by Elastic Email Sep 5, 2023

Why should you use generative AI for email marketing?

Well, for the simple reason that email marketing remains the top marketing channel for building relationships, boosting brand awareness, generating and nurturing leads, marketing your products, and more.

Here’s the proof.

According to a report by Mailmodo, email is ranked the top-performing marketing channel by 78.29% of B2B and B2C marketers.

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But figure this—approximately 347.3 billion emails are sent and received each day worldwide:

With such cut-throat competition, how do you craft successful emails that generate great results?

This is where using generative AI for email marketing becomes helpful.

It can help you create unique email content, personalize emails, and get the most out of your email marketing investment.

In this article, we’re going to discuss how to use generative AI for email marketing. 

Let's get rolling.

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI is a transformative technology that leverages machine learning algorithms to generate realistic and original content like text, images, videos, and more in response to prompts.

Due to its ability to learn and evolve, generative AI has been greatly adopted by brands and individuals alike.

Unsurprisingly, this technology in business market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 33% during the forecast period of 2023-2032.

But how does generative AI work?

The technology utilizes algorithms trained on existing datasets in a self-monitoring system to recognize essential patterns for a wide range of tasks.

When it comes to email marketing, generative AI algorithms can learn from existing emails and craft powerful marketing emails.

How to Use Generative AI for Email Marketing

Let’s learn how to leverage generative AI effectively to improve your email marketing game.

1. Craft Personalized Emails

Message personalization is one of the most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns.

According to a McKinsey & Company report, 76% of consumers are more likely to consider purchasing from brands that personalize. 

The same survey also reveals that 78% of them will make repeat purchases from brands that personalize.

However, personalization is still a stretch goal for many marketers due to the challenges with data and what customers experience.In fact, 43% of brands say they struggle to get accurate customer data for personalization.

Generative artificial intelligence can supercharge how you tailor your email campaigns for your audience.

For instance, you can leverage generative AI to craft personalized email campaigns for your brand ambassador program to target potential brand ambassadors who can help you drive awareness and sales.

The technology can analyze subscribers’ interactions, individual preferences, purchase history, demographics, and website activity of email recipients. It can then help you create personalized emails and promotional materials.

It can make the recipient feel more connected with your brand, which can boost open rates, click-through rates, and engagement and drive conversions.

2. Generate Your Email Copy

Another way to use generative AI in email marketing is to craft the email copy.

As mentioned above, email marketing is dubbed one of the top marketing channels by most marketers.

But considering the tons of emails the average consumer receives per day, how do you ensure your emails are clicked, opened, and read? 

You need to craft emails that stand out in a crowded inbox.

This is the only way to support your email marketing efforts. But crafting compelling emails can be a tough task for beginners. It could also blow up your budget.

Fortunately, with artificial intelligence, you can reduce your business expenses and get great-quality emails. You can simply provide the topic or type of email you want, and the AI tool will generate the email copy for you.

For instance, here's what happens when we ask ChatGPT to create a welcome email for a newsletter promoting our sports company:

In just a few seconds, the tool can quickly draft a compelling email copy based on the prompt you provide. Similarly, if you were to prompt the AI with something like "write an essay for me," the AI would generate a well-structured essay based on your input, showing how versatile the technology is across various content types.

You can also leverage AI to create compelling email copy for your email marketing campaigns if you’re selling something. For instance, if you sell online courses and want to target interested students for them, you can write emails using generative AI.

Note that when using it for email marketing, ensure you make further edits to the email copy to match the tone of the text to match your brand voice.

3. Generate Images

Adding images to your emails can greatly boost open and click-through rates.

Here’s the proof:

According to the latest email marketing benchmarks by GetResponse, emails with images have a higher open rate and click-through rate of 30.27% and 2.78% than text-based emails (21.9% and 1.13%).

However, creating stunning images to include in your emails is easier said than done.

Fortunately, with generative AI, you can create highly personalized graphics based on your subscriber’s industry, location, etc.

Here are ways artificial intelligence can help with image creation:

  • Product imagery: Generative AI solutions can help you create convincingly beautiful images of your products that you can use in your email marketing campaigns, social media, etc. Here are the best AI solutions for e-commerce by Attrock.
  • Visual branding: With generative AI, you can create branding materials like logos and other visual elements for your emails.
  • Ad creative: You can also create visually appealing and engaging ads for cold email campaigns that can help you stand out from the competition. This will help to improve click-through rates and conversions for your email marketing campaigns.

4. Segment Your Audience

Apart from content personalization, email segmentation is one of the most effective strategies to boost engagement.

Nevertheless, segmenting your email list can be a tough task without the right skills and tools.

Luckily, with generative AI, you can appropriately segment your audience into groups based on parameters like demographics, previous browsing and purchase history, etc. This can help you target your email campaigns better.

For instance, if some customers start showing interest in different products from the ones they have been purchasing, AI tools can automatically adjust their segment to ensure these customers receive more relevant emails and promotional content.

All this is achievable because generative AI tools use pattern recognition. 

It can uncover patterns much faster than humans, and it can help you dynamically manage segments of huge email lists.

Likewise, generative AI can also help make real-time adjustments to email lists based on any customer behavior changes.

Pro Tips for Using Generative AI in Email Marketing

Here are some of the ways you can get the most from generative AI for your email campaigns:

  • Execute multiple prompts to get different results and choose the most valuable one
  • Be specific with your prompts
  • Don’t blindly use generative AI
  • Leverage human oversight

Conclusion

Learning how to use generative AI for email marketing can be beneficial in many ways. From personalized email content to targeted campaigns and image creation, generative AI has no doubt simplified email marketing for many marketers.

We hope this article will encourage you to test the power of generative AI in your email marketing efforts.

About the author

Reena is the Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a result-driven digital marketing company. With 10+ years of sales and operations experience in the field of e-commerce and digital marketing, she is quite an industry expert. She is a people person and considers human resources as the most valuable asset of a company. In her free time, you would find her spending quality time with her brilliant, almost teenage daughter and watching her grow in this digital, fast-paced era.

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