The breadth of AI’s capabilities has recently dominated the headlines — and stirred up concerns across demographics and industries — after tech reporter Kevin Roose documented his encounter with Microsoft’s chatbot Sydney in the New York Times. No one knows where AI is headed or how it will reshape the world. But one thing is for certain: Employing AI email marketing can be a huge boon for digital marketers.
Galactic Fed will help you dive into the benefits of AI-powered email, learn how you can use it to your advantage, and find out the answers to the burning question, “How will AI affect email and marketing automation?”
What Is AI Email Marketing, and What Are Its Benefits?
AI email marketing calls upon the powers of artificial intelligence to accomplish several of the leading objectives of email marketing campaigns — namely, improved lead generation, increased traffic, broadened brand reach, and higher sales.
Artificial intelligence platforms can sift through consumer data to make blink-of-the-eye decisions that would be impossible to achieve by even the most gifted coterie of digital marketers. By employing AI email marketing in your marketing strategy, you could:
- Benefit from improved efficiency
- Land with consumers in a more personable, real way
- Enhance public perception of your brand and foster consumer loyalty
- Fuel conversions
It’s true that humans like you and your team are certainly capable of adjusting email send times or analyzing crucial consumer data, such as your target audience’s email behaviors and the performance of your email campaigns.
But these tedious tasks pull substantial time, energy, and creativity away from the big-picture ideas and solutions your marketing team should be focusing on instead. Moreover, AI can compute and evaluate massive swaths of information at a speed that’s infeasible for humans — and at an exceptionally cost-effective rate.
Is Email Marketing Still Relevant?
In a word: Yes.
Rumors abound that email marketing is going the way of flip phones and dial-up modems — and succumbing to the trend of youthification.
Digital marketing experts disagree, and the numbers underscore email marketing’s enduring benefits:
- Email marketing has an impressive ROI: $40 for every $1 spent
- 81% of small businesses leverage email for client acquisition
- 80% of small businesses use email marketing to increase customer retention
- Welcome emails enjoy an open rate of 68.6%
Two of every three digital marketers rely on email marketing to share information organically. Further, more than half of the global population — 4.6 billion people — will be using email by 2025, a strong indication that email marketing isn’t going anywhere and will only continue to expand as time marches forward.
AI Email Marketing: 5 Ways to Capitalize on Artificial Intelligence
If email marketing isn’t already in your digital marketing playbook, the ease, efficiency, and measurable results of AI email marketing may persuade you to adopt the practice. Here are five ways you can leverage it to level up your brand’s growth and success.
1. Personalized Content
There are few things more off-putting to a consumer than receiving communications from a brand that has nothing to do with their interests. An email that isn’t aligned with their wants and needs may go unopened or be flagged as spam — or, even worse, result in the loss of an email subscriber who could have become a loyal customer.
AI helps diminish this risk. It collects key data points about your consumers, including their:
- Interests
- Online habits
- Purchasing history
- Behaviors
Additionally, AI tracks the actions consumers take on your website and social channels. If you’re a fashion brand and a consumer recently browsed your selection of summer shoes, you can then create an email highlighting your shoes’ specific features, testimonials, and perhaps a discount for first-time buyers.
Similarly, AI monitors abandoned carts. This puts you in a prime position to retarget prospective consumers.
Consumers don’t just want this level of personalization; they essentially demand it. Over 70% of consumers want brands to give them an individualized experience.
2. Email Marketing Optimization
You might already be employing analytical tools to assess open rates and other key information. AI improves upon this concept by automating email marketing campaigns to integrate with the data it has gathered, ensuring that send times are on point and your subject lines resonate (and propel users to open and review your email).
3. Audience Segmentation
These days, it’s seldom enough to have a buyer persona at the front and center of your mind when crafting marketing campaigns. Audience segmentation is increasingly perceived as one of the most effective ways to dial into the specifics of consumers by focusing on subpopulations within your target audience.
