Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently become everyone’s number one fear. With articles claiming that AI will replace millions of jobs,ruin our love lives, and even wipe out human civilisation.
At Deployteq, we’ve been separating ourselves from the fear-mongering. Instead, exploring AI as something that has the potential to revolutionise the way we live and work positively.
In fact, when it comes to email marketing, we have long been embracing AI to deliver outstanding campaigns that improve the customer experience and results.
In this blog post, we hope to bring some positivity to the AI conversation. Exploring how marketers are using AI to improve their email campaigns, the benefits of AI in email marketing, and what the future could hold.
What is artificial intelligence in email marketing?
AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines and technology, notably computer systems.
It enables machines to learn from experience, adapt to new inputs, and perform human-like tasks—problem-solving, decision-making, and language understanding.
Today, AI is used in an increasing amount of applications. From natural language processing (NLP) and speech recognition to autonomous vehicles and robotic manufacturing.
So, how does this relate to email marketing?
Many marketers, just like you, are already utilising AI in their email marketing process and campaigns.
Let’s explore some examples:
- Sending highly relevant campaigns
We don’t have to remind you that email personalisation is essential to engaging with modern consumers. However, achieving this required level of relevance is virtually impossible manually.
Instead, marketers can use AI algorithms to analyse user data and behaviour to automate content and timings of their communications and generate highly personalised campaigns. This could include tailored subject lines, body copy, imagery, promoted products, and calls to action. The list goes on…
- Optimising content
Sifting through endless data to determine what elements of campaigns are most successful can be a full-time job in itself.
AI can be used to analyse campaign data to determine the types of content that are most effective at driving results. This data can then optimise future campaigns for specific audiences, resulting in maximum impact with little manual effort.
- Predictive analytics
By analysing vast amounts of historical consumer data, predictive analytics algorithms can identify patterns, trends, and correlations to help marketers predict consumer behaviour and preferences.
Marketers can use this information to segment audiences based on specific attributes effectively. As well as gain insights into optimal timing, frequency, and content of emails to increase engagement..
- Automated testing
Automated testing uses AI to simulate real-life scenarios, allowing marketers to A/B test email templates, subject lines, layouts, rendering, and functionality across different platforms and environments. All to determine which combination will drive the highest engagement and conversion rates.
Automated testing also helps verify the accuracy of personalisation, dynamic content, and conditional logic within emails to ensure the best ongoing performance possible.
What are the benefits of using AI in email marketing?
We’ve covered a variety of ways that marketers are using Artificial Intelligence in email marketing. But what are the actual benefits of embracing AI?
- Boosting efficiency
Every marketing team wants to do more with less.
With AI, marketers can boost efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, such as list segmentation, email scheduling, A/B testing, and copywriting.
This helps marketers to save time and resources, allowing them to focus on strategic elements of their campaigns.
- Improving engagement
AI can help marketers to build more engaging emails that truly resonate with their audience and offer them a highly personalised, one-to-one experience with the brand.
For instance, AI-fuelled subject line generators can help marketers to craft more compelling and clickable subject lines. Or, dynamic content can populate emails with specific products that are highly relevant to the individual.
- Continuous optimisation
AI algorithms can identify trends and patterns to inform future campaigns and help marketers to refine their messaging, targeting, timing, and content to improve overall campaign performance.
And because AI takes care of the difficult data-crunching and analysis, this can be an ongoing process that doesn’t take up too much of the marketer’s time.
What can’t AI do?
Despite significant advancements in AI, it can’t do everything.
In fact, there are some key elements of marketing that simply cannot be executed with technology. Instead, they require the human touch.
- Build genuine relationships
AI lacks the ability to truly understand human emotions, intentions, and context.
Building genuine relationships requires empathy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to adapt to individual needs and preferences So, while AI may provide personalised recommendations and responses, it lacks the human intuition that is essential for authentic connections.
- Produce unique and creative content
AI can generate content based on the patterns and examples it has learned from, but it struggles to go beyond to produce truly original content.
The process of creativity involves intuition, inspiration, and the ability to think outside the box. Qualities that are difficult for AI to replicate. So, while AI can assist in content creation, it still relies on human creativity to produce unique and exceptional work.
- Managing and understanding qualitative data
Unlike quantitative data, that can be easily measured and categorised, qualitative data requires a deep understanding of language, culture, and context.
Generally, AI struggles to capture the subtle nuances, tone, and sentiment expressed in qualitative data, often leading to misinterpretation or oversimplification.
What does the future of AI look like?
In short, no one is quite sure!
There have been endless news reports, articles, podcasts, and talks on what AI means for marketers and humanity as a whole. And whilst the future remains mysterious, there are some elements of AI that, as marketers, we are excited to see advance.
This is particularly true in offering customers an even better experience with brands. Advancements in hyper-personalisation and natural language processing will contribute to a better understanding and therefore, better communications in a variety of formats, from written emails to chatbots.
And of course, as AI advances so must our own data privacy and ethics laws. Stricter regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have been implemented to protect individuals’ privacy rights and ensure responsible data handling. And, unsurprisingly, ethical considerations such as algorithmic bias and fairness in decision-making have gained increased attention.
Next steps
If you’re as excited about embracing AI as we are, then you’ll be keen to implement this technology to improve your email campaigns.
Whether you’re starting on the journey to advancing your email marketing, or want to ensure you’re using AI in the best possible way, we can help.
So, why not contact us for a chat about all things AI? And to hear how we can help embed advanced email technologies into your marketing strategy.
