A new survey of email marketers reveals that the use of AI is exploding, with plenty of room for growth in the future.
A report released earlier this month by email marketing firm RPE Origin is based on a survey of more than 100 business marketing professionals about their email practices. Almost half of respondents (48%) said they plan to use AI next year, up from 26% in 2022. Nearly one in four respondents (24%) say they are already using AI “extensively.”
The main ways marketers are using or plan to use AI are content personalization (50%), email retargeting (47%), and subject line optimization (47%). Almost all respondents (99%) said their experience with AI was very or somewhat positive.
Ryan Phelan, managing partner at RPE Origin, said the rapid growth in AI usage this year reflects the rise of more affordable or free tools like ChatGPT. “Before, in an industry where you weren't always given a budget, you had to commit to it and find the budget for it,” he said. “Now we are opening the door because ChatGPT and the generative AI tools that have come out so far are free to everyone.”
This growth allows marketers to quickly develop email content and better segment their audiences, as well as better tailor communications based on numerous data points. “From an association perspective, we can get to the point where based on your email address and a few questions, we can suggest a path to take at the conference,” Phelan said.
45% of respondents said their biggest concern with AI in email marketing is “customer privacy and data protection.”
AI tools can also be better at making network recommendations. “The AI is going through the company's priority list and doing the analysis, so you can start saying, 'This is the person you need to talk to,'” Phelan says. “For the sponsor, it might say, 'Here's the person you really want to connect with based on their behavior and the company's behavior.'”
Phelan said this kind of appearance of omniscience is troubling to many people, and marketers will need to be increasingly careful about using what he calls “creepy data.” . (45% of respondents said their biggest concern about AI in email marketing was “customer privacy and data protection.”)
“The key for marketers is not to overtly claim to have that data for messaging, but to use it for targeting,” he said. “We really need smart marketers who can separate themselves and be relevant without being creepy.”
Phelan recommends that email marketers spend more time experimenting with AI tools and set up control groups to determine whether the messages and processes that AI generates are effective. But he cautions marketers that AI alone cannot create targeted emails.
“You can go into ChatGPT and enter all this information and say, ‘Generate X,’ but you still have to comb through it as an individual and humanize it,” he says. said. “I have to make sure that's my voice and that's still the company's style. We haven't gotten to the point yet where this tool is foolproof. It's still experimental.”
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