Email Marketing & Machine Learning

It may be hard to predict the future of commercial email marketing, but one thing seems to be clear: machine learning will definitely be a huge part of it. With the ability to radically change the email marketing landscape, the advent of AI and machine learning promises to alter some of our oldest assumptions about the email marketing phenomenon.

By reading this article, you will have the chance to understand how machine learning will impact email marketing in the years to come.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is basically the usage of email to promote certain services and products. It is all about using email to establish and develop long-lasting relationships with prospective clients. Moreover, email marketing is a segment of internet marketing, which actually includes blog marketing, website marketing, and social media marketing.

In today’s world, email marketing has become quite an essential tool. A technique of direct marketing which actually uses email as a form of disseminating commercial messages, email marketing has a plethora of advantages that readers should know about.

Advantages of Email Marketing

The primordial advantage of email marketing has to be the fact that its return on investment can actually be tracked. Indeed, by analyzing email marketing data, marketers get to know about the open and click rates of emails, the number of link clicks, and even the most successful geographical locations in terms of click rate.

Another massive advantage of email marketing? The fact that advertisers can get to reach remarkably high numbers of email subscribers on subjects which actually interest them, which obviously increases email open rates.

More advantages of email marketing that you should know about?

Here’s a list:

• Email is the oldest communication channel in the web
• More than half of all web users check their email every single day
• Email marketing allows for higher degrees of customer-oriented personalization
• There are 3 times more email accounts than there are Twitter and Facebook pages combined
• It has a higher ROI, making it one of the most effective marketing channels
• Since 72% of website users prefer getting promotional content via email, this is clearly the favorite communication channel around
• Email is proven to drive more conversions

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is basically the scientific study of complex algorithms and statistical models which are used by computer systems.

The aim? To continually improve their performance on a particular task.

What is the premise? To allow us all to build algorithms which can actually receive input data as well as use statistical analysis to be able to predict a certain output while also updating other outputs as newly-minted data becomes readily available.

What is needed to create pitch-perfect machine learning systems? Data preparation capabilities, automation, iterative processes, basic and advanced algorithms, scalability, and ensemble modeling.

Why is this tech so important in the world we’re living in? Since data mining and Big Data have become power words that can change the future of real estate, banking, FinTech, gaming, and even the food industry, it’s only natural that there seems to be a certain appeal for this high-tech. Things such as varieties of available data, computational processing, growing volumes, and the much-needed data storage will make this advancement a huge deal in the years to come.

Soon, by using algorithms to effectively create models that discover connections, all organizations will be able to make better decisions without the need for human intervention. From financial services to government, from health care to gas and oil, from transportation systems to marketing, every industry is now tapping into the inspiring potential of this phenomenal tech to yield better results, and energize strategies.

In fact, this boon combines increased personalization and huge scale to be able to effectively craft timely messages for each member of a company’s mailing list. By being able to gather more insights and meanings from analytical data than ever before, AI and machine learning can help brands use that data to automatically provide much better messaging to every single client.

This means subscribers will really be able to find answers more rapidly than before, becoming aware of the fact that companies know a lot about them, which helps empower the sense of personalization that is actually the cornerstone of perfect customer success.

Now that we know what is email marketing and what machine learning is, let’s see how they will come together to come up with incredible new solutions that will surely impact the future of advertising.

How Machine Learning Will Impact Email Marketing

1. The Content Itself

Content is obviously a remarkably important part of any email marketing strategy and it is certainly going to benefit from machine learning and automation. But how will going through a machine learning tutorial help marketers with content?

Whereas before you would have to test several different combinations of body copy and subject line to see which one yielded the best open and click rates, you can now take advantage of this tech’s statistical ability. Before, the time-consuming process of A/B testing promised to drive email marketing experts insane.

Now, with machine learning algorithms, you will be able to learn more quickly than ever before what is indeed the best possible combination that can get more clicks and empower businesses through email marketing. AI and machine learning will also allow marketers to expand their reach, testing different elements in more variations.

