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Boost Your Brand's Success With AI-Based Email Marketing
Master AI Techniques and Optimize Campaign Performance
Megan Smith
January 12th, 2025
My decision to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a writer came out of practicality — an “if-you-can't-beat-'em” mentality, but the truth is that I've learned to love my robot minions.
AI-based email marketing has changed customer engagement and marketing workflows.
AI and marketing automation benefit brands by allowing them to reach their audiences at the perfect moment with the perfect message.
By using email automation and AI, you can do more with less time and effort.
Personalization turns email broadcasts into individual dialogues between you and your readers. Campaign optimization and content creation are also easier.
If you haven't yet joined the revolution, now's your chance. Here's how AI can benefit your brand and tips for making the most of it.
Table of Contents
Understanding AI-Based Email Marketing
Email marketing remains a key marketing tool, and AI is one of the latest email trends helping it stay innovative.
What Is AI-Based Email Marketing?
AI-based email marketing utilizes artificial intelligence to improve how brands craft, target, and deliver emails. It can process large datasets to give marketers new insights and make data-driven decisions possible.
You can learn about your audience at every level, both in groups and as individuals. Let AI tools refine your practices and personalize the content you send.
The Evolution of Email Marketing With AI
Email marketing used to be a way to broadcast messages to a wide audience, but it now demands a more targeted, AI-supported approach.
As of September 2023, 57% of enterprise marketers use AI in email, and that number is still growing.
AI email applications have gotten increasingly precise and sophisticated. You can use them to improve your content and strategy, continually refining your email marketing.
Key Benefits of AI in Email Marketing
Integrating AI into email marketing strategies improves efficiency and effectiveness. With AI, marketers can provide more relevant content, simplify processes, and boost audience engagement.
Enhanced Personalization and Segmentation
AI personalization and segmentation help engage individual recipients and tweak content for different audience segments.
Personalized Marketing
Consumers leave information behind whenever they see your content, connect with your brand, or make a purchase.
Sixty percent of retailers report they have easy access to enough consumer data to leverage AI tools. AI crunches the massive amounts of data generated in every interaction and turns it into usable insights.
Tailored Campaigns
With AI's ability to process and interpret this data, marketers can craft highly personalized email campaigns addressed to the specific interests of each recipient and improve engagement rate.
Personalized emails capture attention and foster a stronger connection between the brand and the audience.
Better Targeting
The power of email segmentation lies in your ability to group these recognized individuals based on various criteria, and AI can help you create and populate effective groups.
Common email segments include people who share the following characteristics:
Demographics
Geolocation
Purchase history/browsing behavior
Email engagement levels
AI analyzes customer data to create these groups.
Automation and Workflow Optimization
The top automated email campaigns free up valuable time by delegating routine tasks such as scheduling emails, managing subscriber lists, and analyzing campaign performance.
Guide your readers’ journeys and respond to every interaction with customized automated workflows that instantly respond to designated triggers.
Now, with generative AI, you can decrease the time spent on content creation and design, too.
McKinsey & Co. estimates that generative AI will be able to automate up to 30% of ordinary business activities by 2030. Get a head start by taking advantage of it for email.
Eliot Crist calls beehiiv's automation tools instrumental to the success of his fantasy football newsletter Fantasy Life. He used them and other elements of the platform to increase his click-through rate by 200%.
Predictive Analytics and Data-Driven Decisions
AI uses the past to predict the future. It anticipates and responds to customers' needs and interests as they evolve.
This proactive approach helps businesses improve campaign outcomes and stay (literally) ahead.
Email marketers identified predictive analytics as the number-two trend poised to affect email automation — after hyper-personalization.
Improved Customer Engagement and Retention
All of these benefits contribute to a more engaged, loyal customer base. With timely, personalized content, you can turn one-time browsers into long-term relationships.
For instance, 80% of business leaders claim that personalized experience increases consumer spending, and 62% believe that it aids customer retention.
How AI Is Used in Email Marketing
Artificial intelligence improves email's efficiency and effectiveness. Marketers leverage AI to refine their strategies and create better content for their audience.
Content Generation and Optimization
U.S. and E.U. marketers rate automatic content and image generation as the most interesting applications of AI email marketing.
beehiiv's AI writing assistant makes the creative process easier. It can help you compose catchy subject lines and write the email body, making it easier for marketers to grab attention from their first lines.
Optimize the copy with the ideal tone and message for your target audience.
