Email marketing still works but this channel has become very competitive. An average office worker receives 121 emails every day. Inboxes are overcrowded and it has become tough to capture customers attention. To stay ahead of the game and make a mark in a crowded inbox, marketers are adopting AI (Artificial Intelligence) as AI is not a futuristic technology anymore.
AI is helping brands create super relevant messages for the subscribers based on their behavior and interests and their past interactions with the business. With AI email marketers can personalize everything from the copy to the images, to the send-time of the emails. So, emails don’t get lost in the crowded inboxes. Here’s an in-depth guide of how you can leverage Artificial Intelligence to power you emails and get the best possible engagement from your campaigns.
Here are five specific where brands can utilize AI to ensure the success of their email marketing campaigns:
1. Power of AI in email personalization
A critical skill in this digital age is to be able to craft a highly personalized, innovative marketing message.
It not only makes your email marketing campaign successful but also helps you connect with your prospects and nurture them. This, in turn, allows you to push them further down the sales funnel.
And don’t let me dictate you into believing this.
Have a look at this statistic below:
This statistic by Salesforce shows how personalized emails increase email open and click rates.
Artificial Intelligence technology can analyze the behavior of your consumer and generate data-driven insights by studying their interests. Thus, each email you send out is tailor-made and look less like it is machine-generated.
For instance, if you send personalized product and service recommendation emails to your subscribers, it can boost customer loyalty and improve engagement and conversion in your email marketing campaigns.
Take this email marketing campaign, for instance:
Since AI can automatically track purchase and browsing behavior, interest levels, and online activity, it can generate tailor-made product recommendations in the body of emails instantly. It will save you the time from having to hand-pick products for your customers.
The smartest way to collect data for an effective approach to this method is to ask your subscribers to set their preferences while they sign up.
In fact, in data collected by MailChimp in 2017, it was stated that 75% of recipients are more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented ones.
2. AI-powered subject lines
As per researchers, 47% of subscribers make the decision to open or ignore an email based on the subject line of the email. An email subject line is evidently a vital element of your email marketing campaign.
You can use natural language generation, and deep learning AI to create, test, and optimize email subject line language. It has proven to increase customer engagement and open rates for many brands.
Additionally, based on your email marketing campaign history, AI can tell what resonates best with your subscribers. Thus, it can create optimized subject lines utilizing natural language technology.
3. Automate your email campaign
Apart from automating subject lines of your email, AI can also automate the entire content and optimize it.
With the help of AI-powered software, you can utilize pre-written copies, images, blog post snippets, promotions, links, curated content, and even machine-generated content s to generate emails that are optimized for a high engagement rate. An attractive body copy and a clearly defined call-to-action (CTA) that triggers a specific action are equally as important.
For instance, if you look at Uber’s email campaign, it is simple, tasteful, straight to the point, and has a clear CTA.
AI algorithms not only determine the optimal combination of different types of content, but this automation also significantly cuts down on the time and resources needed to keep your email campaigns running.
4. Determining optimal timings
The timing in which you send your email can have a notable impact on email opens and clicks. AI can determine the best time to send a mail and also the frequency of your email campaigns by mechanically analyzing different data points.
The machine learning algorithms powered by AI can help you to send messages to subscribers when they are more likely to open them. AI analyzes it based on their past behavior, and increasingly, based on instantaneous triggers. It can add up to a considerable boost in conversions.
A 2016 report by HubSpot stated that 78% of subscribers unsubscribed from emails as they were receiving too many emails from a brand.
This number is too substantial to ignore.
However, as suggested above, if you allow AI to set the frequency of your email campaigns, it is less likely to happen to your brand.
5. Retargeting
As per AdRoll, generally, only 2% of the shoppers convert on the first visit to an online store. And the aim of retargeting is to gain back the other 98%.
If your customers have added items in their cart but not proceeded to check out, email retargeting can effectively charm them back and boost your sales.
Something like this:
AI can highly improve your retargeting strategy.
Artificial Intelligence will know whether to send an email to a customer an hour after they have left your site or to send them after a day or two. Most importantly, it can tell apart different types of customers and send your retargeting emails at the best time. It can also help you increase your sale value by suggesting some algorithmically-chosen items.
AI also helps to boost your remarketing strategies by using ML to interpret data around users’ purchase history. It can recognize patterns that can assist in predicting future purchase behavior.
Moreover, AI is also able to make out if your site’s visitor has a serious intention of buying a product from his/her browsing time pattern. It will even know if a buyer has just checked out online but are not really interested in purchasing your product.
Summing it Up
The impact of AI on email marketing is so significant that we can safely assume that more and more brands will be using this technology in the months and years to come. If you haven’t yet – this is the right time for you to incorporate AI into your email marketing strategy. As AI will not only help your business to save plenty of time and effort but it can make your campaigns more effective and targeted.
Don’t wait and watch other businesses increase their efficiency and maximized ROI from this channel while you have the chance to take your email game to the next level with AI.