Data, statistical reach, and number-focused scientific fact. This is how this fundamental tech can help create much better - and successful - email marketing content in the future. 

2. Promotions Become Unique

How to ensure a promotion showcases the most alluring number? How to know when users will cave in, seeing that the cost reduction is 50%, or 64%, or 34%? What is the magic number that can be the difference between dull neglect or phenomenally high conversion levels in email marketing promotions?

AI can help us get to know. The right AI tool will be able to collect, gather and learn information about consumer purchase history. With that pithy data, over time, marketers will be better able to determine which are the very best offers that guarantee high-performing email marketing promotion campaigns.

It may be a perfectly balanced and data-oriented mix of free shipping and percent off, a specific amount of euros, or even nothing at all.

The main idea? To use this tech’s amazing data-driven abilities to earn more revenue with promotional content and discount campaigns, allowing company email marketing to reach new levels.

3. Segmentation Gets Smart

Purchase behavior, demographics, psychographics, and even geographic location. In fact, there are many aspects and categories when it comes to the realm of market segmentation in email advertising campaigns.

But how can AI and machine learning help you take market segmentation to new levels of optimal power? These technologies can help speed up the whole segmentation process.

How? By being able to quickly identify particular subscriber behaviors and purchase patterns gathered through CRM systems, website forms, as well as other well-known customer data inputs.

The end result? Both these advancements will be able to dynamically segment subscribers into specific lists faster than ever thought possible.

4. Send Times Become Optimal

One of the struggles faced by all who have tried to tame the email marketing monster and become versed in advertising through email? The fact that it’s hard to understand what is the very best time to send an email.

The more varied and diverse the pool of emails, the tougher it is to decide what is the optimal time of the day that guarantees higher open rates, faster clicks, and increased customer retention.

How can machine learning and AI help email marketing master optimal send times? AI and predictive analytics will make the choice much simpler, by helping email marketing experts to actually automate the more efficient send times based on certain insights from both behavioral patterns and previous email interactions.

This means that email marketers will be able to supercharge AI to determine what is the best time to send successful emails to each promising subscriber, making sure all emails get the attention they duly deserve. This can really become one of the greatest email marketing solutions of all time.

5. Efficient Workflow

Email automation has been the talk of the town for ages. But how will AI turn this email marketing service into something that is much more impactful? AI-enabled systems already make it possible to actually set up automation campaigns.

These email marketing campaigns are informed by subscriber insights and are effectively based on which lifecycle phase subscribers happen to be at. By being able to understand interests, browsing behaviors, and past purchases, AI allows you to set up perfectly automated campaigns that will take lead nurturing to a whole new level.

Moreover, AI and email marketing will come together, allowing everyone to know what content and images will yield the best results in recovery emails, welcome emails, order update emails, newsletters, and retention emails.

The master objective? To systematically increase engagement and escalate conversions.

6. Product Recommendations

Using machine learning technology and predictive modeling to deliver dead-on product suggestions that are effectively based on real-time customer interactions and behavior is now possible. This means savvy email marketing professionals will become able to use recommendations to improve as well as adapt, ensuring they get to increase clicks, opens and purchases as more info is learned about users.

This will effectively allow you to send triggered promotional messages to a loyal customer base. Moreover, these two technologies will also allow companies to completely rethink how they actually communicate with their database, using programmatic templates to personalize umpteen messages every single day.

These product recommendation email marketing campaigns can actually double the engagement rate of some of the other traditional campaigns. Instead of going through the hassle of building promotional campaigns one by one, companies are going to be using these two new ideals to craft impeccable product recommendation emails that are not only automated but much more effective.

Email Marketing 2.0

Highly targeted personalization, automated product recommendations, tried-and-tested content, and a huge wealth of analytically-driven data that can empower email marketing strategies and shape the future of marketing itself.

By using the wondrous power of AI and machine learning, you will be able to supercharge remarkably successful, tailor-made, pitch-perfect targeted email marketing services that will effectively increase customer retention, ROI, and help form long-lasting partnerships between companies and optimally supported customers.