Email marketing has been an integral part of marketing as far back as the 1970s. Now, in the 2020s, the role of email marketing in the overall digital marketing strategy of businesses has only grown bigger and better. The email marketing industry value stood at $7.5 billion as of 2020 and is expected to hit $17.9 billion by 2027.

Like most things since the 70s, email marketing has progressed and adapted. It now offers more possibilities, especially with the introduction and development of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Let’s take a look at how AI will impact email marketing, what it means for your business and your overall marketing efforts. 

4 Important Contributions AI is Making Towards Email Marketing 

1. Email Content Creation

Email subject lines, as well as the body content, are essential contributors to the success of your email marketing campaigns. Think about it: the first thing a subscriber sees is the subject line, so whether or not they open the email depends on if the subject line did a good enough job of pulling them in. 

Maximizing contact with prospects and increasing conversions is no easy feat. Marketers can spend hours trying to work out the best email subject lines, the right type of content to send, and the proper email format to use. This leaves room for trial and error, which can waste time, effort, and resources. 

AI takes away the guesswork and makes the process relatively easy for busy marketers. With AI, you can generate email subject lines that are in tune with your audience by analyzing previous marketing campaigns for better optimization. You can also craft body copy that keeps readers’ attention and ensures the most crucial information is front and center. 

The result? More click-throughs as your audience will find your content more engaging and personalized. Which leads us to our next contributor. 

2. Hyper-Personalized Content

At the heart of effective email marketing is personalization. Gone are the days of generic, mass emails. If you want to build trust with your customers and see a higher click-through rate, your emails should address them by their first name and offer them suggestions and content tailored to where they are in the customer journey. If your emails lack these elements of personalization, you risk them being ignored or, even worse, marked as spam. 

AI makes this process easy, as it can track certain actions your subscribers take on your website, as well as buying patterns and how they interact with previous emails you sent. You can then take this information and use it to determine their specific future needs, offering them product recommendations or promotions you know they’ll be more inclined to want. 

3. Better Predictive Sending

Marketers previously had to rely on experimentation and intuition to determine the best times to send emails to prospects and customers and the number of emails for optimum results and conversion. This means that it has often taken a lot of time for marketers to spot a pattern and build on it.

AI eliminates some of this work by analyzing data points and previous emails. Since you can access various email metrics, you can determine which emails you sent were the most successful based on the time frame in which you sent them. So, when it comes time to schedule your next marketing campaign, you can be sure that it will arrive in customer inboxes at the times they are more likely to open and read them. 

Plus, AI allows you to automate the process of sending emails. So, instead of manually sending tons of emails to all your contacts, you can set up your emails to go out when you want them to or set up triggers that deploy emails based on actions your subscribers take.

What’s more, most email automation tools allow you to segment your contacts based on various qualifiers and demographics. So if you have subscribers all over the world, you can make sure you’re sending them emails at the best possible times within their time zones. 

4. Cleaner Email Lists

One of the biggest killers of an effective email marketing strategy is a list filled with spammy emails or inactive addresses. When you send emails to accounts that lead to a bounce-back or an error, you can gradually hurt your deliverability and sender score and, in the worst cases, get your email blacklisted. 

AI tools, like email verification can scrub your lists and remove any suspicious emails that could ultimately hurt your efforts. It may be unpleasant to see your email list shrink, but it’s better than emailing accounts that won’t engage with your content anyway. 

It’s an amazing time to be an email marketer, and the email marketing software that you decide on for your business should be able to handle the endless possibilities that AI has to offer, both now and in the future. If you are unsure where to begin to harness the benefits of AI in email marketing, check out Benchmark Email for free and see how it can help you send better emails.