Email is already a favorite tactic for many marketers, but new research from Ascend2 and RPE Origin finds that those incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their marketing are finding they can improve efficiency by facilitating things like email personalization and retargeting.
The strong preliminary findings may be why 57% of marketers at companies with 500 or more employees are using AI for their email campaigns — more than double the percentage (26%) who said the same in a similar survey by Ascend2 in 2022. Additionally, another 25% plan to use AI for email marketing in the near future.
“AI is going to be really important going forward,” says Todd Lebo, CEO of Ascend2. “Marketers are realizing that there are a lot of channels they don't have control over. With email, you have much more control over your audience, and AI can help you personalize, target and retarget those messages more effectively.”
Do more with less
The survey questioned 110 marketers, of which 64% felt their email marketing efforts were “somewhat successful.” Of the respondents who are using AI in their email campaigns, 99% reported very good or somewhat good results. Some of the areas where marketers are using AI include content personalization (50%), retargeting (47%), subject line optimization (47%), dynamic content generation (44%), send time optimization (44%), and predictive analytics of customer behavior (40%).
“AI can enhance all the things that already work: predictive analytics, open rates, clicks, etc. This predictive component really makes email marketing more efficient,” Lebo says. “AI helps us become more sophisticated in many areas where we work with large amounts of data. AI also helps us do more with less effort. For example, mass personalization, something that would traditionally take days, can now be done in just minutes with AI.”
Still, marketers have concerns about relying too heavily on AI for email marketing, including customer privacy and data protection (45%), data quality (42%), lack of in-house expertise (40%) and lack of an effective strategy (39%).
Despite the overwhelming positivity towards using AI in email marketing, 14% of marketers say they aren't using AI in email and have no plans to do so in the future. Lebo suggests that rather than being truly short-sighted, many of these marketers simply haven't researched how AI can be used in marketing.
“They view email as a proven tactic and overlook AI as an enhancement to it,” Lebo says. “They may not be aware that many of their marketing programs already use AI for audience segmentation and other functions.”
When asked about the most valuable features of an email marketing platform, 55% of marketers cited improved personalization algorithms and recommendation engines, and 55% said predictive analytics would be beneficial. Other top features included automated content creation and copywriting (43%), better integration with CRM and other marketing tools (45%), and advanced testing and automation capabilities (47%).
Improving testing is an area where AI shows great promise, Lebo said.
“We can use this to inform not just testing, but what to test for. It tells us, 'If you do this kind of testing, it will be more effective,'” he said.
The jury is still out on whether AI will impact email marketers' work: 43% of those surveyed said they would like to see AI-powered content creation capabilities in their email marketing platform, and a similar number (47%) said that while AI will impact marketing channels, it will never replace human creativity or strategy. Only 5% said they see limited uses for AI, and only 3% said they don't know.
But AI's potential in content creation may still only be partially realized, Lebo said: For example, humans will probably continue to develop content strategy and basic messaging, leaving it to AI to optimize those elements for different audiences.
“There are a lot of different ways to customize content, and that's where we think AI can help,” he said.
