{"id":12640,"date":"2019-02-21T13:25:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T07:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/email.uplers.com\/blogs\/?p=12640"},"modified":"2020-07-31T00:13:09","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T18:43:09","slug":"artificial-intelligence-innovating-email-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/email.uplers.com\/blog\/artificial-intelligence-innovating-email-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"How Artificial Intelligence is Innovating Email Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0email\u00a0marketing industry is currently\u00a0in the midst of\u00a0a seismic shift in the way it builds marketing content and in how that content is delivered to consumers.<\/p>\n

Chances are\u00a0quite\u00a0good at this point that\u00a0any global internet user with\u00a0a Facebook\u00a0account, an Instagram\u00a0account,\u00a0or an email address has\u00a0probably already experienced this shift, most of them\u00a0without\u00a0even\u00a0realizing it.<\/p>\n

Like so many of the digital marketing shifts that preceded it, the one currently taking shape is being driven by technological innovation. Much like the advent of the smartphone and the widespread adoption of marketing automation, the latest technological innovation to rock the digital marketing world has the potential to disrupt some of the industry\u2019s most long-held beliefs and strategies, and to offer brands and marketers new email marketing powers on a scale that few could have anticipated.<\/p>\n

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What is this amazing innovation that\u2019s currently turning the email marketing game on its head?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s artificial intelligence, and it\u2019s about to change everything.<\/p>\n

What Everyone Should Know About AI<\/h2>\n

Artificial intelligence is an extremely powerful\u00a0digital marketing\u00a0tool. Sure, today\u2019s AI may not look like the all-purpose humanoid robots we remember from our favorite sci-fi films, but there\u2019s no question that it\u2019s already having a big impact. Be it the recommendations on our favorite eCommerce site, the films on our Netflix homepage, or the inexplicably enticing copy in the ads on our Facebook news feeds, AI is touching our lives in subtle but important ways every day.<\/p>\n

In a world where consumer data is worth its weight in gold,\u00a0and where many brands sit atop untold mountains of that data,\u00a0the\u00a0ability to sift through it and glean valuable marketing insights from it is a precious commodity indeed.\u00a0The thing is, algorithms capable of doing just that have been widely available for some time.\u00a0Re-branding such algorithms as \u201cAI\u201d and marketing them as such has become an all too common practice in the email marketing space.<\/p>\n

True\u00a0AI\u00a0however, is capable of much, much more.<\/p>\n

What sets AI apart from the algorithms and automation technologies\u00a0that preceded it is something\u00a0far more valuable still: artificial intelligence learns. True artificial intelligence gets more effective and more efficient at completing its assigned task with every passing day.<\/p>\n

If you build an AI for the specific task of optimizing a brand\u2019s email marketing processes (like we did), it will learn to do so more effectively with\u00a0each and every\u00a0send.\u00a0It will learn what a brand\u2019s unique audience responds to, what it doesn\u2019t, and thus how to engage that audience more effectively over time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the true AI difference, and that\u2019s what every email marketing brand\u00a0should be actively seeking.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why\u2026<\/p>\n

How AI Helps in Building an Effective Email Strategy<\/h2>\n

Every brand\u2019s audience is different, and no brand\u2019s audience\u2019s tastes stay the same forever. What works in an email marketing campaign<\/a> today\u00a0could very well fall flat next week (or even tomorrow!).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why regular, thorough, and ongoing split testing should be an essential element of every brand\u2019s email marketing strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a problem, though: most successful brands send out a great number of emails over the course of every week, and the process of manually split testing them, analyzing the performance data these split tests generate, and optimizing each campaign\u2019s content accordingly is incredibly time-consuming and onerous.<\/p>\n

But not for artificial intelligence. AI can manage these tasks quickly, efficiently, and repeatedly, optimizing your email marketing campaigns to reflect the changing preferences and tastes of your audience as it goes in real time, and with very little human input at all.<\/p>\n

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AI and Subject Lines<\/h2>\n

There is strong evidence to support the belief that email subject lines are the single most important element of any email marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

Research has indicated that a full\u00a047% of consumers<\/a><\/u>\u00a0make the decision to open or ignore and email based on that email\u2019s subject line alone.\u00a0Aside from a\u00a0brand\u2019s\u00a0\u201cfrom\u201d name\u00a0\u2013 which drives this decision in a full 64% of cases \u2013 no other aspect of an email marketing campaign drives the all-important open as much as its email subject line does.<\/p>\n

With email open rates across all industries hovering\u00a0somewhere around 18%<\/a><\/u>, there remains plenty of room for improvement\u00a0here. Using\u00a0natural language generation and deep learning AI to generate, test, and optimize email subject line language has proven to have a massive positive impact on driving increased subscriber engagement and open rates for brands in many industries already.<\/p>\n

The ability to split-test AI-generated, brand-compliant email subject line copy at scale quickly and efficiently, and to optimize future subject line language based on the resulting performance data can be an extremely lucrative one for brands.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to keep in mind however, that while email subject line optimization is among the first aspects of email marketing to feel the full force of\u00a0AI marketing language<\/a><\/u>, it certainly won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

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Case Study<\/h2>\n

With 6.5 million users and \u201creally poor\u201d open rates that were only getting worse, classified ads site Gumtree,\u00a0a division of eBay,\u00a0decided to give AI-optimized email subject line copy at try in the hopes of boosting user engagement several years ago.<\/p>\n

This type of\u00a0\u201csubject line effectiveness decay\u201d<\/a><\/u>\u00a0is a startlingly common problem in the email marketing business, as subject lines which garnered robust open rates in the past show diminishing returns over time in almost all cases.<\/p>\n

The promise of fresh, unique, on-brand subject line language to include with\u00a0each and every\u00a0campaign was simply too intriguing for the forward-thinking team at Gumtree to pass up, so they formed a partnership with AI-driven marketing language vendor\u00a0Phrasee\u00a0to see what AI was capable of.<\/p>\n

After experiencing a sustained increase in email marketing ROI resulting from a 35%-50% increase in\u00a0campaign\u00a0open rates, Gumtree has now made AI a key aspect of its larger email marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

Have a look at the video:<\/p>\n