Email marketing certainly isn’t a new strategy, but new tools to optimize it are always emerging. To thrive in the eCommerce sector, impactful email campaigns with high open rates and maximized conversions are a must. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the secret ingredient to working smarter, not harder, to generate revenue through email.
The thought of AI may conjure a vision of the metaverse, and maybe that future is ahead of us with the advent of some sharp, modern email marketing tools. In reality, it’s important to remember that AI isn’t something to be afraid of but should be embraced. The ability to swiftly sort massive quantities of data and leverage it to entice customers can help your business boom.
What Is AI?
AI encompasses a range of technologies and uses. You’ve probably interacted with AI many times without thinking about it. When you interact with Siri or Alexa, the vocal response is generated by AI. When you binge-watch your favorite show on a streaming service, and the service recommends another show in the same genre, that is AI detecting your viewing trends.
It’s not just computers, devices, and software packages using AI. Intelligent self-driving vehicles and automated manufacturing equipment that can detect and self-correct errors in production are other real-world examples of AI driving all sorts of industries forward.
How Does AI Pertain to Email Marketing?
AI has two primary purposes in eCommerce and several potential roles it can execute to achieve its purposes. Those purposes are:
- Increase revenue by improving the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.
- Reduce costs by automating your email marketing and freeing up staff to tackle tasks involving greater complexity.
A successful email marketing operation has always depended on accumulating data. It has never been enough just to have email addresses, but now the wealth of data you can use to categorize customers is deeper than ever. Evaluating your customers’ buying trends can include sorting by income, residential zip code, age, and other data points. AI takes this data and can streamline its usage at speeds a human marketer could never replicate.
What Types of AI Tools Exist for Email Marketing?
Above, we indicated AI serves two purposes and holds a variety of potential roles to help you accomplish them. Some of the ways AI can improve your email marketing campaigns include:
- Predictive analysis. AI can perform predictive analysis of customer behavior to assess how they may behave in the future.
- Timing. AI can decide when the best time is to interact with customers. Send time optimization (STO) services optimize when customers receive your email with the intention of placing it at the top of their inbox at a time when they are more likely to open it.
- Catchy subject lines. Effective subject lines are another aspect of email marketing that has always existed and now has been marvelously improved by AI. Worried your subject line is driving a well-crafted eCommerce email directly into the spam folder? AI can evaluate previous effective subject lines and even adapt to your brand guidelines to create subject lines that deliver revenue. Pretty sweet, right?
- Personalization. Emails are more effective when they have a dash of personalization. The time and resources it would take a copywriter to personalize emails would never yield the volume needed for success. AI integrated with your CRM can swiftly generate personalized emails by the thousands.
- Flawless language. The personalization doesn’t just extend to subject lines or salutations. Natural language software can produce spotless prose every time to present a clean, easy-to-read, and likely-to-convert email.
- Streamlined mailing lists. Another perk of marrying AI to your CRM is the ability to merge and purge email lists faster and more accurately than ever before. Cut out the frustrating spreadsheets full of duplicate entries in your marketing mix!
- Data analysis. Quick metric assessment allows AI to learn what is working and what isn’t faster than a human could. Finding trends to follow or discontinue means constant improvement in the effectiveness of your email marketing will occur automatically.
There are new programs and additional capabilities in existing AI emerging every year. As a human marketer, your job is to think about what roles AI can take over to benefit your business best. Once you find the right tools (or ingredients), the machine takes care of the rest.
AI Is Improving Email Marketing
Consider all the ways the roles mentioned above would be more time-consuming and less effective if carried out by people instead of AI…you might not have to think long. Remember email marketing back in the day when humans still had to input all the relevant data right up to the point of clicking “send?” If your business still lives in the “good [bad] ol’ days,” it’s time to change and whip up a new strategy.
Using effective AI programs for their automation saves time and money that would otherwise be devoted to copywriters churning out subject lines and copy. A CRM manager would pour hours into generating email lists that may not even match customers to relevant products. The time spent reviewing metrics, if there were quality metrics to review at all, sucked up valuable time.
You may feel a little worried about losing the human touch in your email marketing communication. The truth is that, for most customers, the difference is not all that noticeable. The content written by AI is so polished (and mouthwatering) that they can’t tell the difference between whether it was written by man or machine.
How AI Should Change Your Marketing Strategy
Wielding big data as a tool to generate revenue is the key to modern eCommerce. The more data you can gather about your customers, the greater return AI can generate from it. High open and conversion rates lead directly to increased revenue.
Once your email marketing is automated, you can focus your attention and resources on other means of attracting customers and keeping them engaged with your brand. These can include engagement campaigns on social media or rewarding purchases with electronic gift cards as an enticement to inspire another purchase.
Embrace Artificial Intelligence Today
Our sweet team of eCommerce professionals at CakeCommerce are real experts in artificial intelligence. Contact us today to receive a free audit of your digital marketing from digital strategists with proven results.
