‘Items that have been in Spam for over 30 days will be automatically deleted.’
I assume most of you are familiar with this notification. It is in the Spam folder of your e-mail (in case you are still wondering). My question is: How did the e-mails land up there in the first place? Who decided to spam them?
The answer is: AI or Artificial Intelligence
We don’t see this AI at work. However, it has a strong impact on the e-mail marketing campaigns. From filtering of spam messages to recognising your target audience’s reading patterns, AI promises to take your e-mail marketing campaigns from blatant to brilliant.
Let’s see how.
AI & Email Marketing: Perfect Pair or Not?
I thought e-mail marketing is dead.
If you had the same thought in mind, then I am sorry to break this notion for you. As per sources, the average return for effective e-mail marketing campaigns is $38 for every dollar you invest. That indicates a whopping ROI of 3800%. With the improvement in AI technology over the years, e-mail marketing is more likely to generate an unbelievable number of leads and sales.
This is how AI innovates e-mail marketing campaigns and make life 10X easier for e-mail marketers like me.
Optimised subject lines
The success of your e-mail marketing campaigns hinges on the words you use in your subject line. A perfect subject line will stand out in your receiver’s inbox. It will encourage them to click through and read the entire mail. Alternatively, a bad subject line will be ignored and even worse, labelled as spam to be kept in the junk folder forever.
It is not easy to write client-centric and engaging subject lines all the time. At times, you may run out of ideas or simply fail to think about anything as an attractive subject. Ever heard of the term ‘writer’s block’?
AI is your saviour in this case.
Artificial Intelligence uses a specific algorithm to generate interesting and engaging subject lines for your target audience. The subject lines will attract a higher click-through rate and invite more leads and traffic to your business. The AI algorithm analyses the purpose of each e-mail marketing campaign to optimise your subject lines for the best results.
Personalised e-mails
Would you read an e-mail full of jargon? No. Similarly, your potential clients will tend to ignore the e-mails that do not serve their needs. AI will help you resonate with your target audience at a personal level. You can tickle your recipient’s fancy and persuade them to read your e-mail.
AI analyses the behaviour of your target audience and studies their interests to generate data-driven insights. You can ask your clients to set their preferences while signing up for your services, as shown in the image. It will help the AI analyse consumer behaviour. Thus, you can craft customised e-mails tailored to your target audience’s specific needs.
Personalised e-mails are reported to be 26% more likely to be clicked and deliver 6X transaction rates. You may be familiar with the basic level of personalisation, but AI expands the possibilities. It makes your consumers want more from your services.
Efficient send-time optimisation
What if you send an e-mail to your potential customer when he is busy at the office? He won’t have the time to notice your e-mail, let alone reading it. Timing is an integral factor in marketing. If you send multiple e-mails to the right person at the wrong time, you may risk losing them forever.
We all know how cluttered our inboxes are these days. Hence, it is always suggested to send e-mails at a time when your target audience or subscribers are free to open their inbox. AI will help you know when your subscribers open their inbox and automatically send the e-mail at the right time.
The combination of predictive analysis and AI can do wonders in the field of e-mail marketing. You can study past consumer behaviour, generate insights and create an e-mail automation system to send e-mails at the right time.
For example, if someone is most likely to open their inboxes in the morning, the e-mail will reach their inbox at that time. Similarly, if someone usually opens their inboxes in the evening, the message will be delivered in the evening.
Precise product recommendations
You can boost your customer loyalty through tailor-made products and service recommendation e-mails. Wouldn’t it be great if you could send just the recommendations your target audience were looking for? AI will help you achieve that.
AI can track purchasing and browsing behaviour of your subscribers and understand their interest levels along with other online activities. Thus, you can send personalised product recommendations in the body of e-mails and that too in real-time.
Often, promoting the wrong products or offers lead to a drop in engagement with your potential customers. That’s a major setback for e-mail marketers. Also, you don’t have to hand-pick products for your individual customers in the e-mails. All hail AI!
Brilliant customer lifecycle marketing
‘It’s been three months since you bought dresses!’
Don’t you get such e-mails from e-commerce shopping sites? This is also a result of combining AI and predictive analysis to fetch maximum ROI from the e-mail marketing campaigns. It lets you generate and analyse insights about your potential customers on the basis of their behaviour and interests. You can discover the average time your customer takes to make a purchase.
It would take forever for us to study each insight and send contextual e-mails throughout the customer’s buying cycle. AI makes this task 10X easier and faster. You can create powerful e-mail campaigns to educate and engage your customers.
AI will help you notice when a customer abandons the cart on your store. It will capture the subscriber’s purchase behaviour and send the cart abandonment e-mail automatically within a few hours.
Wrapping it up
E-mail marketing campaigns are not just limited to discounts and first-name personalisation. You need to sustain new and existing clients by translating data into relevant, valuable and unique content for each customer. This is possible only if you combine AI with e-mail marketing. If you haven’t incorporated AI into your e-mail marketing strategy yet, do it now. This technology will bring you more leads, conversions and sales.
