The E-commerce, Retail, and Software Industries today are leveraging automation, AI, and technology. In the same way, Marketing Industry is harnessing the power of AI and technology. AI enables the marketer to understand the internet users in a better way. It also assists in preparing and executing an E-mail strategy that can truly work.

E-mail marketers are using techniques like Personalization, Automation, Smart Segmentation, Predictive Analysis, and many more that are driven by Artificial Intelligence. There will be nearly 4.3 billion Email users by 2023. It is estimated that more than 370 billion emails will be sent and received in a year by 2025. Also, 30 % of the marketers worldwide are of opinion that E-mail marketing offers the maximum ROI among all other marketing channels. This makes E-mail a very significant channel from a marketing point of view.

Main Goals of E-mail Marketing

The main goals of an Email-Marketing Campaign are:

• Increased Engagement: Increasing engagement involves increasing the interactions that customers have with the brand by delivering personalized messages.
• Increasing conversions: When a person completes a desired goal, such as filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading an E-book, it is referred to as a conversion.
• Increased lead generation: Lead generation is the process of generating customer interest or inquiry in a company’s products or services.

Figure 1: Key Performance Indicators to measure the E-mail Marketing goals (Accessible in PDF Version) 

How does AI impact KPIs of E-mail Marketing Campaigns?

AI is revolutionizing how marketers plan, create, arrange and execute email marketing. According to Forrester Research, the businesses that make use of AI to enhance E-Mail marketing will grow $1.2 trillion annually from those who don’t. As per Social media Today’s stats, 82 percent of marketers reported high open rates with the help of AI-enabled customized techniques in their email marketing campaigns and 75 percent of marketers reported it produced high click-through rates.

The chart below shows how different AI-enabled automation work flows like Order confirmation, Customer Reactivation Automation, and Custom Automation will show better KPIs.

Figure 2: Top 6 Automation Workflows (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Personalization in E-Mail Marketing 

Personalized E-mails are undoubtedly imperative to boost overall engagement rates. AI makes it simpler for marketers to gauge what kind of content they are likely to respond to. AI enables higher-level personalization in E-mail Marketing by tracking and analyzing customer behavior online and personalizing the content. Genuine personalization helps the email marketer to comprehend the real-time tastes and choices of each consumer and Personalize content to an individual level. AI-driven personalization in E-Mail marketing can help the E-mail stand out and can bring 6x more transaction value.

For Instance, LinkedIn is a business-focused social platform that takes note of the listings we responded to. Every day, LinkedIn sends out a compilation of jobs that it believes will be of interest to its users.

It’s not used by LinkedIn to generate paid business. LinkedIn uses algorithms to keep a keen watch on the locations and kinds of jobs that the user is looking for. This is how businesses can use personalized emails to drive engagements.

Figure 3: Linkedin Job Picks (Accessible in PDF Version)

Personalized emails can also be sent when a customer performs a specific action. Examples of trigger email campaigns can include:

Figure 4: Account Activation E-mails (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Optimization of E-mail Subject Lines

As per a survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, nearly 40 percent of customers decide to click on an email based on the subject line. This makes the Subject Line a critical element of E-mail design. In order to make sure that the Subject line is optimized, one should avoid using lengthy sentences and too many potential actions. Personalization can also be used to optimize the subject line.

AI-backed smart E-mail marketing tools generate optimized subject lines and body copy that can help the marketer to increase click-through-rate. OpenTable motivates customers to leave reviews by sending an email with a personalized subject line inquiring how the most recent meal ordered through their platform went.

Figure 5: OpenTable (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Predictive Analytics 

Predictive Analytics enables marketers to create compelling E-mail campaigns with the help of analyzing the subscribers’ and visitors’ behavioral data. Along with AI, other tools and techniques like statistical algorithms, ML, and data modeling are used to predict future behavior on the basis of the data available. By analyzing collected data such as purchase behavior, website browsing behavior, customer relationship management (CRM) data, social media interactions, and email engagement metrics, marketers can create better E-mail marketing strategies that appeal more to the prospects.

• Marketing Spend Analysis: It analyses how the current customer segments are procured and engaged, and then develops the most effective acquisition and retention strategies.
• Collaborative Filtering: This predictive-analytics technique analyses customer profiles and purchase decisions to suggest services or products that they would be willing to spend on.
• Clustering Algorithms: It divides the audience list into segments based on demographics and specific customer behaviors to forecast their upcoming decisions,

AI-driven predictive analysis helps to identify customers at a granular level. There are a lot of instances where predictive analysis and personalization led to spectacular results. Netflix is a famous example.

