Email marketing has experienced tremendous growth over the last decade, with over 4 billion people worldwide now using email. As email usage has increased, so have customer expectations for relevance and personalization.
The average business person receives over 120 emails per day, and most consumers have an email inbox full of promotional messages. Breaking through the noise is a major challenge. Segmentation and personalization have become critical for brands to engage their customers in this high-volume environment.
Consumers have come to expect personalized, relevant communications tailored to their interests and preferences. According to research by Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.
Email customization is now a necessity, not a luxury. Fortunately, advancements in artificial intelligence are making it easier than ever for marketers to provide the customized email experiences customers demand.
How AI Enables Customization for Email Marketing
Artificial intelligence provides the capability for highly personalized and relevant email campaigns by analyzing customer data and optimizing content. AI marketing tools can segment recipients and customize email content, timing, and subject lines for each individual.
Some of the key AI capabilities for email customization include:
- Dynamic Content – AI systems can automatically customize message content for each subscriber by pulling in personalized details, recommendations, and offers tailored specifically to them. This creates a more targeted and engaging experience.
- Predictive Send-Time Optimization – AI analyzes customer behavior data to determine the optimal time to send each email by recipient for maximizing open and click-through rates. By optimizing send times, deliverability improves.
- Subject Line Personalization – Subject lines can be automatically tailored by AI to match the interests and attributes of each recipient. This increases open rates by making emails more relevant.
The deep learning and predictive analytics powering AI enables it to get to know each customer and precisely cater messaging in real-time. It goes far beyond basic segmentation and manual personalization. With AI, email marketing reaches new levels of customization, driving higher engagement.
AI Customization in Action
AI email customization is enabling impressive results across many industries. Here are some real-world examples of the power of AI:
Clothing retailer Stitch Fix uses AI to customize email campaigns. By studying customer data and purchase history, their AI email writer creates personalized recommendations and content for each subscriber. This AI-powered customization has increased Stitch Fix’s email click rate by 50%.
The nonprofit charity: water uses AI to optimize the timing of fundraising emails based on when supporters are most likely to engage. Sending emails at the optimal time for each supporter has helped charity: water raise over $19 million dollars through email campaigns.
Financial services company Personal Capital uses AI-generated subject lines tailored to each recipient. Their open rates increased by 22% compared to generic subject lines. The platform also customizes email content for a more personalized experience.
Online learning platform Udemy used AI to test variations of promotional email content. The AI picked the top-performing content for each subscriber segment, improving email revenue by 25%. This shows how AI can optimize content in real-time based on data.
As these examples demonstrate, AI email customization can have a dramatic impact across many metrics from open rates to dollars raised or revenue earned. The data-driven insights of AI enable sending the right content to the right person at the right time.
The Benefits of AI Customization
AI-powered email customization provides remarkable benefits that directly impact key marketing metrics. By delivering each subscriber a highly tailored, relevant experience, marketers see substantial improvements in open rates, click rates, conversions, and customer satisfaction.
With AI systems analyzing customer data to customize every aspect of an email campaign, recipients feel as if each message was crafted just for them. This personal touch makes them far more likely to open, read, click, and take action compared to generic bulk emails.
Specifically, AI customization has been shown to:
- Increase email open rates by an average of 14%, sometimes as high as 50%. With machine learning algorithms constantly optimizing subject lines, preview text, and timing for each subscriber, campaigns grab attention better than ever before.
- Boost click-through rates dramatically thanks to dynamic content blocks tailored to individual interests and needs. Click rates also rise when AI predicts the optimal time to send each email for maximum engagement.
- Drive more conversions and sales by delivering highly relevant, targeted product recommendations and offers within email content. AI generates product suggestions based on previous behaviors and preferences.
- Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through personalized experiences and valuable recommendations. 76% of consumers say personalized marketing plays a role in their purchasing decisions and brand loyalty.
The numbers speak for themselves – AI email customization pays off through hard metrics like open rates and conversions. But it also creates softer benefits of improved customer relationships, satisfaction, and loyalty. Brands that leverage AI to customize subscriber experiences reap rewards on every front.
Getting Started with AI Customization
Implementing AI-powered email customization can seem daunting, but it’s easier than you think with the right strategies. Here are some tips to make your AI email customization journey a success:
- Start small and focus on one campaign or customer segment – Don’t try to customize everything at once. Select a high-value campaign and audience to pilot your AI initiatives. As you refine the process, scale to more email programs.
- Audit your data quality – AI needs reliable data to work its magic. Review your contact data, customer information, and past engagement metrics to fill gaps and eliminate redundancies. Clean, structured data leads to accurate AI models.
- Define clear goals and success metrics – What does success look like? Increased clickthroughs? More conversions? Higher revenue per email? Set specific, measurable goals so you can properly evaluate your AI program and make ongoing optimizations.
- Don’t forget the creative – AI excels at customizing subject lines, content, timing and more, but the creative strategy and design still matters. Work with designers to develop templates and content that engages your subscribers.
- Review AI recommendations thoughtfully – AI will suggest copy changes, segments, and other customizations. Carefully consider each one rather than accepting all recommendations blindly. Leverage your human insight to determine what will resonate best.
- Monitor closely and adjust – Keep a close eye on open rates, clickthroughs, unsubscribes, conversions, and other metrics. Tweak your AI customization approach over time to improve performance. AI email is an iterative process.
With the right prep work and optimization, AI-powered customization can transform the reach, relevancy and results of your email marketing. Start small, learn as you go, and let the technology work its magic for your business.
