New horizons and competition as the market gets more sophisticated, fast, and accurate. Therefore, the sooner you get into this game and introduce AI tools in your email marketing routine, the more chances you have to keep up with the World. The best way to do this is to start with AI tools in email marketing since they are the easiest to handle and control. Though, there are some other good reasons for that.
Why Use AI Tools in Email Marketing?
As a small yet crucial direction of digital marketing, email marketing may greatly benefit from AI tools and machine learning. Businesses deal with many subscribers with varied preferences, needs, demographics, ages, and other factors and characteristics. Each entry should be analyzed to identify behavior patterns. AI is the best at handling such bulk data, making almost no mistakes and taking almost no time.
A subscriber database constantly replenishes as the company grows and expands. Without automation, it is almost impossible to support this scale.
Regular revisions and cleaning are obligatory to maintain a healthy list and increase delivery rates. Again, AI is the one that tackles this task quickly.
Email marketing strategy greatly benefits from automation and machine learning that do chores and suggest improvements for accessibility, deliverability, responsiveness, and content value in real time.
Finally, AI platforms and software unify various marketing efforts under one roof, making email marketing a crucial part of the customer’s acquisition routine.
In real-world applications, AI does these tasks:
- Define email subject lines that perform better with individuals and specific groups of subscribers.
- Determine time slots when the recipient tends to open the email.
- Identify the optimal frequency for sending emails.
- Suggest what content, segments, or product to include in the email.
- Break subscribers into groups to create segmented lists and regroup them if necessary.
- Identify ways and behavior patterns in how recipients interact with emails to spot similarities and future trends.
- Define which products would appeal to a particular buyer and compile a list of recommendations.
- Personalize the newsletter’s content, design, and elements to engage subscribers better.
- Streamline workflow and overall processes.
- Sift through big data in real-time.
- Analyze big data according to specific criteria.
- Clean the list to remove inactive subscribers or update information for specific entries.
- Categorize email lists according to criteria or information gathered from other clients.
- Build a design with a modern responsive layout and interactive features.
- Develop content.
- Customize email retargeting strategy.
- Go through consumer needs to identify the ideal customer.
- Provide predictive insights.
- Minimize manual errors and do chores.
The list of tasks is pretty long; however, there is nothing marketers cannot do on their own except to handle the bulk of data in a short time efficiently. Despite this range of rather simplistic use-case scenarios, AI software may drastically streamline the workflow and bring numerous benefits to the company. This leads us to the pros and cons of using AI tools in email marketing. Let’s consider both benefits and shortcomings of this AI technology so you can make an informed decision about switching to an AI-powered routine.
AI and Email Marketing Statistics
AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data and make intelligent decisions based on that analysis is transforming the way businesses interact with their customers. Here are some key statistics that illustrate the impact of AI on email marketing:
- Personalization: AI can help personalize emails based on a user’s behavior, preferences, and past interactions. According to a study by SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers in 2019 only engaged with marketing messages that were customized to their specific interests.
- Predictive Analytics: AI can analyze customer data and predict future behavior. This can be used to optimize email marketing strategies. According to an EverString and Heinz Marketing survey, 85% of B2B marketers believed that predictive analytics could significantly impact their email marketing initiatives.
- Automation: AI can automate sending emails at the right time to the right people, which can increase open rates. According to a study by GetResponse, email marketing messages sent at the right time can increase open rates by up to 26%.
- Subject Line and Content Optimization: AI can help optimize subject lines and email content to increase open rates and engagement. According to a report by Phrasee, AI-generated subject lines can outperform human-written ones 98% of the time.
- Segmentation: AI can help segment email lists based on various factors like demographics, behavior, etc. According to a study by Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
Businesses can create more personalized, effective, and efficient email marketing campaigns by leveraging AI.
Pros and Cons of Using AI Tools in Email Marketing
AI tools and machine learning are relatively new techniques. Along with their benefits, they also have risks and may cause drastic consequences because of misuse, neglect attitude, or overconfidence. Let’s highlight both pros and cons to get the overall picture.
The main benefits of introducing AI in email marketing routine are:
- Handling time-consuming operations fast and efficiently.
- Saving precious time, human resources, efforts, and money.
- Quick and efficient scaling.
- Unlocking new opportunities.
- Improving deliverability across various email campaigns.
- Personalizing outreach.
- Enhancing relationships between customers and brands.
- Amplifying support team efforts and productivity.
- Boosting the value of email copy.
- Increasing open rate, conversions, leads, and revenue.
- Increasing brand identity and perception.
- Strengthening brand loyalty.
- Staying in the game and keeping up with the competitors.
- Prolonging the lifetime of the company.
AI tools do not require special skills to be handled. They can be great both in the hands of specialists and novices. If the company does not have an in-house email marketing team, it may introduce this routine relatively quickly.
So, what about the shortcomings and disadvantages of AI? The most common of them are:
- AI may output false information due to incorrect or outdated data.
- AI may fail due to numerous outside causes such as blackout, hardware or software malfunction, and simple human error or mistype.
- AI does not have people’s sensitivity, which may lead to racist, biased, or discriminatory suggestions.
- AI might cause data privacy and security concerns.
- AI can be inconsistent in its endeavors.
- AI tools risk plagiarizing content, visual content, and even design, which may devalue the general impression drastically.
- AI lacks originality.
- AI experience problems handling incomplete or insufficient data.
- Some AI algorithms and models may have issues with logic and core models.
- AI requires editing, revision, and supervision.
If you still have reservations about using AI in email marketing, you have every reason for that. AI shortcomings are pretty serious. They may cause fines and destroy the brand’s hardly-earned reputation and fragile customer relationships. They may nullify your efforts or even ruin your current progress and achievements. However, this does not diminish its potential. In the right hands and with the flaws carefully mitigated, it may do lots of good for the company.
To play safe, choosing AI software tested by marketers and approved by the community is crucial. We have picked up the best and the most popular in this niche so you can dip your toe securely. The only thing that can be difficult when working with such tools is their removal if they are unnecessary. To do this as correctly as possible and not leave any residual files, here is the list of applications that will help you with this.
Top AI Tools for Email Marketers
Postcards
The best way to acquaintance AI tools is to start with Postcards. It is a highly regarded email marketing tool that has already streamlined workflow for over five years, earning great reviews and serving thousands of customers worldwide.
Initially, Postcards is an email design builder with a handy, intuitive, feature-rich drag-and-drop playground that comes with numerous perks, including:
- Productive environment for team collaboration
- Flexible project management
- Cloud hosting for images
- Quick export to several popular ESPs
The team has included an AI-powered assistant that shortens the learning path and minifies email marketers’ efforts with the software as much as possible. Just describe the newsletter you need for your campaign, and the assistant will create an HTML email template using its vast, regularly updated arsenal within seconds. You will get a modern, fully responsive newsletter tailored to your brand’s needs and preferences that requires just minor intervention.
The AI assistant has dramatically improved the workflow in Postcards. It makes the most out of the builder within seconds, speeding up email campaigns and allowing companies to test strategies without losing precious time. The best part is that it does not require special technical or design skills or experience. The AI will do all the heavy lifting, guiding customers through the routine.
Unspam.email
Unspam.email is a revolutionary service that combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) with email deliverability testing to ensure your emails reach their intended recipients and make the desired impact. This service is designed to help businesses and individuals create more effective email campaigns, reduce spam, and improve overall email deliverability.
One of the standout features of Unspam.email is its AI Eye-Tracking Prediction Heatmap. This innovative tool uses advanced AI algorithms to predict where subscribers are likely to focus their attention when reading your emails. It generates a heatmap that visually represents areas of the email that are likely to attract the most attention based on various factors such as content, layout, and design.
The AI Eye-Tracking Prediction Heatmap is a game-changer for email marketers. It provides valuable insights into how subscribers interact with your emails, allowing you to optimize your content for maximum engagement. By understanding where your subscribers are looking and how they read your emails, you can tailor your content to their preferences and behaviors, leading to more impactful campaigns and better results.
Unspam.email’s AI capabilities don’t stop at eye-tracking. The service also uses AI to check for spam triggers in your emails. It scans your content for potential red flags that could mark your emails as spam, such as certain keywords, phrases, or formatting issues. This helps ensure that your emails are engaging and reach subscribers’ inboxes, rather than getting caught in spam filters.
In addition to these AI features, Unspam.email offers a comprehensive email deliverability tester. This tool tests your emails against various spam filters. It provides detailed reports on deliverability issues, helping you understand and resolve any problems that could prevent your emails from reaching their intended recipients.
In summary, Unspam.email is a powerful tool that leverages AI to improve email deliverability and engagement. Its AI Eye-Tracking Prediction Heatmap and spam checker features provide valuable insights and actionable data, helping you create more effective and impactful email campaigns. Whether you’re a seasoned email marketer or just getting started, Unspam.email can help you get better results from your email marketing efforts.
Seventh Sense
Seventh Sense is all about optimizing email delivery. As one of the most critical factors of every email campaign, the delivery rate reflects your chances to place your emails into the recipient’s inbox. Therefore, it requires special attention, which the platform is eager to provide. Its optimization system is powered by AI, allowing businesses to improve this factor without spending much money and time.
So, what does it do? The platform focuses only on one task, yet it does it perfectly. It sifts through a database of subscribers and analyzes each entry to spot behavior patterns and define preferences in timing and frequency. This data allows the system to personalize each individual’s email delivery slot and create perfect campaign schedules.
There is more. The platform also throttles the delivery of emails to the same company and increases the chances of the newsletter passing filters of major email service providers. It also offers flexibility and control over the campaigns.
One thing to note, Seventh Sense works only with two popular AI email marketing platforms: Hubspot and Marketo.
Phrasee
From creating outstanding email designs to drive engagement with Postcards to personalizing delivery time for each recipient with Seventh Sense, AI can drastically speed up the workflow and improve the efficacy of email marketers.
However, what about the content – the most critical part of every newsletter that converts subscribers into leads? As you may have guessed, many tools can generate it from scratch. Take ChatGPT, for example. It has already served as an intelligent writer. However, we recommend Phrasee, which was specifically developed to generate email subject lines and messages that resonate with the audience the best to maximize the number of open clicks, conversions, and leads.
Trained on your brand guidelines and based on extensive and deep language learning models, it uses an appropriate tone and style to generate content for email. Analyzing modern trends and target audience preferences and collecting syntax and sentiments, including emojis that spark specific reactions, it comes up with subject lines, pre-headers, headlines, and CTAs optimized for users’ needs and expectations.
On top of that, the system allows businesses to test messages, learn from previous campaigns by getting performance data and iterate with automated experimentation.
Drift
Drift is an AI marketing tool that has the capability to amplify the efficacy of email campaigns and strategies. The team behind the software has created a unified space for marketers to manage all campaign responses in one place.
In a nutshell, it goes through your email subscribers’ replies and finds out which one was from a human and which was from an autoresponder. Based on this data, it creates a list of subscribers that should be routed to the right person in the company so they can follow up with them by sending appropriate newsletters. Alternatively, the system may generate replies on its own using the template defined by the company. This surfaces opportunities to reopen dialogues with potential customers, which may cause conversions and leads.
On top of that, during this search, the platform may clean the database by invalidating out-of-date contacts or updating and enriching records with new information.
Much like Seventh Sense, the system works only with specific AI email marketing platforms. This time, the list is a bit longer. Along with Hubspot and Marketo, it also serves Eloqua and Pardot clients.
Customer.io
Customer.io is a email marketing automation platform that uses AI to forward email campaigns and strategies. It has two major products: one is for automated marketing messages, and the other is for collecting, analyzing, and directing data to other tools. Both leverage the power hidden in AI and machine learning to provide business owners with the best results and amplify the workflow of email marketers.
So, how exactly can it help?
- It creates API-triggered workflows.
- It designs high-performing newsletters and transactional messages.
- It offers time delays and time windows to ensure a message gets to the subscribers at a specific time range.
- It can wait until the recipient gets the required reaction to initiate another procedure.
- It integrates with popular platforms to get all information necessary to create data-driven segments and target the right audience for each campaign.
- It automates even the most intricate workflows using its toolset of complex logic instruments.
The most significant advantage of this software is that it automates messaging systems across various channels, including push notifications, in-app messages, and traditional SMS, so that companies may control everything from one place.
The nameplate of this software may mislead you a bit. You may believe this platform is only about generating content for digital newsletters using AI. However, it does much more than that. Let’s consider what it can do for you.
First, as you may have guessed already, it generates high-performing copy for newsletters. Deriving relevant data from over 42 time-proven data sources, including podcasts and interviews, it develops a plagiarism-free original message relevant to your target audience’s needs and brand strategy.
Second, it sifts through data available on LinkedIn to personify content for individuals taken from your database. It collects prospects’ unique data, including use cases and even awards, and analyses their recent online activity to give insights on creating the best-performing opening email.
Third, it personalizes the entire campaign, from welcome emails that break the ice to follow-ups that bring subscribers back to the funnel.
Fourth, it might create verified lead lists based on your criteria by surfing through LinkedIn profiles.
Finally, it offers a complete outreach engine suitable for all niches so that companies, regardless of their size and target audience, may quickly start their journey in email marketing or take an existing cold outreach game up.
In a word, it is not just a tool to generate a copy but a fully-fledged platform to improve email newsletters and campaigns.
Zeta Global
Zeta Global is an AI-based omnichannel platform that excels at email marketing. It does everyday tasks and chores, giving companies lots of free time to develop new ideas for generating leads and increasing conversions. Its main advantage lies in a thorough analysis of past purchase behavior, real-time interests, and channel preference of every subscriber. This data is used to develop hyper-personalized email copies and optimize the campaign using the best subject line, send time, and frequency.
