Saved or slayed: What AI really means for email marketers [GPT-4 and beyond]

If you work with digital products, you are probably terrified right about now. Since ChatGPT went massively popular a few months ago, developers, content marketers, social media managers, and content creators immediately split into two camps: those who believe artificial intelligence will save the day and those frantically searching for a way to pivot their careers, threatened by the rapidly evolving technology.?

GPT-4 release didn't help, as it is supposed to be capable of everything ChatGPT could do and much more (including processing audio and video materials).?

It means that, technically, a single tool for $20/month could replace a good chunk of your marketing team. Well, technically. In reality, we are all probably safe for the time being. And instead of panicking, we should learn how to harness AI potential.?

That's precisely what this post is about – using AI in email marketing to help you send better-crafted emails, grow your CTRs, and, last but not least, connect with your audience like never before.?

And– you've guessed it! There's an AI for that ;)???

If you want to learn more about the specifics of applying AI in email marketing and take a deeper dive into the topic, read also the original article

AI in email marketing: what's already done

If you are passionate about artificial intelligence, you should have caught the pun two sentences before and immediately thought about our holly mecca of new tools: theresanaiforthat.com .

As we know, email marketing is much more than just crafting clever copy. There is audience segmentation, offer personalization, template optimization, A/B testing, and all kinds of good stuff AI may or may not have already taken over.?

In fact, why wonder? Here are some of the core email processes artificial intelligence and machine learning have been an integral part of for years now:

For recipients

Spam detection

Filter by category

Important emails identification

For senders

Smart compose

Email address analysis

For email marketers

Optimized send times

Product recommendations

Email templates design

Subject line generation

All those have been around for quite some time now, and we've quickly adapted to take them for granted. When I say "we," I mean "humans." Marketers, in turn, had to be among the first ones to master the new possibilities AI brought to the table, and we sure can do that again!?

Instead, it will enable us (now, "us" as in "marketers") to make incredible things happen faster and easier. Just like computers once did.?

So let's look at what crucial email marketing processes can already be enhanced with the help of artificial intelligence and will get improved even further in the near future.?

How to craft better emails with AI?

First, a quick disclaimer to the terrified group: all of the tools and use cases presented here exist to assist you, not replace you. And don't let anyone, including your boss, tell you otherwise.?

Now, let's take a quick look at some core email marketing processes:?

• List management & contact segmentation
• Email design
• Subject line, preview, and email body writing
• A/B testing and deliverability optimization

These are the bare essentials of launching a successful email marketing campaign. Let's assume that other crucial elements like CTAs, analysis, and list hygiene are taken for granted as integral parts of these.?

What if I told you that each of these elements can be sped up, improved, and personalized even further with the help of AI? Better yet, there are companies out there actively doing it right now! And so can you.?

If you've got this far in this post, it means you're serious and motivated, and that's more than enough at this stage. So let's go over each element one by one.?

List management & contact segmentation made easy?

As we all know, good contact segmentation is the key to effective personalization. And it's only possible with proper contact list management .?

In many ways, both can be achieved with enough discipline and having a dedicated person in charge of your email marketing activities – someone to ensure you don't create dozens of contact lists where you could have a single one with proper tags, etc. But it's tedious.?

Going over the contacts has been so tedious, in fact, that it became one of the first things marketers decided to automate. That's why today, any decent email marketing automation platform will easily take care of contact duplicates for you.?

But where does AI come in??

Artificial intelligence outperforms any human when it comes to processing large data volumes. So what we'd be doing for hours, even with the best marketing automation software, AI can take care of in a matter of seconds.?

When it comes to segmentation and list management, AI is particularly helpful with:?

• Automated Segmentation: AI can automatically segment your contact list based on specific criteria, such as engagement levels, purchase history, or demographics. This can save you many headaches and ensure you reach the right people at the right time.
• Predictive Analytics: AI can analyze customer data to help identify patterns and behavior that can be used to segment your contact lists more effectively. For instance, AI can predict the likelihood of a particular customer making a purchase, which can help you target your marketing efforts toward that group of customers.
• Personalization: with AI, you can tailor your marketing messages to specific individuals by analyzing their past behavior, demographics, and preferences. This can help you create more targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience and ultimately lead to more conversions.
• List Cleaning: AI can help you identify and remove inactive or invalid contacts from your list, improving your email deliverability rates and reducing the risk of your messages landing in the spam folder.

