3 min read
min read
August 22, 2023

AI for Email Marketing: Tools & Tips to Use in 2023

AI for Email Marketing: Tools & Tips to Use in 2023

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It's 10 am and I've checked my email twice already — I'm sure you’ve done the same. The average person spends three hours a day on work emails and two hours checking personal emails.

With all those email checks, there’s room to directly capture your target market and convert subscribers into customers using email marketing. This can be achieved without spending a fortune, as email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) compared to other marketing strategies.

While you can spend hours manually analyzing data to learn what will appeal to your target audience, AI can quickly — and more accurately — provide real-time data on your subscribers.  With AI data, you can save time, money, and improve your email marketing performance. This is because the more you know about your readers, the better you can tailor content to them.

As a digital content creator, I understand the need for accurate and fast customer data to create compelling emails. In this article, I will guide you through how to write an email marketing campaign using AI — and why you should.

Why should marketers use AI for Email Marketing

AI is a type of computer technology that enables machines to think and act like humans. Imagine the speed and efficiency of the internet mixed with your personal tone and style. This is crucial for email marketers. We want our emails to reflect our branding and voice while still attracting our target audience.

With AI-based email marketing, you can create highly personalized emails that boost conversion rates and optimize email programs. AI analyzes data to identify patterns in customer behavior and preferences. It then uses this information to tailor emails to an individual. For example, AI can learn what types of products your email subscribers are most likely to buy.

AI can also automate emails to deliver content at the best time. For instance, if you have an upcoming promotion, AI will identify the most appropriate time to alert customers about your offer. It does this by analyzing past email campaigns to learn when subscribers are most likely to open and engage with an email.

As an example, subscriber A may prefer opening promotional emails at 8:00 pm because they do online shopping in the evening. In contrast, subscriber B may ignore late emails and would be better receiving them in the morning.

Using AI’s data-driven insights, you can quickly work out who to send emails to and when. This saves you time and money, as you no longer have to manually analyze data yourself.

Plus, email marketing using AI can predict customer trends and anticipate their needs. Through analyzing customer data, AI can detect patterns to identify what customers are likely to purchase in the future. For example, if a customer recently ordered a beach towel, AI may recommend them a beach bag, sunglasses, or other related items. 

This function helps you anticipate customer needs and create tailored campaigns to meet them.

With the ability to quickly analyze large amounts of data with enhanced accuracy, you can ultimately understand your target audience more deeply. This will help you achieve your marketing goals.

Now that you’re fully aware of the benefits, let’s look at how to use AI in email marketing.

1. Craft Unique Subject Lines and Email Copy

Subject lines are similar to newsletter headings in that they must stand out and interest your readers. Data from Zippia shows that nearly 50% of people will open an email based on the subject line alone.

AI-generated subject lines use natural language processing (NLP). This is a type of machine learning that enables computers to generate language which replicates human speech. Combining NLP with other AI learning tools, AI can analyze data to identify trends and patterns to create the most effective subject line for your campaign type.

For instance, if I wanted to send an email to potential business clients that I have not messaged before, AI-powered tools such as Frase will tell me the most compelling subject lines to use to increase the number of people that open and read my email.

As well as providing strong subject line suggestions, AI can ensure your subject line does not include words or phrases that email providers may perceive as spam. Trigger words such as “amazing” and “profits” can send your email to a customer’s spam folder, leading to poor email deliverability. 

Once you have your subject line, it’s time to craft unique email copy to ensure your intended audience stays engaged. To help you convey your message clearly and concisely, use Wordtune for suggestions.

For example, let’s say I want to explain why unique email copy is critical but I’m not sure how to get this across.

Wordtune Spices (as shown in the image) can help me explain the key benefits of creative copy using the “Expand on” option. To generate text, you must first write a sentence or paragraph about your chosen subject.

In this instance, I asked why unique copy is critical in email marketing. From here, I clicked on the Spices tool “Expand on”. This asks for specific keywords to expand on. Using these words, Wordtune will come up with text suggestions that I can choose from. These are non-plagiarized text that I can use or re-edit to convey my message.

2. Personalize Your Email Content

Personalized emails create six times higher transaction rates and revenue than non-personalized emails. Adding personalization to emails helps to build customer relationships, as it shows clients and customers that they are valued and that their interests are taken into account. 

