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Better Targeting for Your Emails with Artificial Intelligence

Get to know your customers better with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and start improving their email marketing experience by sending your emails with AI.

Are you looking for new ways to improve your email targeting efforts? 

Maybe your current segmentation and personalization efforts just aren’t cutting it anymore. Or maybe you’re looking for a way to stay ahead of the competition. Whatever the reasoning behind wanting to take your email marketing to the next level, artificial intelligence (AI) can help you reach your goals. 

Combining email marketing and AI will allow you to better target and personalize your email messaging. You’ll have the ability to learn and understand your customers on a deeper level and provide them with the most relevant content. 

Once you have a clear understanding of who your customers are and what they need, you can begin to target your emails to them in ways you could never have before. Using AI will truly take your email marketing to the next level and improve your conversion rates. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at five ways that AI can help improve your email targeting. Here’s a quick look at how AI can help you better target your emails: 

  • Improve personalization
  • Optimize email send times
  • Advance automation efforts
  • Provide personalized content
  • Enhance current segmentation 

5 Ways to Use Artificial Intelligence in Email Marketing

Your email marketing
Image by Muhammad Ribkhan from Pixabay

AI has been around for years, but for many marketers, it’s just starting to become relevant in their work. When you first think about what AI is, your mind probably jumps to robots and advanced computer systems. But in reality, it can be an extremely useful tool in the marketing world. 

And there’s no better place for it in marketing than email. AI and machine learning technologies allow you to mine massive amounts of data and quickly learn and identify customer habits. Once you know this information, you can begin to use that to better target their current needs and predict what they will need in the future. 

Investing in AI will help you expand your horizons and start targeting customers in ways you never knew were possible. Let’s take a look at a few of the ways AI can improve your current email efforts.

1. Improved Personalization

Personalization is a very important tactic you should be utilizing in your current email marketing efforts. It’s something that most companies are already investing in, and it’s proven to be an effective solution to improving email metrics. In fact, 82% of marketers report increased open rates with email personalization. 

Sure, at first, your customers were super engaged and opening almost all of your emails. But what happens when your current personalization efforts start to wear off? 

You can keep that momentum by continuously working to improve your personalization. One way to do that is with the help of advanced technology, such as AI and machine learning. 

Personalization
Image courtesy of Gartner

Personalization can mean a lot of things, that’s why using technology such as AI can help you identify what is most relevant for your customers. The more you know, the more you can personalize their email experience with the content they want to receive

By learning and analyzing the behaviors of your customers, you can start to understand what works and what doesn’t for them. You’ll quickly be able to identify trends that allow you to send only the most relevant content to your subscribers. Once you know this, you can target them on a more granular level and begin personalizing emails in new ways. 

In addition to using technology to gain a better understanding of their likes and dislikes, you can ask subscribers to provide you with their personal preferences and interests. This can help you get your feet off the ground and then start running once you have your new technology in place. 

2. Optimized Send Times

With the help of AI, you can also begin to identify trends to help you optimize your email send times. This gets your emails in front of your subscribers at best possible time — resulting in more conversions. 

Think about it this way. If you could avoid sending your emails when they are most likely to get lost in a sea of other emails, would you? Obviously, unless you’re happy with the status quo, the answer to that is yes. 

Send Time Optimizaation
Image courtesy of LinkedIn SlideShare

Optimizing your email send times can make a big difference when it comes to your engagement rates. Sending emails to each person on their individual schedule will result in higher open and click-through rates. 

Being able to put your email front and center will make it much easier to get the attention of your customers and stay on their radar. With AI, it’s a simple process that is done by analyzing a customer’s individual engagement signals. Then, emails are sent to each customer only when they are most likely to engage with it. 

Optimizing the send time of your emails will let you target your customers on a more personalized level based on their current email behaviors. This will get your message in front of your customers at the right time and boost your email metrics in the process. 

3. Advanced Automation

Email automation isn’t anything new for marketers. Automation helps you make your daily email tasks more manageable and can help take your email marketing to the next level. You can automate campaigns and send messages to your segmented customer lists — but what if you could take it even further. 

Email automation stats
Image courtesy of Webfx.

Automation has made a huge difference in the world of email marketing. So much so that many marketers say it’s important in their success and increases revenue dollars. 

Utilizing AI in your email automation does just that. It allows you to create automated campaigns that enroll new customers as their needs change. This can be based on recent purchases, browsing behavior, or their personal customer journey. 

You can start to move customers through the sales automation cycle based on their wants and needs. Send them relevant promotions or enroll them in campaigns that meet their specific interests — the possibilities are endless. 

AI gives you the power of knowledge and machine learning automation. As it learns to predict what customers want, it can enroll them in the most relevant campaigns and start improving your bottom line. When you combine the powers of AI and automation, you can reach optimal targeting levels. 

4. Personalized Content

Create content that speaks to your audience in the most relevant and personal manner possible. Using the right content can differentiate your brand from the others who are providing a one-off experience. 

customer experience research
Image courtesy of Smart Insights

If you’re one of the 87% of organizations that want to provide your customers with exceptional customer experience, it can’t be done without personalized content. 

This goes back to the idea of providing a more personalized experience for your subscribers. The more you understand what types of content work best for them, the better you can market to them. 

But we’re not just talking about adding a name token to your subject line. AI and machine learning will allow you to provide even more personalized content. Knowing more about your customers’ interests, browsing story, and purchasing tendencies will allow you to provide them with an even more personalized experience. 

Not sure what that looks like? Here are a few examples of ways you can personalize content based on the data you can collect from your customers. 

  • Know what customers are more likely to purchase when they are enticed with a coupon, and then send them a coupon
  • Reshare products a customer recently browsed for on your website and remind them of why they loved it in the first place
  • Use their interests to build a connection with your brand and bring them back to your website 

The more you understand what content your customers want to receive from you, the better chances you have at increasing conversion rates. AI allows you to send the right information to the right person and improve your current targeting tactics.

5. Enhanced Segmentation 

So, you’re probably catching on now that AI has the ability to improve nearly any of your email marketing efforts. That’s also true for your current segmentation efforts. AI and machine learning once again can understand your customers on a more granular level and help improve your segmentation. 

List Segmentation
Image courtesy of Neil Patel

Segmenting your emails goes a long way when it comes to your marketing metrics. From increased opens and clicks to lower bounces and unsubscribes, it’s a must-do when it comes to email marketing. 

The great thing about using technology to help enhance your segmentation is that it knows when your customers change and can adjust accordingly. What that means is it takes queues from their behaviors and can identify or adjust segmentation details in real-time. 

Something that would take human months to learn can be done immediately with the help of these advanced technologies. This ensures that your segmented lists are always up-to-date and targeting the right customers at the right stage of their purchasing journey. 

You no longer have to worry if you’re sending the wrong content to new customers versus your loyal customer base. The system will identify exactly where the customer is in the sales funnel and provide them with the most relevant information to help improve conversion rates. 

Take Your Email Marketing to the Next Level With the Help of Artificial Intelligence 

So there you have it. AI has the ability to take your email marketing to the next level and help you better understand and target your customers. You’ll quickly see improvements in your engagement and conversions by providing them with more personalized and relevant experience. 

Improving your targeting efforts is all about understanding your customers on a more granular level. AI lets you quickly and easily begin to identify the interests, wants, and needs of your customers. With that said, are you ready to start building a better connection with your customers? 

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay