Marketers don’t care if a campaign runs on AI alone—they care if it drives results. It’s the boost in clicks, conversions, and revenue that’s truly impressive.
The thing is, AI in email does just that: delivers results. Though AI adoption is still developing in other channels, the benefit of AI in email already boasts an exciting track record.
Discover the four key ways that AI enhances email marketing, and how major retailer, Victoria’s Secret, uses these methods to drive invaluable results for their email program.
Analyze Email Performance
Few marketers love reporting on campaign performance. But while many of these creative minds aren’t necessarily drawn to compiling an enormous spreadsheet, the monotony of the task isn’t the issue. The biggest hurdle is internalizing all of that information and activating it into personalized, engaging experiences before the data ages out—which, according to our recent survey of 300 marketers, is a top priority for 50% of companies.
Marketers often struggle to understand customer behavior—like why a customer opens some emails but ignores others—especially when this pattern occurs across thousands of customers. AI, however, not only analyzes each customer’s pattern of behavior—think clicks, opens, or even product affinity—it can use that information to adapt follow-up messages to make them more relevant and engaging. This invaluable insight from AI allows marketers to craft messages that both resonate today and encourage customers to explore a wider variety of products, ultimately strengthening customer loyalty and AOV.
Get More Insight From the Full Report
Read The AI for Retail Leaders Blueprint to discover how major brands are maximizing AI usage.
Personalization is a familiar concept to the vast majority of marketers, but putting it into practice can be a bit more challenging. While marketers excel at sending the right category of products to each customer via product grids or traditional triggers, deeper personalization is more uncommon.
AI has the ability to constantly adapt messages based on customers’ behaviors. For each message, AI can select the creative asset that has the highest potential for engaging a particular customer. Rather than relying on pre-set calendars or even seasonal trends, AI helps the marketer put the individual customer’s interests at the center of the email.
The set-up that makes this method possible? Rather than linking each creative asset to a specific campaign, marketers can collect them into one content library. With the library, assets can be reused multiple times within their set lifespan, increasing the variety of content AI can leverage for personalized emails. For example, the sweater that was deployed last Saturday can act as the perfect Monday message for a customer that doesn’t open any emails over the weekend.
Hit the Sweet Spot of Send Times
If a recipient misses an email, all the hard work of personalizing that campaign is flushed down the drain. And while Googling the best time to send an email is a step in the right direction, we all know that none of those articles agree with one another, nor are they specific enough—sending emails during “business hours” isn’t all that helpful.
Just as AI analyzes where customers are clicking in an email, it can also understand when customers are clicking most. From there, the AI allows marketers to individualize send times for each customer, making a fully personalized experience with a greater likelihood of engagement easy breezy.
Generate Testable Variations
The limit does not exist when it comes to AI, as any marketer worth their salt knows. Generative AI has unlocked quick access to content—how effective that content is, however, depends on the circumstance.
Open-source AI can get you an image in seconds, but the extra fingers and inaccurate outputs are all too common. That’s why marketers looking to maximize AI for their email program are turning to proprietary AI designed specifically for marketing.
Proprietary AI also gives marketers the ability to A/B test AI-powered content. Whether it’s subject lines, content, or creative, continuously measuring what is and isn’t resonating with customers is the key to effective emails. Using AI for AI’s sake isn’t the goal; marketers want tools that drive undeniable results.
Victoria’s Secret Drove Performance Lift with These Methods
From click-through and conversion rates to revenue, Victoria’s Secret sees impressive lifts across their major KPIs. By using Movable Ink’s Da Vinci, their marketing team creates highly personalized emails that are simultaneously efficient to produce.
And they’re not alone—big brands like Lands’ End and L.L.Bean are seeing the same caliber of results by using Movable Ink’s Da Vinci.
Ready to see the AI-powered content personalization engine for yourself? Book a demo hereor explore our latest report here.