Generic emails seem careless. Let’s say your business has different products and services. A client wanting to learn more about one area may become frustrated if they consistently recieve content related to a different area. For instance, they want SEO advice but receive emails about social media techniques.

As mentioned earlier, AI tools analyze customer data to learn the type of content individuals will most likely engage with. This helps you to personalize your emails so readers receive targeted and relevant content.

3. Email Retargeting Tailored To Your Audience

Many businesses have potential customers on their website. These are people who have left items in their shopping basket or spent time looking through different products. 

Email retargeting can push tailored content to these potential customers to encourage a sale. AI can learn the behaviors of people on your website to understand what they might be interested in. As an example, if a person has left items in their shopping basket, AI can send an additional email with a discount code, or share positive reviews of the products in their basket.

AI also sees what offers people click on, how long they spend looking at content, and if they are interested in an email subject or product category — for example, living room accessories. This helps you produce personalized copy that could entice your potential customers to create a purchase.

4. Generate Smart Newsletters

Smart newsletters are carefully planned emails sent to subscribers regularly. Unlike traditional newsletters, smart ones are customized for each subscriber. Before AI, it was difficult to achieve this.

I used to create several customer lists for clients, outlining different emails to target each list. This was time-consuming and not efficient. Thanks to AI newsletter tools, this is no longer the case. 

Using AI tools, you can almost instantly personalize everything within a smart newsletter from the tone of voice to customized calls to action (CTAs). As mentioned, personalization is vital, as sending readers content that is tailored to their needs can increase conversions.

5. Reorganize Your Email Campaigns For Maximum Efficiency

Reorganizing email campaigns can help you refine your content to ensure maximum effectiveness. Using data from past emails, AI can help you create email templates that recommend where to place content — including your logo and CTAs — to increase engagement. For instance, AI may suggest you place your website link at the bottom of your email instead of at the top.

Another way to reorganize using AI is through scheduling. AI can find the optimal time to schedule emails based on particular triggers, such as when someone leaves items in their shopping cart. You can send an automated and persuasive email to encourage a potential customer to finish their purchase.

6. Understand The Lifecycle Of Your Customer 

The customer journey is all the stages of the buying process, from first learning about your brand to making a purchase. Essential for email marketing campaigns, this information tells you when people are most and least engaged.

AI tools can identify where in the process customers are losing interest. It does this using  technology such as website cookies — a piece of data that stores website information. As an example, AI data could show that you have a lot of new customers on your website but not many returning ones. 

Using this information, you can add incentives in your emails for previous shoppers to encourage them to make another purchase.

7. Recommend Relevant Products Or Services

AI can make product recommendations using predictive analytics, machine learning algorithms, and natural language processing. It can analyze data such as past purchases and scan on-site behavior to personalize suggestions. 

For example, a garden centre may find that a significant percentage of customers who purchase garden furniture also buy accessories such as cushions. With this AI knowledge, you can create an email for garden furniture customers that includes accessory items.

8. Generate Conversions

One of the main reasons to create an email marketing campaign using AI is to generate conversions. If you want more people to visit your website by clicking through from an email in order to increase product sales, the real-time data AI collects will provide valuable insight into your customers and their purchasing decisions. These will then help you to develop and promote the right CTAs.

AI is not only about insights and data. AI tools such as Wordtune Editor increase conversion rates through compelling copy. When you write about a particular service or business frequently, you can produce bland, repetitive content that leads to an unengaged email list.

Wordtune Editor has tools to edit tone of voice and expand, shorten, and rewrite text. This makes text more engaging and easier to digest, and keeps copy varied. 

Bonus Tip: Improve Your Website Copy

Once you’ve created a successful email marketing campaign, you want to ensure that the pages your users are clicking through to are equally as effective. Otherwise, you’ll lose them at this next step.

AI tools such as Wordtune can rewrite your content to make it cohesive and engaging for your readers.

The Wordtune “Rewrite” function can spot repetitive words and suggest more concise sentences. You can see below how this tool makes sentences easier to read. The AI tool also catches grammar mistakes.

Read the full article: Best Practices for Writing Homepage Copy
 Image of Wordtune Rewrite in action, demonstrating how the tool offers users concise, alternative sentence suggestions.

Conclusion

From quickly personalizing content to improving wording and providing deep analysis into customer behavior, AI is transforming how we write and send emails. Whether you are an experienced email marketer or are just getting started, use AI to create a successful email marketing strategy that will boost conversions.

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