

With the global email users expected to grow to a whopping 4.3 billion by the year 2023, it wouldn't be wrong to say that email marketing is an opportunity that no marketer should be missing out on. Moreover, with the emergence of AI, the possibility of intelligent email marketing has increased, thereby making way for enhanced customer engagement and higher conversion rates.

Simply put, AI can give your email strategy an extra boost by upgrading your marketing tactics. So, if you wish to get favorable results, AI can be the key to your email marketing success.

Do you know that the global AI market is expected to reach a revenue of $118.6 billion by 2025? Hence, if you leverage it the right way, you can get a significant email marketing advantage. After all, 87% of companies are already using AI to up their email marketing game.

How AI Works

AI works on three main principles, namely:

a. Detect

In this step, AI identifies the attributes or elements that are most predictive and suggests the ones you must take into account and the ones you must ignore.  

b. Deliberate

With the help of AI, you can compare the predictability of the attributes and get answers or make recommendations.

c. Develop

AI comes with the innate power to program and reprogram itself and learn through it all. According to this information and results of experimentation, it can evaluate the data and alter it.  

How AI can transform your email marketing strategy?

Still wondering how the AI revolution can make way for your email marketing success? Here's how AI can work wonders for your email marketing strategy.

1. Works towards subject line optimization

The subject line plays a critical role in your overall email strategy. While a good subject line will entice the user to click-through and read your email, a bad subject line will be ignored or marked as spam in a worst-case scenario. Moreover, with 35% of email recipients opening an email based on the subject line alone, it becomes all the more imperative to optimize your subject line.

This is where AI can come in handy. It makes use of algorithms to create subject lines that can resonate with the subscriber and enhance your click-through rates. To put it in other words, AI analyzes the results of each marketing campaign and optimizes your subject line over a period of time.

Tools like Phrase can be of great help here. It helps brands to draft more engaging subject lines that are more likely to resonate with the readers and get them to open the email. Rather than using the trial and error method, this tool uses algorithms and data-driven insights that are much more reliable than human assumptions. It takes help of three different AI applications, namely:

a. Natural Language Generation

With the help of this application, the tool creates a grammatically correct language that sounds natural and at the same time, matches the business model and voice of the brand.

b. Natural Language Processing or Sentiment Analysis

Most common emotions that customers act upon are urgency (fear of missing out), inquisitiveness, and friendliness. Through this application, the tool extracts the hidden emotions in unstructured language data. Based on the quantification of the semantic components in the subject line, it can then derive a solid conclusion.

c. Machine Learning or Performance Prediction

This application will inform you about the subject line performance of the email before you click on the “SEND” button.  

2. Helps in fine-tuning your personalization strategy

You can create a successful email marketing campaign with the help of personalization. Do you know emails with a personalized subject line deliver 6X higher transaction rate and have 26% more chances of being opened? That's the reason 74% of marketers believe that personalization increases customer engagement.

While personalization has always been there in email marketing, AI has expanded its possibilities to the core. AI, with the help of predictive analytics, leverages complex algorithms, customer data, and machine learning to analyze the future behavior of customers by taking into account the previous interactions and data trends.

For instance, email marketers can use AI to recommend products or services that a particular customer might be interested in just the way Netflix does.

Netflix email screenshot

3. Facilitates content optimization

Apart from optimizing the subject line, you can also work towards content optimization with the help of AI-powered software. Such software can make use of pre-written copies, images, promotions, curated content, and much more. You can even make use of machine learning to optimize your emails for higher engagement rates.

4. Makes way for optimal send time

Understanding how frequently to send emails to your subscribers along with the best time to send is a critical aspect of any email marketing campaign. While some of your subscribers might prefer opening their email while commuting, others might consider checking it out on a Friday evening. For example, this email from Fab promoting designer watches might be loved by a customer on a lazy Sunday evening when they are relaxing rather than sending it on a busy Monday morning.

Fab email screenshot

AI makes optimizing the send time easier by analyzing various data points. It keeps a check on algorithms that determine the best time to send out the emails. In addition, it can also help you identify your email frequency - whether you should send the emails weekly or fortnightly.

Apart from this, you can also use AI to automate and optimize the send time on an individual basis. Instead of sending an email to the entire list, AI lets you get hold of each customer's demography and previous interactions, thereby helping you optimize the send time and engagement for each one of them.

5. Promotes customized email promotions

Special promotions play a great role in enticing customers to increase your sales. In this context, you can make use of AI and machine learning to determine relevant offers for each customer by taking into account their individual shopping behavior and interactions. For instance, if a customer responds to a 10% discount offer instantly, there is no need of offering them a 50% discount and reducing your profit margin. However, if you know a customer who won't give in to anything less, you can offer them a better discount to entice them to make a purchase.

6. Assists in retargeting

Email retargeting plays a great role in boosting sales while reducing shopping cart abandonment rates. AI can help you fine-tune your retargeting strategy by distinguishing between different customers and sending them emails that resonate with each one of them. While some customers might go for a product purchase right after they have received your email, others might not even respond to your email in a day or two. This is where AI can come to your rescue and send retargeting emails on optimal timings. In addition, you can even include algorithmically-chosen items in your retargeting email and increase your sales value. Do it the Jack Wills way.

Jack Wills email

Marketers in the eCommerce sector can take the help of Commerce Cloud Einstein and send relevant recommendations to the customers by using predictive insights. It will help to visualize customer interactions and analyze them to send out more relevant emails.

7. Facilitates Customer Lifecycle Marketing

Lead scoring models and predictive models can help you to generate insights into your customers and target them with relevant, hyper-personalized emails. It will not only give you an insight into the interests of the customer but also let you know how much time a customer takes to complete a purchase. According to this data, you can create powerful email campaigns that can engage the subscribers in a better manner.

Take a look at this email by RescueTime. It is a time management software that allows the users to track their productivity. The tool studies the behavior of the customer and sends an analysis report based on those details.

Rescue Time email

8. Enables Channel Optimization

More often than not, your subscribers will respond faster to a text message or push notification or a message on Facebook messenger rather than an email. AI helps you to assess the user’s behavior, preferences, past interactions, and predicted behaviors. These details will help you to send the message through the appropriate channel.

9. Helps with Automated Testing

While A/B testing was used as a two-dimensional model in the past, it has now become an omnichannel, hyper-targeting model with the help of which you can test several variables in different combinations. With the help of bandit testing, you can figure out the kind of traffic you would get on the versions you have tested. As soon as the tool notices that one variant is emerging as the winner, the traffic to that variant will be increased so that you can reach statistical significance quicker. If the variant comes out as the winner, you will get incremental revenue too.    

Wrap up

Email marketing, when powered with AI, has the ability to make your campaign top-notch. From improving your email marketing performance to reducing the time and efforts you put into it, AI is surely going to be a worthwhile investment for your business.

To learn more on the AI revolution in email marketing, Email Uplers has put together an insightful infographic. Take a look.

 

Author Bio

John Davier

Content marketing guru at Mailmunch. I’m passionate about writing content that resonates with people. Live simply, give generously, stay happy.

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