How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Email Marketing

This article was last updated on June 7, 2021

When it comes to digital marketing, AI plays a pivotal role, and it’s proving to be an excellent tool for upgrading your email marketing strategies. In fact, it’s very safe to say that artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping email marketing.

Currently, 87 percent of current AI users said they are now using or are considering using it for sales forecasting and email marketing enhancement. There is good reason to join them though, and below, we explore seven ways that artificial intelligence is reshaping email marketing.

Enhance Your Automation Process

Automation has quickly become a staple in email marketing. It reduces the number of repetitive tasks a company’s marketing department has to endure and helps them reclaim countless hours spent sending out individual emails. However, when you incorporate artificial intelligence, it takes automation to a new level.

AI can use customer data to drive automated drip campaigns and determine which actions and events trigger an email. Suddenly, information like past purchases, interests, and browsing behaviors are more valuable than ever before.

Related: What Is Email Automation and Why Does It Matter?

Better Personalization

You can’t expect to grow your customer base without incorporating personalization. Whenever a subscriber opens an email, they’re looking for content that appeals to them. And when they don’t find it, they abandon the email. Because of this, simple acts of personalization like adding the customer’s name to the greeting are no longer good enough. True personalization is to understand your customer and match their interests with quality content.

Additionally, highly personalized emails have higher open and click-through rates than standard emails. Incorporating AI into your process makes it possible for your company to create customized emails for each subscriber. It analyzes your individual customers’ behavior and shows you what they’re likely to respond best to.

AI Optimized Subject Lines

Another way that artificial intelligence is reshaping email marketing is by helping to optimize subject lines. Sales and marketing teams alike understand the importance of the perfect subject line. Almost 40 percent of email subscribers decide whether they will open a marketing email based solely on the subject line.

With machine learning technologies, your software can help you understand which subject lines work and which ones don’t. Through testing, artificial intelligence can analyze your email’s open rates and give insight into which subject lines garner the best response. This takes the guesswork out of the best way to reach your readers.

Related: 23 Tips on Writing Email Subject Line Masterpiece

Increased Engagement

The ultimate goal of email marketing is to engage your readers enough to convert them into customers. Although it doesn’t seem like artificial intelligence — something so unhuman — can be personal, we invite you to look deeper. Your emails need to feel real, human, and relatable, and with artificial intelligence, you can achieve this goal.

A way to further personalize your emails is to ask your contacts about their preferences directly. You can ask them to define their preferences and what is valuable to them when joining your email list. Moreover, you can send out a semi-annual survey asking questions like “how often would you like to hear from us?” or “What are your interests?” to recalibrate your personalization strategy. AI is beneficial because it can track these metrics and use them to boost overall engagement.

Timely Emails

A consistent struggle for many marketers is identifying the best time to send emails to subscribers. Industry experts insist that Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the optimum time, but the truth is there is no perfect time or day. That is, before the introduction of artificial intelligence. Your customers vary, each with their own set of preferences, one of which is their preferred time to read emails.

With AI, you can use previous customer behaviors and engagement history to inform your automated send times. Meaning, you can reach your subscribers at the optimum time, which ultimately boosts your conversion rates.

Accurate Analytics

So much of this blog has highlighted the ways AI impacts email marketing campaigns and their deliverability. However, artificial intelligence is reshaping email marketing on the back end as well. You can use AI to gather performative data on your campaigns, gauging their effectiveness and impact. The data generated from these campaigns can be used in other ways, such as customer engagement and predicting — and preventing — customer churn.

Email Frequency

How many emails should you send in a day, week, or month? This is a question that troubles most companies. There is a fine line between appealing to your customers and repelling them.  Sending too many emails appears clingy while sending too few emails gives the impression that fostering a relationship with your audience isn’t necessary.

Of course, the perfect number of emails you send a customer is determined by factors like the industry you serve and your audience. This is where AI comes in handy. With the right insights, you can pinpoint how often you reach out to customers. To further personalize their experience, segment your list into enthusiastic subscribers and average ones. Bump up your frequency for those who seem to engage the most and decrease the frequency for others.

MailBakery

Email marketing is undeniably one of the most powerful marketing channels out there. When you combine it with AI, it enhances your efforts in a way that makes them unstoppable. We hope that our breakdown of ways artificial intelligence is reshaping email marketing encourages you to employ it in your strategy. If you need email templates to complement your new plan, let MailBakery help.

We design and code email templates for successful marketing campaigns. Working together, we can bring your visions to life and create stunning, responsive, and brand-specific email templates that are sure to engage and convert.

Ready to get started? Contact our team, and let’s get in the kitchen!