How AI and Data Science Are Changing the Email Marketing Industry

AI growth statistics for 2019 have shown us that artificial intelligence and data science have both been big factors in how we market to and understand our customers. Driving sales and traffic through data and AI is huge for countless digital marketing tasks like creating marketing strategies, improving business efficiency, and bringing forward a better customer experience. In other words, whether you are striving to drive brand engagement, gain customer loyalty, or increase overall sales, these tools work seamlessly to create the best experience for both the business owner and the customer.

In fact, one huge way that both of these tools are used is in the realm of emails, where data science in email marketing is used every single day. That being said, many users’ emails are overcrowded with nonsense messages that are useless and often end up unopened and deleted. To beat the unopened email trend and pass your competition, today we will focus on how AI and data science are changing the email marketing industry by diving into email marketing and machine learning, how AI is used in machine learning to classify emails and turn them into insights, as well as covering an overview of how email and big data can boost your marketing campaign. Overall, we’re going to make sure you can implement artificial intelligence in email marketing to make your brand stand out.

How Big Data Can Boost Your Next Email Marketing Campaign

Before we dive into the many ways you can use big data to skyrocket your next email marketing campaign, let’s start off with the basics: What exactly is big data? Big data is a very complex term that essentially refers to an extremely large data set that reveals things like trends and patterns based on human behavior and digital interactions. This type of data is extremely large and often times is even too large for a regular processor to handle because of the overload of information. As it happens to be, that’s what makes big data so effective.

With that covered, let’s move onto some ways that data for email marketing and data science can completely transform your next campaign.

Second Chance Marketing

Giving people a second chance to buy the products they may have left in their carts brings traffic to your website and gives them another look at the products they had their eye on. Whether it’s on mobile, desktop, tablet or all three, sending a quick follow up to your customers is always a good idea. According to the data, 81% of SMBs still rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention. 99% of customers check their email every day, with data gleaned from your users’ very own interactions, you arrive at the perfect second chance email to send.

For example, a company that does this well is the clothing brand, Chubbies. If you have an account with them and have an item left in your cart, they’ll send you an email with a direct link to your cart how you left it. Doing this takes the data they have and gives customers another look at what they were thinking about purchasing, and may even give them the push to convert.

Similar Purchasing

Many companies offer several different versions of products and add-ons that can be used with the products they offer. By leveraging your analytics and zeroing-in on the products your users are purchasing, as well as those that are more often purchased as a bundle, you can send emails after each purchase and offer a better customer experience.

As you can imagine, a brand that does this wonderfully well is Amazon, who offers the option to buy similar products after a purchase via email, as well as through many other points along the customer journey. Combining that with big data tools and analysis, Amazon is ahead of the game when it comes to email marketing.

Special Event Codes

Every customer wants to feel important and that they got the best deal possible. Sending out automated codes for special events like holidays and birthdays makes customers feel very good and more inclined to make a purchase because you’re presenting them with just that: a deal. For an even bigger impact, you can look at the data and personalize these codes for specific products or categories that are more likely to lead to a conversion. For example, this could be sending a “10% off all jackets and sweaters” code as a birthday gift to someone who was browsing that very section of your website.

A brand that understands special event codes is Vera Bradley, who offers special one-time coupons for birthday months and further incentivizes their users a reason to head into the store, even if they weren’t necessarily on the lookout for anything.

Four AI Tools That Are Key to Email Marketing

Knowing what to do is only part of the equation; the rest is knowing what to use and how to use it. To that end, we’re going to cover four AI-backed tools that will prove to be lifesavers in all your email marketing endeavors.

Persado

Ever wonder how businesses have the time to personalize each of their customers’ emails before sending? Well, maybe because they don’t! Persado is an AI tool you can use to send personalized emails to each of your customers, without doing any of the tedious work yourself. Persado creates subject lines that appeal to each customer and increase the odds of getting a conversion with an emotional and personal appeal.

Albert

Directly communicating with each customer is difficult, but with Albert you can seamlessly send targeted emails to cater specifically to each one of them. It’s proven that companies that implement segmented email campaigns have up to a 760% increase in revenue, and Albert does this by optimizing your emails based on factors like location, likes and dislikes.

Optimail

The best email marketing campaigns are tailor-made for each and every recipient. Though personalization will work wonders in this regard, what you really need is the knowledge that your personalization is hitting all the right notes. While A/B testing has often been the go-to to make this happen, Optimail and their AI-backed algorithms that assess the impact of your emails in the context of your entire campaign is exactly what you need. Not content to run a few tests here and there, Optimail will continually monitor user behavior and adjust your messages to meet all your business goals.

Siftrock

Life is busy and people are impatient. Sending out automated response emails is key to bringing the assurance your customers need to let them know you care, and Siftrock does just that. Apart from eliminating tedious work that would have to be done manually, Siftrock generates automated replies for you 24/7 so you can be responsive to your customer without actually responding.

Five Email Marketing Benefits from Using Data Science and AI

Data science and AI is single handlely changing the way email marketing is used for business. Besides the obvious benefit of increasing sales, there are countless benefits that these tools bring to your email marketing strategy. Let’s cover five such benefits!

1. Offer a Personalized Experience

As we briefly discussed before, customers are only interested in what values them and creating the best personalized experience is a marketing trend we can’t get enough of. When it comes to generating the best email purchasing experience, AI tools will be your right hand.

2. Receive Email Analytics

If you ever have the opportunity to improve your users’ interactions with your brand based on actionable data, do it! By using AI tools and data science, you can use the email analytics you gather to change, alter and define how your target customers interact with your content and brand.

3. Improve Communication

Whether it is done directly or indirectly, communication is key for any business deal. With AI tools automatically and steadily communicating with your customers for you, there’s no worry about your customers having to wait hours to get a response; with AI tools, your customers will get answers within seconds.

4. Save Time and Money

While AI tools may cost a little more for you to implement them, you will end up saving an insane amount of time, money and effort in the long run by using data science and AI tools in your strategy and making use of the human-like capabilities they offer.

5. Increase Conversion Rates

People like things to be quick and efficient. If your company can do both, your customers will appreciate and continue to use you. By knowing what your customer wants and how to give it to them, you are destined for success and increased conversion rates.

Let’s Review

It’s clear that data science and AI are creating new expectations for what it means to succeed and exceed in the email marketing industry.  When creating a strategy to boost your next email marketing campaign, be sure to keep in mind everything we covered today. Starting with the combination of data and email marketing, here’s what you can do:

• Second chance marketing
• Offer similar products for purchasing
• Send special event codes

Moving onto the tools you should add to your repertoire ASAP, here they are one more time:

• Persado
• Albert
• Optimail
• Siftrock

Finally, let’s do a once-over of some of the benefits you’ll gain from using data science and AI to back up your email marketing strategy:

1. Offer a personalized experience
2. Receive email analytics
3. Improve communication
4. Save time and money
5. Increase conversion rates