The benefits and tools of AI email marketing you should know about

What is AI email marketing?

AI email marketing refers to the marrying of artificial intelligence technology and communication to enhance and optimize the various aspects of email marketing strategies and campaigns.

For example, email senders could use AI technology to customize messages and create highly-personalized email campaigns quickly and efficiently. Such AI tools could pull data from a customer or prospect database, using it to tailor emails so they sound like they were created specifically for the recipient.

AI-powered technology can also help you automatically segment your subscriber lists and schedule emails so that subgroups receive messages most relevant to them at appropriate times. Essentially, AI can optimize your entire email process, which leads to higher open rates, increased engagement, and better overall results.

Why should you use AI email marketing?

As an email sender, when was the last time you got everything scratched off your daily to-do list? A while, right?

Whether you’re the head of all marketing activities for your organization, or a member of a larger department, solely responsible for handling email marketing, your plate is likely already full – perhaps overflowing.

Incorporating AI-driven email marketing tools is like adding a virtual assistant that can handle many repetitive, time-consuming tasks for you. AI can increase the effectiveness of your campaigns, boost conversion rates, and make you shine like the email marketing pro you are. Plus, it will also free up time for you to take a closer look at your strategy to design winning campaigns and strengthen your overall marketing program.

What are the benefits of AI email marketing?

There are many benefits of implementing an email marketing strategy that uses AI and marketing automation tools, including:

• More efficient content generation

• Better personalization

• More accurate segmentation

• More widespread use of automation

• Increased efficiency

• More granular optimization

• Improved performance

Check out what you can expect to experience in each of these areas.

Content generation

Copywriting is a key responsibility for email marketers, but it can also be one of the most time intensive. AI can create dynamic, personalized content and email copy that resonates with individual recipients by addressing their unique preferences and interests in the message.

And it can do this quickly. So, if you’re stuck in the process, need some inspiration, or want some extra power to meet an important deadline, your new AI team member can work overtime.

This technology can also automatically perform A/B testing by monitoring the performance of different content variations and optimizing content in real time.

Personalization

AI email marketing has grown way past adding a first name to the subject line. Today, machine learning can analyze customer data such as a visitor’s behavior, see what they were browsing, learn preferences, and study past purchases and engagement. This data can help AI create extremely personal marketing communications, extending specific offers, create personalized product recommendations, and offer discounts that will boost conversions significantly.

Although this is often seen as a benefit solely to businesses, AI-powered personalization also helps customers more easily find the items they want, saving them time and effort. This results in a more pleasant overall user experience.

Segmentation

Before AI technology, it was a challenge to accurately segment prospective customers and keep those segmentations up to date. Now, factors such as product preferences, customer location, and individual demographics can be used in algorithms to sort prospects and customers into multiple email lists with targeted campaigns for each stage of the customer journey.

We all know how irritating it can be to face an email inbox full of irrelevant messages. AI is excellent at predicting customer behavior based on previous actions and preferences, and crafting copy that really resonates with that segment.

For example, imagine receiving a follow-up email that includes a coupon for a product or service that you were just about to purchase; you’d be very likely to engage with that business. Accurate segmentation leads to higher conversions.

Automation

We live in a world focused on immediate gratification. We can stream any show, text any person, and buy any product right now.

As a result, customers and prospects expect rapid email responses to questions and inquiries and for hyper-relevant marketing emails to arrive at just the right time. High expectations, right?

AI helps by automating workflows that ensure timely and relevant communication without constant manual intervention. But that’s not it: Technology can also streamline routine tasks such as scheduling, sending, and tracking emails, saving valuable time that you can repurpose for more strategic tasks.

Efficiency

AI email marketing tools can automate mundane work that consumes valuable marketing resources. Instead of focusing on repetitive tasks, you and your team can focus on improving overall strategy, managing important relationships, and designing more creative campaigns.

Since AI-powered machine learning uses algorithms to adapt to real-time campaign results and other market variables, you can easily adjust campaigns as soon as you see that they’re performing well (or not so well).

As a result, your email outreach is more likely to stay relevant and continue to engage customers and prospects for the long run.

Optimization

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology can “learn” from various email campaign results and then refine strategies depending on how customers and prospects respond.

In the long run, this means that AI-powered campaigns identify the best email send time for communications, which subject lines are most effective, and how to ensure emails meet evolving customer needs.

Performance

Overall, AI-assisted email tools can improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns. The number of emails sent and received will continue to increase and is projected to reach more than 392 billion by 2026.

Using AI marketing tools will only serve to enhance your efforts and allow you to take full advantage of the opportunities ahead. In fact, studies show that using AI generated email newsletters are more than 50 percent more effective than traditional approaches used in email marketing.

Will AI replace humans in email marketing?

Whenever ground-breaking technology hits the streets, one of the biggest worries is that AI-powered tools and AI algorithms will replace humans and eliminate jobs.

It’s certainly true that AI technology can do many things faster, better, and more accurately than humans, but let’s be honest: It can’t replace you. You’re the one who truly knows the needs, goals, and brand of your specific company, and the one that can guide AI tools in the right direction.

