Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) are among the most thoroughly discussed trends that are relied on to improve many areas of email marketing.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence applied when a machine mimics the "cognitive" functions associated with a human mind like "learning" and "problem-solving”. When it comes to the choice of relevant content, offer and promotion targeting, or fine-tuning the frequency and send time, AI is second to none. We’ll dig deeper into the main mechanics further on.
Machine learning (ML) is a field of computer science that uses statistical techniques to endow computer systems with an ability to "learn" from data without being explicitly programmed. In data analytics, ML is understood as a method used to create complex models and algorithms for prediction, also known as predictive analytics. In email marketing, ML heavily relies on predictive analytic techniques to identify customer preferences that drive the personalization of messages. These efforts help build lasting customer relationships by delivering more relevant offers and messages to subscribers no matter what industry we’re speaking about.
Deep learning (DL) is a machine learning method based on learning data representations, not algorithms. Neural networks based on deep learning not only perform simple actions like image recognition, understanding speech and emotions but can implement these actions to solve email marketers’ problems. We can expect that by analyzing the emotions triggered by certain content, neural networks will include it into customer communications more or less often, depending on the desired impact. Content creation might also undergo certain changes as bots might create better texts–and do it faster–than people can, thus increasing competition for quality content for distribution.
Being one of the fundamental metrics of predictive analytics, lifetime value (LTV) enables estimating the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns and making greater investments in the new customer acquisition for companies.
AI and ML are widely discussed as the means to address the pressing practical needs of digital marketers. If you look closely at any business owner’s routine, you’ll notice a constant lack of time, resources, and marketing skills. Most attempts to scale up a successful campaign only lead to a growth in the marketing team’s size, not to better results. Automation software can help balance out the marketers’ pains and gains, making email marketing simpler and more cost-effective. Let's take a closer look at the main aspects of a campaign that can help email marketers improve the results.
Machine learning capabilities allow marketers to understand what resonates best with each customer based on multiple data points and variables: socio-demographic characteristics, geolocation, psychological types, peculiarities of behavior, interests, etc. Based on these insights, AI-powered platforms create personalized communication calendars and select relevant content that will work towards increasing each subscriber’s engagement and stimulating activity.
A/B testing drives marketers to think outside the box, as, reinforced by AI strategies, it helps to assign points to the freshly uploaded content, compare it with everything that already is in the system, and plan a personalized communications schedule to increase each subscriber’s engagement and enhance the campaign’s performance to the max. Technically being an advanced version of univariate A/B testing, multivariate tests promise a better outcome, and here’s why.
The point of the multivariate test is to give an idea of which web page or email elements work towards the achievement of the main objective in the most effective way so that you can optimize these elements even further and stimulate a better response from users. Subject line, header, key visual elements, calls-to-action, buttons, send time, landing pages elements, etc. – all of these are to be examined closely and tweaked to perfection. You’ll be surprised with how small a tweak can be (a mere change in button color) and how big an increase in CTR it can drive.
Based on the results of multivariate or A/B testing of real email marketing metrics (OR, CTR, etc.), there is the opportunity to enable the automated personal marketing optimization predictive function that allows to quickly optimize content uploads and/or edits. It also allows marketers to see what content should be changed and in which way, what new content should be added, and how it can influence the future results.
The right content choices help to build stable long-term relationships with each user and increase their LTV.
One of the crucial factors for email opens and clicks is the send time. Sending campaigns at the right time allows increasing their impact on customers by 30%. ML algorithms analyze users’ behavior and pinpoint the time when your messages are more likely to get a response or be interacted with. Such details give a significant boost in conversion. Automated rescheduling of the planned send time helps to adjust your campaign to the ongoing changes in a customer’s behavior, interests, etc.
AI-solutions create a personalized communications schedule to make sure that a website gets in touch with every user with a definite individual frequency and at the certain send time, both of which have been automatically determined by the systems. When determining, the system takes into account a user’s behavior both on the whole website and in different content categories. Thus, if a user prefers a specific section or content topic, the chosen section/ topic will prevail in the communication. Should a user’s interests change, the system will edit the communications schedule based on the content that is currently more appealing to the user. It will schedule the send time for each user individually, taking into consideration the user’s time zone, the time when the content receives the best response, etc.
No two customers are the same, so defining the frequency by relying on AI-strategies helps a business to build and reinforce long-term relationships with each customer. It is impossible to determine the absolute number of emails that a marketer should send to a customer—the figure can lie anywhere between 0 and the infinity. If an increased frequency helps to improve customers’ experience and prolong their lifetime, the system will increase it accordingly.
It is universally known that an email marketing campaign brings the best results when it is aimed at opt-in customers, who expect the brand to know their preferences and provide authentic communications. Modern marketing technologies can cope with this task. AI can also monitor the customers’ behavior to predict the outflow and the potential to improve value.
Actively managing customer churn is essential to making your business viable and successful. In particular, businesses that rely on a subscription-based model keep close tabs on their customers’ churn rate. Combined with the high costs of new customer acquisition, it makes the customer churn prediction extremely appealing. Knowing when and where customers are likely to tune out can inspire marketers to create new communication strategies for various customer groups and pay more attention to existing customers in order to prevent them from outflowing.
You need to get an understanding of your core audience and to continuously work on its engagement in order to build your future capital. Only if you know the ways your customers behave in and can predict the clicks they are going to make can you build the value for your business, get a sense of security, and increase the revenue flow that your company will further invest in scaling your business processes up.