Timing and Frequency Optimization
There are standard best practices for email marketing, including the best times to send a newsletter, but AI marketing helps you refine your schedule. Find the best time and frequency for your subscribers.
Sending emails at the right time increases open rates and engagement with your message.
AI analyzes how people interacted with past emails and suggests the best sending times for the group or the individual reader.
Volume is equally important. If you send too many emails, people may ignore them or unsubscribe. Use AI and email analytics to adjust your frequency to keep your audience interested.
A/B Testing and Campaign Refinement
AI significantly enhances email testing. Create A/B tests with different subject lines or CTAs and automatically send the winners to your audience.
Sophisticated email analytics also help with iteration and continuous improvement.
By highlighting which elements of an email—such as images, buttons, or subject lines—capture the most attention, they contribute to informed decisions.
Audience Segmentation and Targeting
Audience segmentation is a key part of data-driven email marketing, and AI can identify smaller, more focused groups of individuals with shared interests and behaviors.
The biggest brands are already employing AI segmentation and targeting.
Starbucks's Deep Brew program uses AI to identify the best incentives for rewards program members, driving more revenue and growing the program by 13% compared to the previous year.
Best Practices for Implementing AI in Email Marketing
There's a lot of AI-based email marketing out there. Distinguish yours with these best practices.
Choosing the Right AI Tools and Platforms
Choose from the hottest AI tools to find the right one for your brand.
Research AI-based email marketing apps, focusing on the features fitted to your brand objectives. The right tool should enhance your capabilities without adding unnecessary complexity.
beehiiv
In addition to best-in-class email deliverability, growth tools, and analytics, the beehiiv platform includes multiple AI tools to improve your marketing and communication:
Writing assistant: Jumpstart your next email with gen-AI composition.
AI editing tools: Spell-check your prose, change your tone, or get suggestions to improve your style and grammar.
AI image tools: Enhance your copy with text-to-image generation. Just describe the graphic you want the tool to create.
AI translator: Reach a larger audience with a multilingual newsletter, using an in-platform translator fluent in the world's most popular languages.
Zapier
Zapier is a powerful AI automation tool that connects various apps and services through Zaps. When a specified event occurs in one app, Zapier automatically executes the designated tasks in another app.
Connect your email marketing software to other tools, such as CRM or project management platforms. Store and edit information, categorize messages, and even generate responses to incoming emails.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a popular AI-powered writing editor that helps users improve their grammar, spelling, and style in real time. It corrects copy and suggests better alternatives.
Grammarly can improve your marketing emails, blog posts, social media content, and more. Its AI algorithms continuously learn from user data to provide even more accurate and personalized suggestions.
Hemingway App
The Hemingway App is a popular writing tool that helps you improve the clarity and readability of your content. It highlights long sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and other common writing issues and grades your text based on readability levels.
The app’s latest update adds AI-powered suggestions for improving your writing even further.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI technology. It can hold conversations and even generate entire email campaigns on its own.
ChatGPT can automate customer service, engage with leads and prospects, or create personalized marketing messages at scale.
Get the most out of this tool by pairing it with the Superpower Chat GPT extension, which adds pro functionality.
Don't forget to sign up for the free beehiiv newsletter Superpower AI from developer Saeed Ezzati, which gives you tips on how to optimize all of your AI marketing.
Canva
Canva is a design platform that allows users to create graphics, presentations, social media posts, and more.
Even if you're not an experienced designer, Canva offers templates and drag-and-drop features to make it easier to create visually appealing content.
Canva now has native AI tools to help you create images, videos, designs, and copy faster. It can automatically resize images for different social media platforms, generate design ideas based on your preferences, and create gorgeous Canva newsletters to send in beehiiv.
Undetectable AI
Make sure every word you write sounds like it was written by a human. (Sometimes we all sound a little robotic, even when creating 100% organic content.)
Undetectable AI is one of the best free AI detectors. It will scan your content and provide you with a report showing how likely it was written by AI, judging it by the standards used by other AI detectors and identifying whether each would judge your piece as AI-written.
DALL·E 3
GPT-3 offers more than text generation. DALL·E 3 is a GPT-3-powered model that can generate images from text descriptions. It allows users to add custom graphics to newsletters with ease.
Integrating AI With Existing Marketing Strategies
Adding AI to your brand's workflows requires thought and care.