Instead, AI becomes a handy assistant, taking over all those repetitive, time-consuming tasks that none of us enjoy doing anyway. Once those are delegated to technology, we can focus on interpreting data, protecting valuable customer and prospect information, and humanizing AI-generated content.

Learn more about how to be more human in the age of AI by watching our Email Camp session on this topic.

5 AI email marketing tools

Many AI email marketing tools are available today. Let’s take a look at the top five that can help elevate your email marketing campaigns to the next level.

1. Sinch Mailjet’s AI Copy Generator

Mailjet’s AI Copy Generator is a tool built right into Mailjet’s email editor platform for easy use. This generator can help you create compelling content that resonates with your audience. Since it is pre-built into an email platform, there’s no need to toggle between different browser windows to create exceptional email newsletter content.

Once you request AI assistance from Mailjet’s Copy Generator, you can specify the tone, audience, word limit, and language alongside your descriptive prompt to create your content. The tool also allows you to generate up to 10 different versions (using the same prompt).

Finally, once you’ve taken the copy from the tool, you can refine your selected AI-generated email with your specific brand voice and communications objectives and set up different versions for A/B testing. Then, you’re ready to send!

Mailjet’s AI Copy Generator is available in over 20 languages

Want to learn more about how to use AI with Mailjet? Check out our AI Copy Generator post.

2. ChatGPT

When ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, the world was taken by storm. It quickly became the most well-known natural language generation (NLG) tool, and over the last year, millions of individuals, including email marketers, have tinkered with this tool to see what it can do.

ChatGPT, like most tools, comes with its strengths and weaknesses for email marketers. If you understand how to create prompts that can generate the email content you want, it can be fairly effective.

On the other hand, it tends to respond with very generic content for broader inquiries. It may also have difficulty imitating your specific brand voice and is not integrated into a specific email marketing platform.

That said, it’s an easy tool to create AI-powered emails. But once you’re ready to truly use AI and machine learning in email campaigns, you’ll want something that can integrate AI content generation alongside data analytics, email list segmentation, and personalization tools.

3. Grammarly

Perhaps the premier automated editing tool, Grammarly is widely used in business circles to provide grammar, spelling, and readability feedback to writers. It’s no surprise, then, that its artificial intelligence text generator’s strength is its ability to auto-correct grammatical errors.

If you’re looking for an AI email marketing tool that can do the double duty of grammar checker and content generator, this tool is worth looking into, as is its competitor, ProWritingAid.

Like ChatGPT, you’ll probably want to up your AI email marketing game at some point, upgrading to the tools, data analytics, and features that are only available in platforms specifically designed for email marketing campaigns.

4. DeepL

If one of your email marketing goals is to expand to different geographical markets, you’ll want a trustworthy tool that can not only help you generate custom content, but also translate that content accurately into different languages.

DeepL is designed to do just that. Its advanced AI technology helps you communicate clearly across borders, and is a good first step when it comes to connecting with prospects and customers around the world.

This tool can help you expand the reach of your company quickly and easily, providing company background, product and service details, and communication to help open doors for your global sales team in a unique and effective manner. Of course, it won’t take you as far as a proper email localization strategy, but it offers quality translations fast.

Once you’re ready to step up your localization strategy, you’ll be ready to leverage alternatives like Mailjet’s AI Copy Generator, which can respond to culturally appropriate prompts in different languages.

5. Lexica Art

Text-only emails are great for certain use cases, but not every email should be plain text. That’s why one of your challenges as an email sender is deciding how to visually communicate your message.

Larger organizations with generous marketing budgets may be able to afford professional photography or graphic design services, but most small-to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) that want to use images in their email campaigns rely on stock photography, which is more affordable, readily accessible, and easy to use.

If you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated with your email design, but can’t afford to hire a full-time graphic designer, you may want to consider AI-generated art with Lexica Art.

Use this AI generative tool to search for images or to generate a very specific illustration by entering a descriptive prompt. Like AI text generation, AI image generation can be tweaked and refined to create something unique and eye-catching. You can then add and rework these images into a fully customizable email template builder and claw yourself even more time back off the clock.

Create high-performance emails with Sinch Mailjet’s AI Copy Generator

Thinking about leaning on AI to push through your writer’s block? Well, you’re in luck: Our built-in AI copy generator is now available directly embedded into our email marketing software.

You can now easily craft catchy email subject lines, engaging body copy, and creative subtitles in just seconds. The best part is you can do this directly within the platform itself – and in more than 20 different languages.

Just select the AI Copy Generator within Mailjet, type a descriptive prompt of the content you need, specify things like tone of voice and length, and let the tool get to work. You can also further refine your results, including incorporating your brand voice and adhering to your communication objectives.

The good news? If you’re a paying customer, you already have access to the AI Copy Generator. Just log into your paid account and start using it for your next email campaign. If you don’t have a Sinch Mailjet account, create yours now, upgrade, and start building AI-powered email campaigns today!