Have you heard of artificial intelligence?
Today, it’s a favorite topic among email marketers.
Experts from different areas get excited about the possible applications of AI. On the other hand, most marketers don’t really understand how to use AI solutions in practice.
AI has its specifics, it requires proper investment and resources. At the same time, some simple solutions are nevertheless effective and capable of improving your marketing campaigns dramatically.
[The effectiveness of different means of marketing]
According to eMarketer statistics, more than 80% of retailers think that email is the most effective way to get new customers and to keep existing ones. More than 90% of Americans check their emails every day, and the purchase rates of such consumers are 17% higher than in the case of social media promotions.
However, the success of email campaigns directly depends on the chosen strategy. You have to make sure that you target the right audience. In addition, it’s important to know that they actually interact with your emails, responding by buying your products or services. Fortunately, machine learning and AI makes such overwhelming tasks as email verification, targeting, and statistics, as well as scheduling, much simpler.
AI is capable of predicting the content and special offers that will bring you the best conversions, making your audience more engaged. AI tools can easily determine the right frequency and the best time of day so that your emails can reach out to the right audience at the right moment.
How AI is changing email marketing
Even though artificial intelligence is a relatively new technology, its influence on email marketing is already apparent. AI tools are all about optimization and making cumbersome tasks simpler. For example, all marketers know that the success of emails to a large extent depends on the time they are sent. People from one part of the world are less likely to open emails optimized for another time zone. AI solves this problem, along with many others.
[How companies use AI solutions]
AI is capable of personalizing subject lines which are 95% more effective than those written by humans. Many experts also notice that cognitive content written by machines gets constantly improved, and making it more effective than human-written content is just a question of time.
Machine learning allows marketers to forget about large segments, as machines can learn when any particular recipient is most active. It’s impossible to do manually, but for AI, it’s a simple task.
Timing is not the only advantage of AI tools. Adobe has already integrated its AI called Sensei into Adobe Campaigns. Sensei writes personalized subject lines and even improves other content, such as images. This algorithm can calculate how customers react to a certain image and find alternatives based on a particular customer’s preferences.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are also great solutions for A/B testing. Even though it’s nothing new in the world of marketing, A/B testing has never been as effective as now, when it can be optimized by using machine learning and AI solutions. Marketers can make predictions and detect trends faster than ever, taking into account minor details that otherwise would remain unnoticed.
The best AI tools to optimize your email campaigns
Of course, the main advantage of AI solutions for email campaigns is an opportunity to significantly improve customization. Creating custom email campaigns manually would be unbelievably expensive and time-consuming. Fortunately, now business owners don’t have to choose between the effectiveness of their campaigns and budget.
Tool #1. Phrasee
Phrasee is a great example of a tool that can increase clicks and conversions by just choosing the best subject lines for your emails. Smart algorithms of this tool analyze your content, predict the responses of a contact, and choose the appropriate writing style to reflect the specifics of your business. The best thing about Phrasee is what makes all the AI solutions so good – the more you use it, the better it understands your business, constantly learning something new.
AI-based tools can also make your email campaigns more engaging, selecting better images and optimizing text content. It’s important to understand that the actions of your recipients depend on whether or not they are engaged. Even though the substantial improvement of the content may seem to be a time-consuming task, AI is able to deal with it much faster and more effectively than people.
Tool #2. Boomtrain
Boomtrain is an AI solution designed for different types of content. It personalizes your content for each user, increasing engagement and clicks. This tool can increase your sales by choosing the most relevant content that fits the preferences of your audience. It can also analyze user behavior, taking into account activity on your website, in mobile apps, or emails, building a profile for each customer and increasing engagement.
[Human vs AI personalization ]
As we’ve already mentioned above, timing is very important if you want your emails to actually work. If all your subscribers receive emails at the same time, only a few of them will actively interact with your emails and bring you profits. Everyone has specific preferences and habits, and there’s no marketer who has enough time to record and analyze this sort of data. Fortunately, AI can make it.
Tool #3. Seventh Sense
Seventh Sense is a tool that will be appreciated by all Marketo and HubSpot users. Seventh Sense is tracking your customers’ activity and calculates the perfect delivery time for every email. It can also personalize the number of emails and their frequency so that your recipients won’t be annoyed by your emails and won’t mark them as spam.
According to statistics, more than 50% of consumers switch brands that don’t customize their communications. Multivariate testing and A/B testing can help you adjust your campaigns for different segments, but AI tools turn out to be more effective than any traditional approach.
Tool #4. Optimail
Optimail is a tool that automatically adjusts the content and timing of your emails. It shows better results than traditional A/B testing. It leads your subscribers towards your business goals, analyzing their online activity. It also monitors shares on social media and purchases.
Tool #5. Siftrock
Siftrock is a very useful tool which can be integrated with your automation platform and help you manage the replies to your emails. Any new replies are recorded and new profiles are immediately transferred to your database. Using this tool, you can also know when someone leaves your company. Moreover, this tool will immediately notify a responsible member of your team to quickly take action.
Wrapping up
Email marketing has always been time-consuming and complicated. It required manual adjustment and analysis of large amounts of data. Such technologies as artificial intelligence and machine learning make all the overwhelming marketing tasks simpler, showing results that would be impossible to achieve without AI.
Simply put, artificial intelligence makes you a better marketer, expanding your capabilities and making you able to take into account all the details about your subscribers’ behavior and preferences.
Guest author: Berta Melder is a content strategist and co-founder of the Masterra. Specializing in brand management, she cooperates with different education courses and helps participants develop the brand management skills. Enjoys creative writing and blogging. Follow her on Twitter.