Email Marketing Evolution in the Context of Artificial Intelligence

* The article was initially prepared by the Yespo team for the Inweb blog.

Email marketing has been predicted to be ineffective for many years, but campaign budgets are only growing. In 2020, the global email marketing market was estimated at $7.5 billion, and this figure is projected to grow to $17.9 billion by 2027.

According to the Yespo study, email is still the leading customer communication channel.

In 2024, email marketing is still important for businesses because:

1. It is a profitable communication channel — every dollar invested on average pays off 36 times.
2. Email is used by more than 4.26 billion people, allowing you to reach a large target audience.
3. You can maintain personalized, varied, and regular communication with your subscribers, increasing their loyalty and turning them into regular customers.

That's why it's important to follow the evolution of email marketing to adapt to the game's new rules in time and get better results. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the factors behind the significant changes.

In this article, we will tell you:

• how email marketing is developing after the spread of AI;
• how Yespo integrates artificial intelligence;
• how AI simplifies the life of marketers;
• what trends 2024 will bring to email marketing;
• what email marketing might look like in the future.

Email Marketing Development After the Appearance of Artificial Intelligence

Initially, AI, like everything new, seemed scary and incomprehensible. But now, it is hard to imagine high-quality and effective marketing without such a tool.

Companies implementing artificial intelligence in marketing processes have noticed a trend of reducing costs by 10-20%. Another study shows that AI allows marketers to increase sales (52%), retain customers (51%), and succeed in launching new products (49%).

All this is made possible by the following advantages of using AI:

1. Routine processes automation. Artificial intelligence can take over text creation, error correction, translation, and other tasks, freeing up more time for marketers to strategize, test, and improve email campaigns.
2. Lower risk of errors. Standardized AI algorithms minimize the possibility of errors compared to manual processes.
3. Increased personalization. Artificial intelligence allows you to collect and analyze large amounts of data about user behavior, preferences, and interaction history. This helps you create personalized emails with a higher CTR (Click-Through Rate) and conversion rate.
4. Improved forecasting accuracy. AI allows you to predict user behavior more accurately based on their data analysis. It helps to develop more effective email strategies, optimize the timing and frequency of emails, forecast demand, and identify the most promising audience segments for specific products or services.

How AI in Email Marketing Makes Marketers’ Life Easier

90% of marketers claim that artificial intelligence and automation help them spend less time on manual tasks, as they can fully or partially delegate many routine tasks to AI.

Specialists have finally shifted their focus from content creation to process management, strategy building, metrics analysis, and timely response to changes in campaign effectiveness or more global market conditions.

In addition, implementing AI tools can save an employee 2.5 hours on routine tasks. As a result, the marketing team has 25-26 additional working days per year to implement more important tasks.

The Yespo team is also implementing AI tools, one of which is ChatGPT. Let's talk about three already tested ways to speed up the work with email content using artificial intelligence.

Email Subject Lines Generating

To understand who is better at this task, Yespo marketers conducted two A/B tests:

• In the first one, we compared two email subject lines from ChatGPT — both variants showed the same click-through rate (CTOR).

• In the second one, we compared other email topics: one was generated by artificial intelligence, the other by a human. A/B testing showed that both variants had the same result.

If you simply ask ChatGPT to write a subject line for your email, you will most likely not get a good one.

To get a better result, add more specifics to your request, for example, specify

• type of email
• the purpose of the mailing;
• tone of voice;
• target audience;
• key phrases, etc.

Text Translating

The next task for AI from the Yespo team was to translate the subject line of the Black Friday email into languages spoken in Switzerland.

The chatbot fulfilled the request and indicated which languages are used in the country.

Gamification

Gamification in emails can increase the conversion rate by 2.5 times, and gamified reward programs for email marketing campaigns increase customer lifetime value (CLV) by 48%.

However, teams rarely have the time or inspiration to create such engaging emails. This is where artificial intelligence can help again.

Natalia Ustimenko, Head Of Direct Marketing at Yespo, asked ChatGPT to develop a survey game for athletes with 4 questions and 3 answer options for each. However, she got a satisfactory answer only on the third try — at first, the bot did not understand what was required of it.

If you don't like the options you get, re-generate them or write down exactly what the AI should fix without leaving the dialog and adding specifics.

How the Yespo Team Integrated AI

Introducing artificial intelligence into a company's processes can facilitate and speed up routine but also help optimize customer interaction and customer experience, scale, forecast, analyze demand for goods, make decisions, etc.

Yespo omnichannel CDP is a system that combines all your customer data and communication channels in one place. The Yespo platform is used by medium and large businesses, including Adidas, PUMA, Pandora, Dnipro-M, Prom.ua and many others.

Yespo CDP collects and processes a large amount of data every day, and thousands of people use the platform, so artificial intelligence is a must-have for the company.

Here are some examples of AI implementation in the Yespo system.

Assistant in the Email Editor

The email editor has built-in artificial intelligence that helps marketers create content. AI can:

• generate text;
• translate it;
• correct mistakes;
• change the tone of voice;
• add emojis;
• fulfill any other request for working with text;
• analyze the subject and preheader of the email.

Personalized Product Recommendations

Finding the perfect option among the many products offered in an email is challenging. It's even more difficult to choose something among irrelevant offers. Some companies still send customers messages with random product selections.

To avoid this, Yespo has a personalized recommendation functionality in emails, where AI generates relevant offers based on customer data.

