6 ways to use AI to improve your email marketing strategy

In this article, guest blogger Kevin George from EmailMonks discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) helps email marketers to enhance their subscriber engagement.

Artificial Intelligence is an interplay between the pursuit of a goal, processing the data used to achieve that goal, and acquisition of data to discern the goal better. 

As the technology of artificial intelligence is gaining immense popularity, marketers are incorporating it in almost every digital communication sent to the subscriber. 

Email marketing has not remained an exception. Artificial intelligence allows email marketers to create more human email copy that is scalable and allows for automation.

For example, shopping cart abandonment emails rely on personalised content to engage customers, along with optimised on-site messaging.

A recent survey found the global AI market is predicted to snowball in the next few years, reaching a $190.61 billion market value in 2025. 

When it comes to marketing, research found 71% of marketers find AI could be useful for personalisation tactics for their marketing campaigns. 

So, how can you use AI to improve your email marketing strategy? Let’s dig in and unravel this new field of opportunities.

What is AI?

What is AI? It’s artificial intelligence that uses computers, search engines and machine learning to complete problem-solving tasks similar to the human mind. 

AI allows machines to learn from experience using input that allow them to perform human-like tasks. 

It does not have much to do with human intelligence, except that it is sometimes modelled to simulate the characteristics of human intelligence like reasoning, separating fact from belief, and seeing relationships.

What is AI in marketing?

Artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing is when marketing teams use advanced technological tools and algorithms to automate, optimise and personalise their marketing strategies and tasks. 

These frameworks and tools can help with analysing large amounts of data and predicting customer behaviour to name but a few. This information can then be used to make improved decisions about marketing campaigns and therefore boost conversions and drive business growth. 

Examples of how AI can be used in marketing include:

• Predictive modelling 
• Personalisation 
• Chatbots 
• Optimisation 
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)

What is AI-based email marketing?

The powerful capabilities of AI means that email marketing tasks such as drafting email copy, writing subject lines and providing email content analysis can be completed. 

There are also many large data sets to analyse as an email marketer such as email lists, send times and drip campaigns split into sub categories. Using AI, marketers can produce the latter tasks to save time and improve efficiency. 

Ultimately, AI can help email marketers send better emails to more engaged audiences therefore increase metrics like open rate and click rate.

6 ways to use AI to improve your email marketing strategy

See 6 ways marketers can utilise digital marketing AI tools to boost their email marketing strategies.

1. Improved segmentation

Since every subscriber has distinct interests, behavioural segmentation is one of the most important strategies in email marketing. It is the key to create personalised emails that reflect a conversational tone and appeal more to the readers. 

AI allows you to segment your prospects based on the information they have provided and their purchase behaviours. It gathers information from the website forms and CRM systems to enable dynamic segmentation of the subscribers. This generates data-driven insights to let you know the subscribers better.

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2. Optimised subject lines

Your email engagement depends on the open rate. A well-written subject line effectively captures the subscriber’s attention, compelling them to open the email. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to create engaging subject lines, tailor made according to the subscriber’s interests and improve the customer journey.

Artificial intelligence eliminates the usage of human instinct, thereby reducing the scope of human error.

Phrasee is one such tool that can craft intelligent subject lines for you after studying your past metrics and the kind of campaigns that worked.

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3. More relevant email copy

If your email click through rate is consistently low, you might have to reconsider your email copy. By applying the principles of artificial intelligence, you can determine the kind of email copy that works the best for your company.
AI helps you set the right tone in your emails and entice the recipients to buy from you with a language that seems more natural and matches the brand personality.
Cognitive computing that simulates human thought processes, in addition to artificial intelligence drives best results by prompting the users to take action.

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4. Compelling product recommendations

Whenever you want to upsell or cross-sell your products, you should send product recommendations that pique the subscriber’s interest. This is an effective strategy for E-commerce and retail stores, hotel industry, telecommunications, etc.

Have a look at the example by Airbnb.

Through artificial intelligence, Airbnb sends out emails to customers who checked a listing but did not book. It works similar to cart abandonment emails in ecommerce.

The system instantly sends out a reminder email to complete the booking along with relevant listings in the same price range and location.

These emails work as retargeting emails and keep a track of the user’s behaviour to send emails that are most likely to drive conversions.

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5. Better send times

Answer this simple question: At what time does your website observe the maximum activity?
The answer could help you determine a better send time for your emails. It can get exhausting to schedule emails based on the time zone of every subscriber. You can employ AI to get this information and then shoot an email at that time.
Doing so can boost your email open rates as well as click through rates, thereby generating a higher conversion rate.

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6. Smarter testing

Artificial intelligence-driven platforms enable the creation of robust tests, identify the trends that are working and iterate according to the results.

You can create better A/B testing or multivariate testing to evaluate which version of a campaign works better for the target audience. Thus, it makes testing even more powerful and accurate.

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Best AI email marketing tools

Email marketers can take help from certain tools and APIs to incorporate artificial intelligence in their strategy:

ChatGPT

This tool is a chatbot launched by OpenAI, which understands complex inputs and produces answers to questions. The tool has been trained to interact in a conversational way therefore understanding follow up questions.

Mailchimp

It lets you optimize the email marketing processes with the help of personalization tools, send time optimization systems, and A/B testing tools.

Seg

Segment users and target them on the basis of their browsing history and previous purchases with the help of this Mailchimp extension.

Automizy

If you want to create automated workflows with personalized and dynamic user experience, split testing and tracking metrics, Automizy is the best tool for you.

Google’s Cloud Prediction API

This tool lets you analyze your data and make accurate predictions by studying the customers’ sentiments, building recommendations, and tracking the user’s behavior.

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AI and email marketing FAQs

Can AI write emails?

Yes, there’s a range of different AI email writing tools available. This can include email subject lines to increase open rates, optimised CTA text to increase click rate and even body content copy for emails based on the correct inputs.

What are the advantages of AI in marketing?

AI learns about your customers: their history, engagement triggers, interests and browsing habits. This information allows AI to personalise emails for maximum engagement. 

AI is also able to automate and do specific tasks like analyse big datasets much faster than humans therefore marketing teams are able to save time and act much faster.

How is AI transforming email marketing?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming email marketing by making it more personalised, automated, and effective. Some of the ways that AI is being used in email marketing include: personalisation, automation, predictive modelling, and segmentation.

Why should we use automation in email marketing?

There are several reasons why companies use AI in their email marketing strategy:

Efficiency: AI allows brands to launch large scale email marketing campaigns quickly and easily.  

Scalable: AI allows brands to send large batches of targeted messages to a specific target group. 

Personalisation: AI allows brands to personalise their email campaigns based on user behaviour, customer preferences, browsing habits and even the busiest time for online sales.

Consistency: AI allows brands to create a consistent flow of marketing emails based on consistency whether or not recipients have interacted with the business.

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