Start by assessing your existing email marketing and pinpointing areas where AI can provide valuable support.
Begin with small, manageable integrations like automated scheduling to save time and make sure that anyone who needs training in the new tools gets it.
When in doubt, keep these AI integration strategies published by Forbes's Technology Council in mind:
Know AI strengths and weaknesses: Don't confuse what AI might be able to do someday with what it can do right now.
Evaluate your business needs: Identify pain points and time-intensive activities.
Continue to iterate implementation: Help your tools learn how to best serve you and provide them with the most current, accurate information.
Invest in training: Even if you have a team of one and a budget of $0, invest adequate time in learning how to use AI tools.
Strive to enhance, not replace: Homogenous content won't win you any awards. Lean into your brand voice and personality.
The importance of brand personality is rising in a world overrun with AI content. Your top priority should be to connect with your customers, establishing your authentic voice and inspiring confidence.
Ensuring Data Privacy and Security
Eighty percent of data experts agree that AI increases challenges to privacy and security. As you collect and apply more extensive data, protecting that information becomes more complicated.
Comply with data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Use secure servers and encrypt data to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Establish clear policies for data handling and inform your subscribers about the measures you take to safeguard them.
Regular audits and updates are also important, allowing you to identify vulnerabilities and reinforce defenses.
Balancing Automation With Human Creativity
While AI can automate many aspects of email marketing, there's no substitute for human creativity. Only real people can surprise readers and inspire trust.
Sports Illustrated ended 2023 in disgrace after investigative journalists discovered that multiple staff writers were fictional characters, created by AI and "authoring" AI content. Don’t make the same mistake.
AI tools free up valuable time — use your new hours to strategize and develop creative content. Take advantage of intrinsically human abilities such as storytelling and an authentic voice.
Power your content strategy with AI that doesn't replace your voice.
You can use AI email marketing tools for the following tasks:
Brainstorm ideas: Give AI a prompt and generate a variety of topics and angles.
Draft outlines: Let AI draw up the initial skeleton for your emails with content for writers to fill out in their own words.
Data analysis: Identify trends and audience preferences as you lay out content strategy.
Your beehiiv publication also comes with an archive website where you can display previous posts, generating organic traffic to your website.
Help future fans find you with the best AI SEO tools. These tools will suggest keywords and improve the readability of each issue.
Common Challenges and How To Overcome Them
AI brings many benefits to email marketing, but its implementation presents challenges. It’s necessary to understand these challenges in order to avoid them.
Managing AI Implementation Costs
Implementing AI in email marketing can be costly, but there are ways to manage these expenses effectively.
Find the AI technologies that offer the most value for your campaigns.
Look for scalable solutions that allow you to start small and grow as needed, minimizing upfront costs while providing flexibility.
You can also consider open-source AI tools if you're looking for free alternatives.
Strong, cost-effective email platforms combine the latest AI functionalities with traditional email marketing features, giving you more for your money. Check out beehiiv's competitive pricing.
Avoiding Over-Reliance on Automation
Strike the right balance. Use AI in email marketing for time-consuming, non-strategic tasks, but claim strategic decisions and creative tasks for yourself.
Teamwork also outdoes generic AI content, so encourage collaboration and group brainstorming to generate ideas.
Regularly review AI-driven processes and content to ensure that they align with your brand’s voice and goals. Consistency and authenticity are essential.
Addressing Data Quality and Accuracy Issues
High-quality data serves as the foundation for successful AI email marketing. Without reliable data, even the most advanced tools can fail, leading to poor targeting and lower engagement.
Keep your data clean with strict collection and management practices. Regularly update your databases to eliminate duplicates and outdated information.
Join the AI Revolution
To return to my earlier point, you can't beat 'em — but, really, why would you want to?
The old folk legend says that John Henry won the contest against the steam drill, only to die immediately after, his body pushed beyond its limits.
There's no need for such pyrrhic victories. AI-based email marketing enables you to connect with your audience more effectively with less effort.
The keys are strategy and thoughtful deployment of your robot army. Let AI tools handle the tasks best left to them and hold on to the things that belong on your to-do list.
Let beehiiv help you get started. Sign up for a free beehiiv trial today to save time, money, and sanity in your marketing endeavors.
Why Trust Me
I'm an experienced digital marketer with multiple bylined articles to my name as well as an AI enthusiast. An old-school book nerd, I firmly believe that you can have your virtual cake and eat it, too.
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