AI streamlines the process of audience segmentation. It gives you the capacity to tailor email content, send times, subject lines, and more based on these subgroups:
- Stage in the buyer’s journey
- Engagement level
- Device preference and usage
- Industry
- Job title and level of seniority
- Relationship status
- Gender identification
- Family structure
- Religion
- Values
- Ethnicity
- Climate and geographic location
- Personality
- Hobbies
- Lifestyle
Ultimately, AI-generated audience segmentation enables you to take personalized content to the next level in your email marketing, setting the stage for the types of promotions you should inform your user about or the products your emails should recommend.
4. Spring Cleaning — and Vital Updates
AI keeps your email lists clean by identifying inactive email contacts. This feature helps ensure that you’re not damaging your brand’s reputation by emailing consumers who are uninterested in your products and services or feel that they’re being spammed — yes, even if they signed up as subscribers but have forgotten or changed their minds.
With AI-powered email tools, you can also make key, rapid-fire updates to your contacts. AI has the power to update your consumers’:
- Phone numbers
- Job title
- Purchasing history
Will this result in higher conversions? Not necessarily. But it frees up space for you to concentrate on the relevancy and quality of your email content.
5. Newsletter Automation
You can also use AI to create newsletters that are carefully tailored for specific audience members. This technique may increase consumer engagement and lead to the results you’re after. Fortunately, you have access to entire AI platforms used exclusively for creating smart newsletters; Futurescope is one of the most admired and effective.
How Will AI Affect Email and Marketing Automation?
We’re already seeing how AI impacts email and marketing automation.
AI expediently pinpoints when email and other forms of marketing produce better results. It also goes beyond this to ascertain what type of content performs the best with specific subgroups of a marketer’s target audience.
Currently, nearly half of all digital marketers use automation in their email marketing strategies. Not joining them could result in untapped conversions and the loss of potential sales and income.
What Are the Most Effective AI Email Marketing Tools?
Getting started with AI-powered email marketing may seem daunting — unless you have these tools at your disposal.
Some of the best AI email marketing tools presently on the market include:
- Twilio SendGrid: Twilio SendGrid provides digital marketers with the basics needed to craft email marketing lists and campaigns, such as email testing and forms for consumers to sign up. But it also employs AI for:
- Real-time analyses of the performance of your emails
- Neural protection to safeguard your brand’s reputation
- Real-time evaluations to identify invalid contacts and reduce email bounce rates
- Drift Email: This AI email marketing tool facilitates conversations between you and your consumers via email, as well as video and chat. It also updates each subscriber’s details, like the position they hold in their company. This allows you to craft more personalized content and enhance deliverability.
- Zeta Email: Zeta Email works especially well for creating hyper-tailored email content that aligns brilliantly with your audience’s demographics, online habits, and real-time behaviors. Furthermore, Zeta offers predictive data that can help you optimize everything from send time to subject line. As an immense platform for omnichannel marketing, Zeta as a whole can assist you across other channels, including social.
- Mailmodo: The genius of Mailmodo is that it provides an interactive email experience, allowing consumers to act without leaving their email platforms. This simplifies and expedites purchases by omitting the need for extra steps. AI is also leveraged by Mailmodo to:
- Automate time-drip series
- Monitor performance
Naturally, these options are just the start of the emerging top AI email marketing tools. Over time, this tech niche will only continue to expand and improve, providing you with hundreds of solutions in the coming years.
AI Email Marketing: Key Takeaways
The enormous strides made in AI have ignited apprehension, intrigue, and enthusiasm. From identifying human trafficking to assisting with the early detection of cancer, AI stands to do a great deal of good for the world.
For digital marketers, AI-powered email and AI email marketing are saving substantial amounts of time so they can use their wells of innovation for more meaningful endeavors. When it comes to marketing, there may not be a more beneficial partnership than AI and human innovation.
