Do you have an interest in an email marketing strategy that is based on AI?
It is anticipated that by 2025, the number of email users worldwide will exceed 4.6 billion, which represents over half of the predicted worldwide population.
Email marketing campaigns yield an astounding return on investment, averaging $38 for every dollar spent, resulting in a remarkable ROI of 3,800%. Therefore, despite its longevity, email marketing remains an exceptionally effective method of reaching and influencing target audiences.
AI-based email marketing strategy
AI has the potential to enhance email marketing. By utilizing AI-driven email marketing tools, you can bolster and maintain your email marketing approach. These tools enable you to create more intelligent email marketing campaigns and optimize outcomes.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence, email marketing’s 4W1H (what, who, when, why, and how often) can be better understood. Hence, one can effectively deliver appropriate content to the relevant recipients at a suitable time, achieving the perfect hat trick for a successful email marketing tactic.
An AI-based email marketing approach can lead to ongoing enhancements in your strategy because it will self-correct and progress with each subsequent iteration.
Benefits of using AI in email marketing
Increases revenue
The use of an appropriate AI tool by Hotel Chocolat led to favorable outcomes such as a decline of 40% in their unsubscribe rate and an increase in their open rates, ultimately boosting their revenue by 25%. This case study is evidence that AI is instrumental in optimizing the frequency of your email campaigns and maximizing your return on investment.
Decreases costs
By utilizing AI-driven email marketing solutions, the process of creating successful campaigns is simplified and the expenditures associated with advertising are decreased. Findings from a Statista report in 2022 revealed that over 50% of participants reported a cost reduction of more than 20% in their companies’ service operations functions after implementing AI technology in their email marketing strategies.
Extracts large sets of user data
From sets of data consisting of high-performing emails, actionable patterns can be extracted by AI. Programming and reprogramming can be carried out by analyzing this data using AI experimentation. By obtaining the correct information about subscribers, the number of bulk generic emails sent to them in the future can be reduced.
Scaling AI email marketing campaigns
Were you aware that the global AI market is projected to have a value of $118.6 billion by 2025? An increasing number of companies have been utilizing AI systems for customer email interactions. This has helped with expanding email marketing strategies for businesses and reducing the need for sales and FAQ management.
In order to demonstrate this point, we have created a list outlining the benefits that come with implementing AI into your email marketing plan. Our hope is that the following information will assist you in making a well-informed decision.
- 72% of customers respond only to messages aimed directly at them. With an AI email marketing strategy, you can leverage high volumes of customer data, go beyond personalization, and win over your customers through hyper-personalization.
- As AI paves the way for automation, it makes your email marketing strategy agile and scalable without cost implications or resource limitations. Whether segmenting customers or auto-responding to emails, AI can facilitate it all.
- It can make your email marketing strategy dynamically data-driven. Businesses are already measuring metrics and analyzing campaign performance using data. However, AI email marketing will allow you to identify benchmarks specific to your business or industry.
- AI follows a self-learning mechanism, especially by recalibrating the strategy based on the desired outcomes. Due to this feature, AI email marketing strategies will end up on the track for self-improvement, which will optimize campaign performance.
Ways to Use AI in an Email Marketing Strategy
If you’re eager to enjoy the advantages mentioned earlier, here are six practical methods to incorporate AI into your email marketing plan:
1. Use AI in Subject Lines
The success of your email marketing campaign depends heavily on your email’s subject line. The fact that 69% of email recipients mark an email as spam based solely on the subject line proves this. Therefore, it’s essential to meticulously craft your subject line with great care and consideration.
It is not surprising that condensing the intended message of your email, creating curiosity and incorporating emotions within just 9 to 10 words is challenging. Luckily, tools that are powered by artificial intelligence and use natural language generation (NLG) can examine vast amounts of information to generate captivating subject lines that align with your brand’s tone. In summary, these tools enable you to bypass traditional approaches and achieve fascinating subject lines and remarkable open rates!
2. Create Compelling Email Copy with AI Help
NLG is not limited to subject lines only, as it can be utilized for creating tailored email content that increases the likelihood of conversions. By integrating deep learning, another form of AI technology, NLG can optimize the copy even further through sophisticated segmentation and dynamic elements to make the email more captivating and actionable.
Using ChatGPT, you can compose an onboarding email content for your website as an illustration.
3. Maintain Mailing List Hygiene
The degradation of email marketing databases is estimated to be 22.5% annually. Therefore, removing unsubscribed or inactive contacts from your mailing list can be a burdensome and costly process that requires extensive effort and resources. Manually sorting through your email list is a lengthy and arduous task.
By implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, email lists are kept in good condition and prevent any reports being made by email service providers (ESPs). AI-based tools manage email databases by removing outdated contacts as well as modifying job titles, email addresses, contact numbers, along with other details, which significantly improves the email deliverability.
Email validation, removal of obsolete contacts, and automatic updating of details like job titles, contact info, email addresses, etc, can all be easily accomplished with AI tools like ActiveCampaign. In fact, AI can even gather such information from various sources. Keeping mailing lists clean with AI is essential for improving email deliverability rates.
4. Segment Your Audience
AI can enhance your email marketing strategy by employing segmentation, as manually sorting customers is impractical due to the enormous amount of customer data available.
Moreover, customer segmentation can vary based on factors including location, gender, age, purchasing habits, and other variables. By incorporating behavioral and psychographic data, AI can establish a flexible segmentation system that surpasses traditional parameters such as age and location.
The average open rate for segmented emails is 46% higher.
