How AI is Changing Email Marketing for the Better
How can AI enhance your email marketing? Our guest today, Gaurav Sharma – the founder and CEO of Attrock, has a few pointers for you.
Email marketing is a great way to promote your brand and grow its reach. Through emails, you can not only nurture your leads but also drive conversions. It’s also a powerful tool for keeping your audience engaged and driving traffic to your website. And you can enhance it by using artificial intelligence (AI) for email marketing campaigns.
And how can you do that?
Artificial intelligence (AI) finds widespread use in marketing – and email marketing is no different. It can help you with a range of tasks right from powering your A/B testing efforts to improving your subject lines and sending times.
Also, it speeds up the entire process as opposed to doing it manually.
So, how is AI changing the way email marketing is done?
Let’s find out.
AI for email marketing: How is it changing the email landscape?
AI can improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by helping you optimize various aspects of your emails. Let’s take a look at how it’s changing email marketing for the better.
1. AI can improve your subject lines
One of the most important aspects of any email is the subject line. You need to craft enticing subject lines to get people to click on them and open your emails.
They’re so important because even the most well-crafted emails won’t make an impact if the subject line is poor. After all, the subject line is the factor that plays a major role in determining your open rates.
So, how does AI for email marketing help you with that?
AI-based tools can make the process of coming up with catchy email subject lines more simple.
Tools like Phrasee can seamlessly write email subject lines that are not only attractive but also natural. Armed with the power of deep learning algorithms and natural language processing, such tools can be great assets for your email campaigns.
2. AI and email personalization
Getting people to open your email is one thing. However, nudging them to interact and engage with your email is a different thing altogether. And you need to do this well to ensure that they pay attention to your call-to-action (CTA) and click on it as well.
A poorly-crafted, generic email won’t help you get anywhere in this case. If people don’t think it’s relevant to them, they’ll probably move on to the next email or won’t click on your CTA.
This goes to show why personalization is so important.
So, how can AI for email marketing help here?
AI can help you derive deep insights into your customers by analyzing their behavior and studying their interests. By understanding them, you’ll be able to figure out how best to personalize your emails for them.
This personalization will help make your emails resonate well with your audience and as a result, you’ll be able to get the most out of your email campaigns.
3. AI and sending time optimization
Every day, more than 319 billion emails are sent and received around the world. This number is expected to grow to well over 370 billion by 2025. There are also over 4.1 billion email users around the world.
The average email user sends and receives well over 77 emails per day. When it comes to office workers and professionals, this number can be drastically higher.
In such a situation of email overdose, it may not be possible for your subscribers to check each email. Additionally, when they receive so many emails, they might even miss a few.
So, what can you do to ensure that they not only notice your email but also read it?
Hint: It’s all about the timing.
You need to send your email at the right moment – when your audience is likely to open them. This is where AI can help you through predictive analytics.
It can identify when the people on your list are likely to be active. With this data in hand, you can send your email around that time to boost your chances for engagement.
How Sephora uses AI for email marketing
Another example of AI use in email marketing comes from Sephora. Using predictive analytics and machine learning, they figure out when customers are about to run out of their favorite products.
When the deadline nears, they send out an email to their customers enticing them to restock and also provide a link to buy it.
What’s more, to make the offer sweeter, they offer free shipping and loyalty points, which can improve their sales.
4. AI can improve A/B Testing
A/B testing is a powerful strategy to amp up your business growth. It can be a tedious and time-consuming activity. But it’s necessary to ensure that your emails achieve the best results possible.
Through A/B testing, you can optimize each section of your emails – such as subject lines, CTA, or email body.
The idea is to test each component’s performance to identify the one that works the best for you. As this test would require you to send out multiple emails with different aspects modified, it can be challenging to monitor it all.
That’s where AI for email marketing can come in handy. By harnessing the power of AI, you can quickly run A/B tests for your emails to get results as per your marketing plan.
Additionally, machine learning will help you get detailed insights about your campaign with ease and this can help you seamlessly find out what works the best for your campaign.
5. AI puts emails on autopilot
Some AI-powered email marketing tools can also help with marketing automation. They make it easier to create and set up automated email campaigns so that you can move your audience smoothly through the funnel.
The best part about this is that AI can help you understand customer behavior and accordingly automate the campaign. Thus, you’ll send the right set of emails at the appropriate time.
On top of that, these marketing automation tools can determine what kind of copy or image would work the best for your audience. It’s easy improve the effectiveness of your email campaign!
6. AI for retargeting
To get the most out of your audience, you need to leverage email retargeting by using a retargeting platform like Perfect Audience. Many of your customers who reach the middle of the funnel may back out after adding products to their carts.
These customers may have decided against buying your products or services at the last minute. That’s where you can use retargeting to get them to buy from you.
You can launch a retargeting campaign and send emails to these leads to encourage them to purchase those products. Consider offering them a discount coupon as well.
And that’s where AI can help you.
It can fine-tune your retargeting strategy based on user behavior so you can craft emails that are more relevant for those leads. This, in turn, can improve your conversions.
Final thoughts
AI for email marketing can make a major difference when it comes to the effectiveness of your campaigns. AI-powered tools can optimize your email subject lines.
Additionally, AI will help you improve your email copy by understanding customer behavior.
AI can also play a major role in lead generation and targeting, by allowing you to fine-tune your sending times.
Finally, it speeds up the A/B testing process, powers up your drip email campaigns and assists with retargeting.
Author Bio:
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.