How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Empower Email Marketing

Whenever one thinks about Artificial Intelligence, terms and techs like ChatGPT, Alexa, and Siri, populate our minds. While AI does have its supporters and critics, marketers have taken to it like fish to water. In 1950, Alan Turing, a young Brit, challenged the status quo by presenting a pathbreaking paper titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”

AI was conceived thus, by an ingenious mind that saw its way into the future. While the jury stands divided on many aspects of AI, such as ethical concerns and the ultimate fear of the unknown, today’s blog will study the diverse implications of the marriage of AI and marketing, more specifically, email marketing. 

On that note, let’s delve into how AI can help empower different aspects of email marketing and thereby optimize it to realize enhanced revenues from email campaigns. 

Constructs & Pillars of Email Marketing & How AI Can Optimize The Process

Once we understand the rubrics of email marketing, it will be easier to absorb the role artificial intelligence can play in realizing even better ROIs in email marketing.

People are intelligent, value their time, and have increasingly short attention spans. Thus if you want your email to not just make it past the spam, enter inboxes and have a real chance at receiving a click from the subscriber, you need to really add value in exchange for those few minutes of the user’s time. 

The following constitute the anatomy of a well-thought-out email campaign. 

• A super cool Johnson’s box (preheader)
• An attractive subjective line that is not salesy
• Well-written, engaging copy that offers value, solves problems, or helps discover pain points (that your product/service was made to solve)
• A footer 
• The link to a landing page that will ultimately translate into conversions
• Segmenting audience 
• Cadence and send time
• Delivery

Incorporating AI into the mix can help you iron out any folds and curves that you may encounter in devising the perfect email marketing campaign.

The idea is to personalize every step of email marketing for the target audience to maintain their engagement with the brand and encourage inactive subscribers to re-engage. AI can help you with every rung of the ladder, including customer acquisition, retention, engagement, and advocacy, by analyzing and developing consumer-centric data. Here’s a detailed insight into how AI can be your trusted buddy!

1. Personalization for the win

Personalized copy hits the bullseye mostly always rather than a la carte fare that’s mostly a nay! Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes, and you will know why! If somebody is interested in upgrading their kitchenware, they will probably not be looking for cement. Knowing your target audience, and segmenting them according to their preferences, is extremely important for running a successful email campaign. 

AI can help you with this by deploying deep-learning technology to decode consumer browsing behavior, history, and product preferences. Imagine how cool real-time assistance would be! Picture this, “Alexa, show me quirky men’s socks,” and your brand is optimized for real-time conversions. Good brand connect, real-time interactions, and a deep analysis of customer quirks can help you crack the code for awesome ROIs through AI-powered email marketing automation. In a nutshell, AI can help you with personalization in the following ways;

• Machine learning algorithms help unveil what kind of content is consumed by which segment of the audience. The emails that are opened and those that are not can be analyzed to develop a deeper, more realistic understanding of the content that is well-received.
• Marketers can bridge gaps by offering the right service at the right time using AI, such as Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Alexa.
• By delving into consumers’ browsing preferences and purchase history, marketers can upsell and cross-sell packages tailor-made to consumer requirements. 
• Marketers can amplify the returns on their email campaigns significantly by identifying vital parameters such as conversion rate and email-click-through rate.

2. Craft relevant subject lines that cut through the noise

The first thing that a prospective customer comes across is the email subject line. If it seems too salesy, impersonal, and spammy, the campaign may sink deeper than the Titanic! Pardon the exaggeration, but you get the drift. 

When email campaigns are conceived, coming up with enticing headlines to suit different segments of the audience can seem like a Herculean task. AI can help you craft compelling subject lines that work best for specific segments of your audience. 

AI can analyze deep data that runs across the receiver’s past and current purchasing and browsing behavior, including click baits that work for the majority of a particular demographic section. For instance, a header that works for millennials may seem too bland for Gen Z.

3. Deploying AI-enhanced A/B testing

A/B testing serves a wide range of purposes, from helps\ing segregate the best headers and preheaders from the not-so-popular ones, to deciding the optimal position for CTAs. 

Conventional A/B testing involved sending two separate sets of emails to two different sets of subscribers. The one that performed better on the basis of analytical parameters was considered the one that could rake in the moolah.

With the advent of artificial intelligence, the task of analyzing tons of data just got easier. Marketers now have the option to save time and money by deploying machine-powered data crunching to craft the best-in-class email campaign with documented results.

4. Creating better-automated workflows

Email marketers benefit from the results offered by AI-powered deep learning at multiple levels. With the ability to process larger chunks of consumer data in a shorter time, marketers can craft enhanced workflows that offer varied touchpoints for consumer engagement and interaction and saves the manual effort of manually creating custom audiences and attributes.

5. Defining the perfect send times and cadence

Send the perfect email copy at the time when respondents are most likely to check their inboxes, and bam! You ultimately have the edge over your competitors by delivering the right message at the right time. Artificial intelligence can help you slay on that front as well! With deep insight into respondents’ preferred mail cadence and time of checking their mail, you can ensure that your email copy garners the visibility and eyeballs it deserves.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, artificial intelligence can help you achieve your email marketing goals with minimal investment and maximum returns. Right from re-engaging customers who seemed to have lost engagement with the brand to sending personalized abandoned cart reminders, deep machine learning coupled with natural language processing can help you in more ways than you can imagine. The future is AI-empowered marketing, and the time to embrace it is now.

To learn more on the AI revolution in email marketing, take a look at this insightful infographic by Email Uplers.