How to leverage AI in email marketing while maintaining a human element

It’s 2024, and we’ve all heard about how AI can boost our email marketing efforts. However, it doesn’t take long to discover that generative AI technologies like ChatGPT can produce mediocre campaigns, inconsistent and off-brand content, and poor results.

As AI becomes more prevalent in business, far too many organizations and lone entrepreneurs attempt to utilize technology to replace labor. They become preoccupied with how it can boost productivity. However, it is critical to recognize AI’s correct function – as a tool that saves you time and grows the organization by augmenting rather than replacing your labor.

With each new AI tool for email marketers, it is critical that the content and campaigns developed with it have a personal touch while not reducing the brand experience.

Why make your email efforts? Impersonal is bad for business:

Let’s look at Chick-fil-A and McDonalds. They are both fast food enterprises that use AI technology during the food ordering process.

McDonald’s utilizes technology to minimize staff interaction. When you visit a McDonald’s, you are met by a kiosk where you may place your order, not by an employee. In the drive-thru, the first question may be, “Did you use the app?”

McDonald’s encourages customers to interact less with their employees.

Chick-fil-A, on the other hand, provides personnel with mobile devices and sends them outside to greet customers in person. Customers can place orders without entering the restaurant. This strategy improves the consumer experience using AI.

As you can see, one employed AI to make their process less personal, whilst the other generated a lot more engaging human-to-human interaction. How does this translate into sales?

Chick-fil-A outperforms McDonald’s, with average shop sales of $9.3 million versus the Golden Arches’ $3.7 million. This is impressive given that Chick-fil-A is only open six days a week, whereas McDonald’s operates seven days a week.

According to a 2020 report by experience management firm Walker, customer experience will supersede price and product as the primary brand differentiator. The research appears to have come true. Simply look at the sample above.

Instead of employing AI only to help our businesses, we should use it to improve the human experience through the content we create.

How to leverage AI in email marketing while still providing a human experience

Generative AI

When you think of AI in email marketing, you usually see employing it to create email content. Tools like ChatGPT have a lot of promise for this.

• Rewriting drab prompts and templates.
• Summarizing bulk messages.
• Sequence framing and outlines.
• Fully written email campaigns.
• Subject line generation.

However, the words in your emails represent your brand’s identity. It is critical to use technologies like ChatGPT to improve your writing, rather than having them do everything for you.

Use it to generate ideas, then outline and draft them. After the draft, polish and edit without the use of artificial intelligence. At this point, you need to concentrate on personalization and brand voice. When you’ve finished your draft, run it through AI to check for spelling and grammatical errors, format it, and send it to your email service provider.

Let us look at an example of a ChatGPT response. The assignment was to compose a sales email for a new product in the pickleball industry.

Analytical AI

Marketers are under greater pressure than ever, with shorter deadlines, tighter budgets, and less resources. Fortunately, AI techniques are allowing engagement metrics and sales to constantly increase.

Analytical AI techniques within an email service provider can recognize:

• Your most engaged customers.
• Customers that need to be re-engaged.
• Ideal times to reach out to past customers and potential leads.
  

These are critical for growth in this modern, fast-paced, low-budget period. Once detected, the AI categorizes these clients and leads into email segments that can be targeted with personalized content.

For example, Black River Farm and Ranch employs AI segmentation to identify first-time campers and invites them on a personal tour of the campus.

On the customer service side, this guarantees that clients get a tailored experience and are satisfied with their purchase from the outset. In return, this form of email promotes customer retention. After all, a satisfied customer is a repeat customer.

Tips for Using AI in Your Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Fact-check

AI might not always be right, especially with content creation. Fact-check what it gives you to ensure the information you send is 100% accurate.

2. Use it to enhance existing strategies

AI has made a complicated marketing strategy like email much easier in the last year alone. It’s an amazing tool, but beware! AI-created content should enhance, not replace, what you are already doing.

For example, if you’re writing a new launch campaign for a new product, instead of asking ChatGPT to write each email, ask it for five new hooks that would appeal to your ideal buyer. Or ask it for the top-performing launch emails of the previous year. 

3. Use AI to produce ideas, not full emails

It can be tempting to insert a prompt into ChatGPT or Gemini and copy and paste its answer into your email newsletters and campaigns. However, doing so will result in generic content that receives almost no positive feedback from potential and current customers.

Instead, AI can be used to generate ideas, outlines and rough drafts. Always edit and customize AI-generated content according to your company’s brand voice, emphasizing a human-to-human connection.

4. Ensure relevance and personalize

Have I mentioned how impersonal and generic AI-generated content can be? When creating campaigns or outlines with AI, don’t be afraid to differentiate from what the AI source is giving you. Keep your brand in mind and personalize it with names, images and other data about the reader. 

Also, ensure it is relevant to your reader. Take what you’ve learned from analytical AI and decide what kind of messages, sales and stories need to be sent to each segment of your list. 

Even if you’ve entered all the information into your AI tool, it’s always a good idea to double-check to ensure your campaigns are relevant to the reader and personalized for the best experience.