AI in Email Marketing: 6 Ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Be Used in Email Marketing
Email communication has been around since the 1970s. In the digital marketing space, email marketing is just a dinosaur. The only difference is that email marketing is nowhere near to extinction!
Email marketing continues to be one of the most popular marketing tools deployed by companies from around the world. Despite the emergence of new-age and modern digital marketing channels, email marketing continues to stand ground as an effective marketing tool. Why? Simply because it is effective!
Although technology has evolved at quite a rapid pace, emails are an important part of our lives. Besides, email marketing offers a great return on investment (ROI).
Having said that, a lot of aspects of email marketing have evolved over the years, and most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) is making inroads in this field.
In this article, we will take a look at how artificial intelligence is driving personalization and making an impact on email marketing.
SEE ALSO: 8 Jaw-Dropping Email Marketing Statistics for 2021
Quick overview:
- AI is increasingly being used to optimize subject lines and track performance
- AI is enabling marketers to recognize how customers are likely to interact based on their past conversations
- AI is also being used to generate email-friendly content
- With AI, you do not have to worry about email scheduling, follow-ups, and retargeting campaigns due to a customer’s preferences and habits
Let’s see how AI is making its mark in the email marketing space.
1. Optimized subject lines
The subject line is arguably one of the most important components of your email strategy.
Did you know that nearly 35% of email recipients decide to open a mail based on the subject line? [1].
An exciting and out-of-the-box email subject line will ooze out uniqueness, which encourages recipients to open and read the email. On the other hand, an email with a general subject line is likely to be overlooked and ignored, and in extreme cases, even deemed as spam.
Traditionally, a copywriter was assigned to create engaging subject lines. Besides, there were other tried and tested methods with which you could experiment your subject lines for your customers. With AI thrown into the mix, this job has become extremely easy.
AI relies on algorithms to create subject lines that are likely to have a higher click-through rate. It closely tracks the performance of each marketing campaign to enhance the subject lines of your email campaigns over time.
2. Personalization
Mailchimp revealed the email open rate benchmark in 2018 and dived deep into finding the open rates by industry.
In their study, they found that the average open rate across different sectors was around 20.80% [2].
This number indicates that it is crucial to be more realistic, segment your audience, and also personalize your marketing emails.
Besides, emails with a personalized subject line have a 26% higher opening rate than non-personalized emails [3].
Although a very basic degree of personalization has been common in email marketing for a long time, AI broadens the horizon.
Predictive analytics leverages complex algorithms, machine learning, and customer data to make predictions about the future behavior of customers.
For instance, a marketer can use AI to recommend products to customers for which they have expressed interest in the past.
3. Content automation
This is very similar to the automation and optimization of email subject lines. Just how email subject lines can be automated, the entire body of the email can be automated.
This is where AI software steps in. Such solutions can use images, blog snippets, copies, and curated content to craft optimized emails for a better engagement rate.
Apart from producing optimized content, automation also minimizes the time and resources required to keep your email campaigns up and running.
4. Optimal timings
Now that we have spoken about the subject line and the body of your email campaigns, it is now time to identify the best time to send emails to get high engagement.
Back in the day, identifying the best time to send emails largely depended on data analysis, experimentation, and intuition.
AI is eliminating the guesswork of choosing the right frequency and time of your email campaigns by evaluating different data points.
AI algorithms can identify the best time to deliver marketing emails. Besides, these algorithms can also determine the frequency of your emails.
5. Email promotions
Email promotions are one of the most effective ways to get more customers to sign up for your list.
You can also increase your sales by providing tailored promotions for each customer by turning to machine learning.
The choice of promotional emails depends from customer to customer. What may work for customer A may not do the trick for customer B.
Marketers can also offer promotions on different products, provide free shipping, discounts, incentives, and freebies. All of these elements can be tailored to your customer’s taste and past shopping behavior.
This degree of customization is impossible to achieve without AI.
6. Retargeting
Abandoned cart emails are very important! There are so many instances where customers add items to their cart but do not complete the checkout process.
Email retargeting is one way to combat this problem and boost sales. Besides, it also minimizes the shopping cart abandonment rate.
AI enables you to tweak your retargeting strategy and make it more effective.
For example, a group of customers may interact with emails an hour after leaving a website. However, another group of customers may take up to a week to complete the checkout.
AI can identify these customer types and thereby help you send retargeting emails at the right time.
Is AI the future of email marketing?
As seen in this article, AI can be used in many ways to set your email marketing strategy in motion.
Have you noticed that each application helps you achieve two fundamental goals – increased conversions and engagement?
Marketers from all over the world are becoming increasingly aware of how AI can turn the fortunes of their marketing campaigns. This is why the adoption of AI in email marketing is set to move in an upward direction in the years to come.
AI-powered email marketing tools can elevate the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. So is AI in email marketing here to stay? Looking at the current trends, yes, AI will play an important role in shaping the future of email marketing.
SEE ALSO: 5 Unmissable Benefits of Live Chat Software for Your Business
Feature Image Source: Image by Tumisu from Pixabay
Image 1 Source: rawpixel.com
Image 2 Source: Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Source:
[1] Matthews. K (2019) “13 Email Marketing Statistics That Are Shaping 2019 and Beyond” Convince&Convert [online] Available from: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/email-marketing-statistics/ [accessed August 2021]
[2] (2018) “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics by Industry” Mailchimp [online] Available from: https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ [accessed August 2021]
[3] (2018) “The New Rules of Email Marketing” [online] Available from: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-new-rules/ [accessed August 2021]
