As technology is constantly evolving and developing, so must email marketing.
Artificial Intelligence – or AI – is one of the hottest topics on marketers’ lips. It’s quickly becoming an integral part of any marketing strategy.
Don’t worry, though, marketers aren’t going to be getting replaced by robots any time soon. Using artificial intelligence in marketing is basically just to help you send better quality emails and give you the best results possible.
What is artificial intelligence?
And why are more and more email marketers using it? Simply put, artificial intelligence is a task performed by a machine. A task that, if a human was a to carry out, they’d have to apply some intelligence to complete it.
Many email marketers are now using artificial intelligence to tell them what kind of content is more likely to encourage a customer to engage with the email, as well as the best time of day to send it.
If a human wanted to optimise their email marketing to the same extent, it would take a significant amount of time and A/B testing to decide what the most effective content and send times would be.
Lucky for you, though, artificial intelligence has the potential to do it all in seconds.
Artificial intelligence can be used to improve many aspects of your marketing strategy. You could soon be on your way to increasing engagement and generating a higher conversion rate.
How artificial intelligence can improve your email campaigns
Here are 4 key areas of your email marketing campaigns that artificial intelligence could improve:
1. Subject lines
An effective subject line is vital to the success of email marketing, and it can really make or break the campaign.
It’s the first thing your subscribers will see and it’s what will make them want to click on the email. It’s all about making a great first impression. If your subject line is boring and not engaging, your response rates aren’t going to be all that great.
Many artificial intelligence tools can write a better subject line than a human could. Yes – really.
Artificial intelligence can learn from all of your previous subject lines and maintain your brand’s voice. It will carry out split tests which will determine which words and phrases will work best for your target audience.
So not only will you generate better results from your emails, but it will give you more time to spend on other aspects of your email marketing. Pretty neat, right?
2. Making it personal
Personalising your emails shows your subscribers that you understand that they all have different interests and behaviours.
I’m not just talking about just using ‘Dear Jane’ and clicking send, artificial intelligence goes beyond that. Email marketers now need to collect lots of data to better understand the individual behaviour of their subscribers, and how they will respond to their email campaigns.
Batch and blast emails are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Segmented emails are now the standard – it’s expected. All of your consumers now know that your personalised emails aren’t actually that personal at all.
Customer A might engage with a certain subject line and be free at a certain time, whereas customer B might be the complete opposite. That’s why the key to email marketing today is to send tailor-made content so it reaches the right person at the right time.
Personalised emails result in improved open rates and click-through rates.
Artificial intelligence will enable you to manage customer data and to study their behaviour in order to send tailored emails in the right way.
3. Better email content
Obviously, the actual content of the email is the essence of the campaign, but what sort of content will produce the best results?
It’s important to keep your branding consistent across all of your marketing channels so that it can be recognised and trusted by the customer.
Traditionally, marketers will test emails with different content to determine what will work best. The problem with this is that it can be extremely prone to human error, not to mention tedious and time-consuming.
Using artificial intelligence to write your email content will give you a better understanding of what resonates best with your subscribers. The copy of your email can be written in an engaging fashion through advanced machine learning, while still sounding personal and human-like.
4. Send your email at the right time
The time that you send your email campaign has a lot to do with whether it gets opened or not.
With more cluttered inboxes than ever, the timing is considered essential for email marketing campaigns. It’s common for marketers to make an assumption about the time of day which works best for campaigns, but this also assumes that every single subscriber is free and on their devices at the same time.
You have to remember that your customers are human beings, and everyone has different routines and preferences.
Now, email marketers are using artificial intelligence to help them to make sure emails are sent at the ideal time, depending on when an individual tends to read their inbox. Artificial intelligence removes guesswork. It automates the perfect send time for each subscriber based on their engagement history.
Don’t waste any more time
As you can see, artificial intelligence helps you to create a more personalised experience for your subscribers, while increasing your engagement and conversion rates.
Although artificial intelligence is still in its early stages, it’s important to ensure that you have the right technologies in place now before artificial intelligence becomes more accessible and everyone starts using it.
It won’t just save you a lot of time and effort, but it will mean your campaigns are more effective and powerful than ever.