Creating Smart Newsletters

AI can be used to create “Smart” Newsletters to increase subscriber engagement. AI-enabled tools help to create newsletters with content curated for audience at individual level. These Newsletters are generally automated and used for better engagements.

Customization of Promotional Offers 

Sending Offers or special promotion E-mails is popular technique used by marketers to induce sales. Although excessive offer-E-mails can create a negative impact and sometimes lead the customer to unsubscribe from the E-mail List. AI-powered tools help to create optimized and minimal promotion E-mails. These E-mails are tailored for every consumer which increases the Click-through-rate.

AI integrated E-mail Marketing tools can help to create different offers, discounts, recommendations, freebies, rebates for different customers on the basis of the data collected and analyzed.

Smart Segmentation 

Segmenting subscribers on the basis of different criteria like a position in sales funnel geographical location, demographics, purchase history, can help to target the customers in a better way. Segmentation can help to send relevant information/details/offers to the right people. AI can help for precise segmentation to boost hyper-relevant marketing.

Sending Time-Optimization 

An average E-mail user sends and receives approximately 77 E-mails per day. In this scenario, it is not always possible for a user to open an e-mail at any hour of the day. E-mail sent can be lost in the many E-mails received by the user. Hence it is very important that E-mail is sent at the right time to the user. The Right Time can be different for different users.

Send Time Optimization means sending the email only within time when the users are most likely to open the E-mail. Contacts who access emails most often on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. will receive them around that time, on the other hand contacts who open them on Mondays at 7 p.m. will receive them at that time

AI-driven tools can help marketers to send the E-mails to the users at a time when it has the highest probability to be clicked at. This can boost the chances of engagement. The below diagram indicates how KPIs of an E-mail marketing campaign differs according to the day they are sent on.

Figure 6: Benchmark Averages by Day (Accessible in PDF Version)

Retargeting 

Retargeting is aimed at encouraging sales to the customers who are in the middle of the Purchase Funnel. The power of AI can be leveraged by fine-tuning the retargeting strategy based on Customer behavior data and create E-mails that are optimized for those leads. This, in turn, can induce sales/conversions.

Improving A/B Testing 

A/B testing is used to test various elements’ performance to know what works best. In order to conduct the test, one might require to put out multiple E-mails with different aspects modified to various users. In this case, it becomes highly challenging to monitor the data and the insights. AI can help to quickly run an A/B test and also help to understand the data insights from the same.

Cross-media Individualization 

Social Media behavior reveals a lot about the person’s preferences, interests, choices, and other traits. Based on the behavior of the customer on different channels, AI identifies what mails are to be sent to different users addressing specific needs. A lot of e-commerce websites are harnessing the power of AI to boost their sales.

Amazon has been successful in its Omni-channel marketing strategy. Amazon prioritizes the customer experience. They use data to create personalized, responsive interactions, regardless of the channel through which their customers interact with them. They concentrate on backend channel integration. This is more than just inventory and central fulfillment. It entails connecting customer data and fulfilling customer desires through whatever channel they prefer.

Improving Automation

Marketing automation tools, with the help of AI, can be used to create Automated E-mail Marketing Campaigns. These tools also help to select the right image and create the right content that would work for the audience. With an Automation tool, the Right set of E-mails can be sent to the right audience at the right time.

E-Mail Marketing Tools 

The platforms and tools listed below could help to create smart E-mail Marketing Campaigns. There are a lot of tools available in the market. As a result, it is not an exhaustive list, but it can assist you in determining which tool will work best for your business. Depending on the type of business, industry, or purpose, different tools can be used. These tools enable businesses to carry out the aforementioned functions.

Figure 7: E-Mail Marketing Tools (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Key Takeaways

AI can provide better information and insights for business growth. AI can analyze browsing preferences and boost the performance of overall E-mail marketing campaign and strategy. It can help the businesses to discover new customers and retain the old ones.

With the help of AI, the E-mail marketing campaigns can be broken down into various sub-campaigns for enhancing the inbox delivery. Time saved by automating the daily E-mail marketing tasks can be utilized in more valuable marketing activities. More so than that, marketing campaigns can be hyper-optimized to obtain greater Return on Investment and optimum utilization of resources.