Email design has become more accessible than ever before

Access to premium email templates has always set outstanding email automation platforms from the basic ones. But in fact, email design is more than just beautiful graphics.?

You need to consider the reader, their interest, and their attention span, not to mention the metrics that matter most – open rate and CTR. The right emoji (or the absence of such) in your subject line can make all the difference for the person deciding whether or not your message is worth their time.?

Besides, designing an HTML email template from scratch can get messy and prolong your campaign launch. In contrast, editing readily available templates often makes your emails boring and repetitive. That's where AI comes in.?

You can use AI in email design to:?

• Create data-driven templates: AI-powered tools can create email templates by analyzing thousands of designs, identifying patterns and trends, and then generating new templates based on that analysis.?
• Automatically change templates to match your brand colors & style.
• Generate multiple templates for various screen sizes in a few clicks.
• Create unique header images. Thanks to generative AI, you no longer have to wait for your design team to help you – the engine can do it for you! And the images generated are usually just as good!?

No more writer's block: subject line and email writing automated

As a content marketer, I know firsthand how frustrating getting stuck on a copy can get. Not being able to pick the correct adjective for a single product can delay your output for hours, especially in email writing, where you're limited in words and need to catch the reader's interest even more.?

AI proves invaluable here, as instead of sitting and aimlessly staring at your screen, you can now toy with different ways to convey exactly what you meant with the help of generative language models.?

Apart from that, there are other crucial elements of the email body, such as a subject line (responsible for 69% of all spam complaints !), consistency of your tone of voice throughout the message, and, of course, the contents of your email themselves. AI makes it easier to focus on saying the right thing because you can now think of what to say instead of how.?

When it comes to email writing, artificial intelligence can help you with:?

• Subject line optimization: AI can analyze subject lines and predict which ones will likely result in a higher open rate based on language, length, and keywords.
• Content suggestions and creation: AI can advise which content to include in an email based on the recipient's interests, past behavior, and other factors. Or it can even create everything for you from scratch!?
• Grammar and spelling checks: AI can automatically check emails for grammar and spelling errors, ensuring that the messages you send sound professional and error-free.
• Tone analysis: AI can analyze the tone of an email and suggest changes to make it more polite, friendly, or assertive, depending on the desired outcome.

Run split tests and optimize your email deliverability automatically

Finally, coming back to data analysis and data-driven decision-making, humans can only compete with a solid AI model.?

In email marketing, analytics are invaluable because we eventually learn which strategies to invest in and which to deem failed. AI helps us compute more data, process the results faster, and make better decisions.?

When it comes to email marketing campaign optimization, AI will help you:?

• Optimize send times: it will base the predictions on each user's preferences, not the geographical zone's average estimate, so your email hits their inbox when they are most likely to interact with it.
• Split-test elements that matter most: don't just settle for the A/B options – experiment with C, D, E, and more, while AI will tell you which parts of your email need the most testing. Better yet, it will create variations for you, so you won't have to worry if changing an emoji and adding an exclamation point at the end of your subject line can still qualify as a practical A/B test .
• Ensure even better email deliverability rates, no matter the size of your list. Some advanced marketing automation platforms already know how to tackle large sending volumes without compromising your domain reputation. But now, with the help of AI, you can optimize the process even further and ensure your IP warmup process is in-check!?

So, as you can see, there are quite a few nifty tips and tricks on how AI could already be effectively embedded in your email marketing strategy without sacrificing the value of human input. But is it for everyone??

Which industries will benefit from the AI email marketing revolution the most??

You should already have a pretty good understanding of two main points:?

• AI has been used in email marketing for some time now, and it's here to stay
• It is pretty limited in its current capabilities, but with the AI revolution started, the second Open AI went public with GPT-4 that is about to change

And just like right now all the marketers are terrified by the implications the spread of AI tech may bring, business owners want to hop on the bandwagon not to be sent into oblivion.?

But here's the thing: not everyone will lose their job to AI, just like not everyone will be able to build an empire with it. It will work. Worse for some industries and better for others.?

From where we stand, 3 main branches will most likely benefit from AI the most: ecommerce, B2B, and digital agencies. Why? Simply put, AI will be invaluable in aiding them because they struggle the most to match the increasing demand right now.?