5. Leverage Automation
It’s difficult to envision a dedicated individual overseeing all drip marketing and retargeting campaigns to ensure appropriate emails are sent at the appropriate moments. Nonetheless, automation plays a role.
Through AI, customization of automation can be achieved based on customer behavior and previous experiences, such as product browsing and purchases. As a result, all aspects pertaining to the email content and retargeting campaigns can cater to the recipient’s preferences and requirements, ultimately extending the customer’s lifetime value.
6. Personalize your Email Copy
Businesses that deal with numerous customers or clients often opt for AI writing assistants when sending bulk emails. AI email writing tools, such as Lyne.ai, Magic Sales Bot, Conversion.ai, Snazzy.ai, Lavender, SmartWriter.ai, and Lola AI, can quickly generate emails based on the specified topic.
As an illustration, Lavender provides a personalized touch to your introductory email to prospects by showcasing their social network activities, funding news, technological infrastructure, employment opportunities, as well as company details, all based on their email address.
Including personalization in the opening line of your cold emails is crucial if you want to elicit responses. It shows that you’ve conducted thorough research on your prospective client. Below are several examples of how personalization can be incorporated into the opening lines:
- “Just finished reading the case study you wrote for {{customer name}}. It’s fantastic how you were able to increase ad conversions on their Facebook page by 15%.”
- “I was at {{event}} and saw you speak. Enjoyed the unique insights and looking forward to putting some of those ideas to test in the coming weeks.”
7. Restructure your Email Campaign
By utilizing tools powered by AI, email marketing campaigns can be subdivided to enhance delivery success. Given the increased importance of email privacy, the delivery of emails has become a top priority for marketers.
Using AI, you can set up cart abandonment emails for a particular duration, at a designated frequency, or triggered by a specific event. Take advantage of our abandoned cart email template to lure back a customer who left the purchase halfway.
By employing interactive emails from Mailmodo, Traya managed to achieve a cart recovery rate of 15%, thanks to automated reminder emails for users who abandoned their shopping carts without making a purchase.
8. Make Smart Segmentation
Included in this data are purchase history, surfing habits, and choices. The AI system leverages this information to create email segments and send customized emails to each individual. As a consequence, guessing which goods would attract a specific consumer or what form of writing they would prefer to read is unnecessary with AI.
9. Understand your Customer Lifecycle
Recruiting potential clients is the first stage of lifecycle email marketing. Businesses use AI to sift through consumer needs and attributes to identify the ideal customer.
In the lifecycle process, the subsequent phase involves interacting with potential clients in a manner that guarantees a favorable reaction. Moreover, AI is utilized to reconnect with current customers and encourage their continued patronage. This strategy establishes a lasting connection with customers, ensuring their loyalty to the brand.
10. Customize Email Retargeting
With the assistance of AI, you can enhance your email retargeting approach by differentiating between patrons and delivering them emails that connect with them. Even though a few purchasers might buy a product as soon as they receive your email, others may take a day or two to respond to it.
AI can be of assistance in the sending of retargeting emails at the most advantageous moments. Additionally, the incorporation of algorithmically chosen items in your retargeting emails can enhance the value of your sales. With predictive insights, we aid eCommerce businesses in the delivery of pertinent retargeting emails. Consult our retargeting campaigns guide to obtain further knowledge about our approach.
11. Make Product Recommendations
With the help of AI, brands can monitor the activities happening on their website and utilize the acquired information for sending personalized product recommendations via email. Real-time incorporation of particular suggestions based on actual product and website data is feasible.
Endy utilized AI-driven suggestions to incorporate items that aligned with the interests of each individual customer or items that were similar to ones they had engaged with on the company’s website, as evidenced in the email notification about an upcoming exclusive sale.
AI tools for email marketing
Ready to begin your email marketing strategy with the help of AI? Here are some tools to assist you in getting started:
- ChatGPT: This AI chatbot developed by OpenAI has been all in vogue since its release. You can input prompts in ChatGPT to generate content (subject lines, email copies, etc.) or to research topics of your choice.
- Optimove: Optimove is an omnichannel marketing hub. Optimal, an AI-powered module of Optimove, is aimed at email personalization and customer hyper-targeting. It continuously monitors customer behavior to adjust email marketing campaigns accordingly.
- Rasa.io: Rasa.io is an AI-powered newsletter tool that helps you send uniquely personalized newsletters to every subscriber. It curates a list of articles that match reader interests to make your emails engaging.
- Phrasee: If you want to craft outstanding email subject lines and CTAs that attract clicks like light to moths, look no further. Phrasee uses NLG to analyze brand guidelines and past messages to generate intriguing content.
- MoEngage: MoEngage leverages AI to make email marketing smarter and more strategic. The AI engine allows businesses to curate compelling, personalized emails that match the receiver’s preferences, behavior, journey stage, and trends.
 AI replacing email marketers
According to The Email Marketing Show Podcast, AI tools have limitations as they can only produce content focused on features and benefits. By inputting data into these platforms, the resulting output is straightforward and centered on features and benefits. However, relying solely on features and benefits is not enough to influence people’s purchasing decisions as emotions play a crucial role as well.
Although AI can be utilized by email marketers to incorporate content blocks, the absence of emotion and empathy in these software programs remains apparent. While machine-generated, data-driven email campaigns may result, they are not a substitute for email marketers who interpret and humanize these details for you.
Email marketers incorporate narrative techniques in their emails to make them more relatable, thereby improving customer loyalty and trust. It is distinct from personalized content, which caters to the user’s name, purchasing patterns, and so on. This is the reason why email marketers will continue to be relevant for a prolonged period.