There is more. The AI-powered toolset helps businesses to create segmented lists, select audiences for companies more accurately by analyzing real-time data, streamline workflow, and automate campaigns based on various criteria, such as transactions, events, or database segments.
As an integral component of the fully-fledged marketing platform, Zeta Global comes in handy for those companies that want to orchestrate all channels from one place or start with email marketing and build their way up without switching platforms afterward.
Email Marketing Platform by Optimove
Optimove is another famous marketing platform on our list. It has been in the niche for years, covering numerous channels, including email marketing. The latter takes a special place in the software’s portfolio and is regularly updated and revisited.
Today this multifunctional software exploits AI tools and machine learning to the full extent. Using various learning and open models, it bakes hyper-personalized digital newsletters based on data derived from subscribers’ interactions and previous reactions. It tracks responses and open and delivery rates to suggest enhancements for real-time campaigns and deliver emails at the preferable time.
Optimove provides a rich email platform populated with regularly updated features, including a visual template editor, cross-client preview, personalization tags, testing platform, product recommendations, and tracking. Use it to power your email marketing strategies with no coding skills.
All-In-One AI Solutions
If you feel like you can handle everything and seek complex solutions that cover tools to level up marketing efforts across the board, then you should consider all-in-one solutions where email direction is prioritized.
Hubspot
Regarding all-in-one solutions in the email marketing niche, Hubspot is the first thing that springs to mind. Being one of the most popular platforms, it is also one of the oldest and most time-proven. Marketers all around the World use it to level up their email presence in prospects’ inboxes, bring back customers through well-thought-out follow-up strategies, and keep their list of subscribers clean and healthy. Its portfolio of tools is quite impressive. You can do a range of things, for instance:
- Design newsletters for all sorts of campaigns.
- Personalize copy and subject line for each individual by skillfully operating with such information as text, links, attachments, and product recommendations relevant to their current preferences and needs.
- Send emails from proven servers.
- Optimize campaigns using A/B tests and analytics.
- Improve overall brand performance.
The best part is that many of these tasks are done by AI to eliminate manual mistakes and speed up the process.
Hubspot is a professional software for the whole marketing department; therefore, it comes with various capabilities, including a Marketing Hub, CRM Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, and Service Hub.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is another big name on our list that is synonymous with the email marketing niche. It is an increasingly popular and highly-regarded platform that focuses on emails. Being decades in here, it has all your company may need to set its foot in this direction.
Much like other platforms, Mailchimp has improved its core with AI. The latter enhances productivity and solves multiple issues quickly and efficiently, thereby surfacing new business growth opportunities.
Among its main features used in real-world applications are:
- Email design builder with hyper-personalized components.
- Content optimizer.
- Multivariate and A/B testing instruments.
- Predictive segmentation based on an individual’s likelihood.
- Automation of customer journey through handy builder that leverages customer’s behavior patterns, triggers, and company criteria.
Integrating with over 300 third-party products like Canva, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Instagram, and others, it is a reliable and powerful partner in the marketing niche that sufficiently covers all your email marketing needs.
Conclusion
As the most affordable and most accessible way to increase traffic, AI email marketing has carved its niche in the digital universe. It contributes to the company’s growth and is crucial to overall success. These days, this direction sees improvements coming from AI-powered tools. Some marketers believe machine learning and intelligent assistants are the future of digital marketing due to several strong reasons:
- AI-based tools and machine learning handle some situations better and more efficiently than humans, for example, by quickly analyzing a bulk of regularly updated and replenished subscriber data.
- They may improve the campaign and strategy from various real-time perspectives. For instance, they increase deliverability and ipso facto sales and strengthen the brand’s presence across various marketing channels.
- Recent studies show that AI in email marketing will continue to grow more prevalent. Many email marketers have already introduced technology in their routine, getting a confident head start and competitive edge over those who still doubt that. The earlier you enter this game, the more chances you will have to fight the competition.
Along with the necessity to introduce AI, it also offers numerous benefits like surfacing new opportunities, boosting the value of email, amplifying efforts, increasing ROI, and freeing your team from mundane tasks.
However, it is crucial to remember that it should be introduced with caution since, as a relatively new solution, it comes with shortcomings, risks, and possible consequences when neglected. For instance, it may output false or discriminatory information or mislead marketers during a campaign, being fed up with irrelevant data.
Putting your best foot forward is critical, but you should not rush. The rule of thumb is to remember that human supervision and intervention are obligatory. Start your acquaintance with AI with the time-proven tools in the niche. Use our top picks for that. They will give you a solid foundation to move forward. Then handle tasks individually to see how AI can improve your workflow. Finally, scale your business by mixing different AI software to unlock its potential.