But let's take a look at each case in more detail.?

Ecommerce

As an ecommerce marketer, you can benefit from AI in several ways. I'm talking improved customer experience, increased sales, and optimized marketing campaigns. Sounds sweet? Well, because it is!?

Let's look at some examples:

• Personalized Recommendations: AI can provide personalized product recommendations to each customer based on their interests, purchase history, and behavior on your website. By suggesting products that customers are more likely to be interested in, you can increase sales and improve the customer experience. Ecommerce GetResponse MAX customers are already using it and let me say that the results are impressive!?
• Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can provide 24/7 customer service support, answering FAQs and providing product recommendations (just like you would on-site or in an email!) This significantly reduces response times and improves customer satisfaction.
• Predictive Analytics: AI can analyze customer data and identify patterns and trends to help you make more informed decisions. For example, it can predict which products will likely be popular in the future, helping you plan your inventory and marketing campaigns more effectively.
• Dynamic Pricing: AI can help you set prices dynamically based on supply and demand, optimizing costs to increase sales and revenue.
• Marketing Optimization: AI can help you optimize your marketing campaigns by analyzing customer data and identifying the most effective campaigns. It can also suggest campaign changes to improve performance, e.g., that it's time to optimize your ad targeting or adjust the timing of emails.

B2B brands

There are quite a few smart applications of AI for B2B marketers , especially those interested in marketing automation. To name just a few:?

• Lead Scoring: AI can analyze customer data and identify which leads will most likely convert. This way, you can prioritize your sales efforts and increase revenue.?
• Account-Based Marketing: AI can determine which accounts have the highest potential. It can analyze data on account size, industry, and other factors to help you identify the accounts that are most likely to become customers in the nearest future.
• Content Creation: With the help of AI, B2B marketers can create content more efficiently by automating tasks such as data analysis, keyword research, and content optimization. By freeing up time and resources on these repetitive tasks, you can focus on creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience. And that's what really matters.?
• Sales Enablement: If your sales team struggles with finding crucial data and relevant audience insights, it might be a sign of trouble, but also nothing a good AI can't fix! By analyzing data on leads and accounts, AI can provide sales teams with personalized recommendations on how to approach potential customers.

Digital agencies

If you work for a digital marketing agency , you can leverage the power of AI to improve your clients' campaigns and achieve better results. Here are just a few examples:?

• Sentiment Analysis: AI can analyze social media posts and other online content to determine sentiment and identify trends. You can create more targeted and effective campaigns by understanding how people feel about your clients' brands, products, and services.
• Ad Creation: Create more effective ads by trusting AI with data analysis of past ad performance and identifying the most effective elements. This way, you'll create more in less time without sacrificing the standard of quality, which effectively means you'd be able to sign up even more clients!?
• Social Media Management: AI can help you manage your clients' social media accounts by automating tasks such as content scheduling, audience targeting, and engagement.?

Of course, there is more, but you should agree that the possibilities are pretty exciting even at this stage! As such, there's just one more thing left to address:?

5 AI tools for email marketers you can't miss

This could be a whole different article of its own, but we couldn't leave you hanging without providing a handful of AI solutions to play with. And no, there'll be no GPT-4 on the list because we all know you know about it already!?

• Phrasee – excels at crafting short copy that matches your brand voice, perfect for email marketing campaigns, social media posts, or ads;
• Smartwriter.ai – explicitly designed to create personalized emails, from a subject line to the Shopify product title and description, it is sure to help you even with cold outreach;
• Seventh Sense – will prove invaluable if you struggle with email deliverability and need a little boost with your sender reputation;
• GetResponse MAX – leverages an Open AI-powered generative model to help you create emails from scratch and embed personalized AI product recommendations;?
• Designs.ai – could probably tackle the entire design system of some smaller brands, so it will be handy when collaborating on email design with your marketing team.

I sure do hope these will come in handy to you and your colleagues, and to finish off on a positive note, let me reiterate that we shouldn't be scared of AI. As digital marketers, we've already seen the world change so often! Yet, the human factor persisted. It always does.?

So, if anything, these changes open a gateway into a more exciting, more relationship-driven future for all of us. Just don't be afraid to embrace new tech that makes it possible ;)

Anna Kvasnevska,

Senior Content Marketing Specialist