Originally published March 22, 2023. Updated Feb. 7, 2024.
Email marketing is an invaluable tool for any business looking to drive sales and generate leads. In fact, 64% of small businesses rely on email marketing to connect with customers.
And with the introduction of artificial intelligence tools, email marketing campaigns can be even more powerful than ever before, drive higher levels of engagement, and provide valuable insights into how your audiences interact with your content. By utilizing AI-powered email marketing tools like analytics and automation, you can give your email marketing campaigns a much-needed boost.
What Do You Want to Achieve With AI?
First things first: You can’t set out on a successful journey without pinpointing where you’re going.
Similarly, defining your goals for an AI-powered email marketing strategy is key to finding the right tool for the job. When you establish specific goals for each campaign, you can take full advantage of how to use AI for email marketing successfully, creating emails that strike a chord with subscribers and bringing you more business. An effective goal-setting process will ensure you’re using the right metrics to measure success and that the strategy you choose is aligned with your overall business objectives.
Start by considering exactly what you want to accomplish, who you hope to reach with your emails, and what specific results you expect to achieve from using AI.
Once you have a clear idea of your goal, start mapping out the steps you’ll take to reach it. For example, if your goal is to increase email open rates, explore options for segmenting emails based on customer interest or look into automated testing techniques to ensure maximum impact.
Choose the Right AI Tool to Reach Your Goals
AI can help you optimize various aspects of email marketing, such as subject lines, the timing of sends, the personalization of messages, and more. The most popular types of AI include:
● Natural language processing (or NLP), which can help you identify trends, understand customer intent, and create personalized user experiences.
● Machine learning (or ML), which can help you optimize customer segmentation and scoring.
● Deep learning (or DL), which can analyze customer behavior to predict outcomes.
● Predictive analytics, which helps suggest the right content to the right person at the right time.
As you’re determining which AI tools for email marketing campaigns to use, consider any specific tasks you hope to automate, as well as the platform’s features, costs, and customer and technical support.
For instance, if you want to increase your email marketing campaign’s open rates, an NLP tool such as Phrasee can help you craft automated emails with a human-like touch. (While we don’t recommend fully relying on AI to write all of your emails, AI can provide a great starting point that you can then customize, saving you time during content creation.)
And if you've taken the jump into ChatGPT, you might want to check out OpenAI's CustomGPT. This feature of ChatGPT allows you to create a virtual assistant to assist you in tasks like writing emails, notes, and more in your preferred tone and format.
Ultimately, taking the time to invest in the proper AI tools for email marketing will have a positive impact on the success of your campaigns, so don’t skimp on practicing due diligence.
Integrate Your AI Tool Into Your Email Platform
Setting up an AI tool can be a straightforward process, but integrating it into your email platform might take a few extra steps.
Depending on the tool’s capabilities, you will likely need to collect data from your email platform to get it running properly. This could include finding the right API keys or other credentials needed to connect.
It’s crucial to understand all the requirements before proceeding with this task, as the consequences of not doing so could be costly and time-consuming. Once you confirm that everything is in place and ready to go, you can begin test runs and trial scenarios to ensure everything works as expected.
Fire Up Your AI Tool for Use
You’ve done the testing and trial runs. Now it’s time to see where this new technology can take you. With your tool fully integrated and your objectives clearly defined, you can begin to craft messages that will attract, engage, and convert customers.
Bear in mind that AI tools for email marketing can help streamline message creation by suggesting content that has performed well in the past. This will enable you to set up specific campaigns tailored to different customer segments, so they receive more relevant emails.
Continuously Optimize for Best Results Using AI in Email Marketing
To get the most out of any email campaign, it’s essential to monitor and track your results. Doing so can help you identify areas for optimization, ensuring each successive campaign performs better than the last.
To make this process easier, using AI tools to automate certain tasks and provide deep insights into your performance can be a huge benefit. They can help you identify key trends, understand customer behavior, and ultimately drive better outcomes for each campaign. When you continuously use AI tools to monitor and optimize your campaigns, you can derive maximum value from every email sent.
Using AI for email marketing campaigns can save both time and money. Automating certain tasks associated with email campaigns, such as segmenting based on interests, can enhance the results of campaigns and provide a steady stream of ROI. So, how will you tap into the power of AI to get the most value out of your email marketing campaigns?