This tool increases conversion, CLV, and customer loyalty.

Shafa.ua and Comfy are among those who have already tested personalized product recommendations in emails. Results:

• At Shafa.ua, the conversion rate of triggers increased up to 233%;
• At Comfy, product recommendations generated 49% of sales in promo emails and 20% in triggers.

Predictive Segmentation

For predictive segmentation, Yespo uses AI algorithms that predict the likelihood of customer acquisition or churn and form the appropriate segments. Artificial intelligence can also forecast the possibility of a purchase.

This tool allows you to understand customer behavior better and make changes to your marketing campaigns and strategy accordingly. AI takes into account the following behavioral indicators:

• increase in the number of website visits;
• activity while browsing the web or application;
• viewing reviews;
• interaction in the chat;
• clicks on discounts;
• average decision-making time, etc.

Optimize Message Sending Time

Sometimes, subscribers receive too many emails from one company per day. Even if the content is relevant, an excessive frequency of messages can be annoying.

Artificial intelligence will help you avoid this with the “Annoyance level” feature. In the settings for each campaign, the marketer assigns points based on the type and frequency of the email campaign.

After that, AI calculates the norm of annoyance level for each contact. If the set limit is exceeded, the subscriber will not receive the newsletter to avoid irritation.

Email Marketing 2024 Trends

In 2024, email marketing will continue to evolve under the significant influence of artificial intelligence, transforming how businesses interact with customers. Let's look at this year's trends to know what you should pay attention to when creating email campaigns.

Personalization

Personalization in email marketing has long gone beyond addressing by name. In 2024, it includes analyzing user behavior and adjusting the content of emails according to the data obtained.

Artificial intelligence allows you to automatically adapt offers and content based on previous customer interactions, location, purchases, and other information. Personalized email campaigns have a 29% higher OR (Open Rate) and 41% higher CTR compared to non-personalized emails.

Omnichannel

The omnichannel approach involves the integration of email marketing with other communication channels, such as messengers, social networks, mobile applications, websites, offline sales outlets, etc. For example, you can communicate with customers through emails, mobile notifications, App Inbox, and Viber messages by pre-installing a widget on your website to collect emails and phone numbers.

This creates a continuous and enhanced customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Companies with high omnichannel customer engagement report a 9.5% increase in annual revenue, compared to 3.4% for businesses with weak omnichannel strategies.

Automation

Automation in email marketing is not new, but technologies are contributing to its development every year. Using artificial intelligence to automate processes such as content creation, audience segmentation, email timing, etc., significantly increases the effectiveness of campaigns.

31% of all orders via email are the result of automated campaigns.

Interactivity

Interactive elements in emails are about improving usability and motivating the client to engage in a dialog. Videos, surveys, and product slides increase subscriber engagement and interaction with the company.

According to statistics, interactive content has 52.6% more engagement than static content.

Focus on Increasing CLV

The focus on high customer lifetime value is an indicator of product relevance to the current market, brand loyalty, and recurring revenue from existing customers.

Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for increasing CLV, as it allows you to personalize communication as much as possible and constantly reminds you of yourself. To improve this indicator, you can use welcome chains, triggers like "Abandoned cart," reactivation emails, etc.

Welcome emails are among the most effective. According to statistics, their average open rate is 91.43%, and the revenue per email is 320% higher than advertorial.

What the Future Holds for Email Marketing

In addition to the trends of 2024, several other trends are expected in the near future. Let's take a look at four of them.

1. Even more AI

56.6% of marketing experts believe AI will significantly impact the marketing industry by 2025. Artificial intelligence continues to evolve and will become an integral part of marketing strategies and processes in the future.

AI may learn to respond to customer emails, sign them up for various services, select products for specific needs, etc.

2. AMP technologies development

This function is already in use, but it will reach a new level in the future. For example, you can add all the necessary checkout blocks to your emails so that customers can purchase within the email without going to the website or app.

This will make it easier to purchase goods or services and improve the customer experience.

3. Email as a source of important information

Increasingly, people are getting tired of social media because of the excessive amount of content. In Western markets, there is already a tendency to shift from social media to email as the main source of important information.

4. Less spam, more useful

Users will receive less irrelevant content thanks to current and future updates to Google and other email clients. For example, people can already unsubscribe from your newsletter without opening the email.

It is worth focusing even more on interesting and personalized content for customers to engage them in interaction and not encourage them to unsubscribe :)

Results

Email marketing is still one of the most popular ways to communicate with customers, and it is constantly evolving. This is especially true after the introduction of artificial intelligence in marketing.

For example, AI can process large amounts of data and take over routine processes such as writing and translating text, correcting errors, generating images, etc. This allows marketers to save time and create the most personalized communication with customers, increasing their loyalty and CLV.

In 2024, email marketing will focus on the following trends:

• personalization
• omnichannel;
• automation;
• interactivity;
• focus on increasing CLV.

In the future, email marketing will retain its popularity and continue to evolve. Artificial intelligence is expected to play a key role in this. In addition to AI, AMP in emails will also reach a new level, improving the customer experience.

As social media are now overloaded with content, the main source of important information may be revised, which is likely to be email.

Of course, the future of email marketing will be based on interesting and relevant content. Even now, users don't need to open an email to unsubscribe from newsletters. All this outlines the main tasks for companies: increasing customer engagement and loyalty.