AI in Email Marketing: Tools and Techniques for Powerful Campaigns (2024)

The average person receives about 120 emails a day, making it tricky to break through with your email marketing campaigns. But as one of the highest-converting channels, the effort is worthwhile. To improve your email campaigns and stand out in the inbox, you may want to work with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms.

AI-based email marketing combines the nuanced touch of a human writer with the precision of AI technology. Marketers use AI tools to analyze user behavior, write email subject lines, optimize email deliverability, and boost overall customer engagement.

Here’s more on AI-driven email marketing and tool recommendations for your marketing team.

What is AI email marketing?

Artificial intelligence email marketing, or AI email marketing, leverages computer algorithms to build more specific and optimized campaigns. Through machine learning techniques that analyze customer behavior and automate and personalize content creation, AI can help email marketing teams attain better open rates.

AI email marketing tools complement the work of email marketers. A human worker may draft personalized emails for specific segments of the email list, then ask the AI application to suggest a subject line, flag invalid email addresses, and schedule messages for optimal delivery times based on historical conversion rates.

9 uses for AI in email marketing

1. Smart segmentation
2. Email personalization
3. Send-time optimization
4. Subject line suggestions
5. Content creation
6. A/B testing
7. Data analysis
8. Spam filter avoidance
9. Workflow automation

Integrate AI into your email marketing efforts to save time and accelerate your creative process. Whether you aim to generate leads, close more sales, or extract customer insights, here’s how AI platforms can optimize your email marketing strategy:

1. Smart segmentation

AI can segment email lists by analyzing data like demographics, purchase history, and engagement levels. For example, if you sell women’s and men’s clothing, you can segment shoppers based on their purchase history to deliver more relevant emails.

2. Email personalization

AI can analyze customer data to create highly personalized email content tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. For example, with purchase history, a generative AI program can craft entire emails aimed specifically at individual recipients. Using AI-generated content in concert with your own creativity to personalize emails can be more efficient.

3. Send-time optimization

Marketing emails only work if the recipient opens them. AI can determine the optimal times to send emails to each recipient based on their past behavior, increasing the likelihood of opens and engagement.

4. Subject line suggestions

Subject lines are key to email performance; they determine whether the recipient opens the message or sends it straight to the trash.

Using natural language generation capabilities, AI writing tools can suggest subject lines for your marketing emails. Or if you prefer to do the writing yourself, these tools can analyze your work and offer tweaks for the most compelling subject lines.

5. Content creation

If you don’t feel confident in your writing skills, generative AI can help. AI email marketing tools can leverage natural language processing (NLP) to compose your email text. Human marketers should oversee this process to ensure the copy accurately reflects the brand voice and provides correct information.

6. A/B testing

AI can automate A/B testing—running two versions of an email to see which performs better—and analyze results. With these variations in place, it will help you extract insights from email open rates and link clicks, and then apply the results to continually improve campaign performance.

7. Data analysis

AI can predict customer behaviors and outcomes. Using historical data and known user preferences, tools can estimate what a user might want to purchase in the future, letting you build campaigns that target customers more effectively.

Once a campaign is over—or even while an extended campaign is underway—AI can analyze performance data to provide actionable insights and recommendations for future initiatives. This can come in handy throughout the customer lifecycle. By continually sending relevant emails that align with buying patterns, you can retain current customers and attract their future business.

8. Spam filter avoidance

Ending up in the spam folder can harm your email communication efforts. AI tools help you create emails that avoid this by suggesting subject lines and adjusting sender addresses to meet email validation criteria set by providers like Google and Yahoo, meaning your targeted email campaigns are more likely to reach the intended recipients.

9. Workflow automation

An AI-powered program can take complete control of your email management. Email automation includes drafting, scheduling, linking to product pages, managing responses, and updating email lists. Fully automated emails free your team to focus on higher-level strategies and business operations.

7 AI email marketing tools

1. Zoho Campaigns
2. Mailchimp
3. Omnisend
4. ActiveCampaign
5. Brevo
6. Seventh Sense
7. Jacquard

The market is chock-full of software applications that can do everything from suggesting optimal send times to drafting and sending entire email campaigns. Here are seven well-regarded email marketing programs in no particular order that use AI to varying degrees:

1. Zoho Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns offers several AI-powered marketing automation tools, including A/B testing, interactive emails, and email deliverability features.

As an ecommerce-focused solution, Zoho offers features specifically for Shopify users, including abandoned cart emails and targeting based on purchase history.

Pricing: Zoho Campaigns offers a free tier, while paid plans start at $4 per month.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform with AI features like audience segmentation based on demographics and purchase behavior and predictive sending for optimal delivery times.

Pricing: Mailchimp has a free tier, but AI-powered features require a paid plan, which starts at $1 for the first month, and then goes up to $20 per month.

3. Omnisend

Oriented around ecommerce, Omnisend’s AI-powered emails can include product recommendations, abandoned cart reminders, and automated segmentation based on purchase history.

Pricing: Omnisend has a limited free tier; a more useful standard tier costs $16 per month.

4. ActiveCampaign

Use ActiveCampaign’s built-in AI for lead scoring (ranking leads through different factors like demographics or social media use), customer journey mapping, and personalized email content based on subscriber behavior. It can fully automate emails, from send times to personalized content.

Pricing: Plans start at $15 a month.

5. Brevo

Formerly Sendinblue, Brevo is an all-in-one email marketing platform with multiple AI features like send-time optimization and personalized content recommendations. Brevo’s capabilities also include A/B testing, marketing automation workflows, real-time API scans, and customer relationship management (CRM) integration.

Pricing: There’s a free tier, but more functionality is available with paid plans, which start at $9 a month.

6. Seventh Sense

Seventh Sense is an email delivery optimization system that runs atop HubSpot and Adobe Marketo. It primarily uses AI to optimize send times by analyzing subscriber behavior, ensuring you send emails when your subscribers will most likely open them.

Pricing: Pricing depends on the platform you’re integrating. For HubSpot, it’s $80 a month (billed annually); for Adobe Marketo Engage, it’s $450 a month (billed annually).

7. Jacquard

Formerly known as Phrasee, Jacquard uses natural language generation (NLG) to analyze messaging history and brand voice to craft compelling subject lines, email body content, and calls to action (CTAs).

Pricing: Jacquard is a premium product for well-financed organizations. Pricing starts at $95,000 a year.