The shift from manual, mass email–based email marketing to personalized marketing automation is already well underway. In fact, we’re heading into the next generation of marketing automation with tools that learn as they interact with subscribers.
We’ve been seeing new services pop up in the email marketing world, from predictive content like automatically generated, persuasive subject lines to artificial intelligence (AI) email software that reaches out to inbound marketing leads, interprets email responses, and qualifies leads. Some of the top names in tech are calling AI the next big thing since mobile and social.
Taking your email marketing from marketing automation to cognitive computing will, it’s said, make life a lot easier since smart computers are able to aid us in how we’re interacting with customers. For example, Conversica’s automated sales assistant contacts every single lead, engages them in what seems like human conversation, and then puts them in contact with someone in your sales department. As a marketer, you’ll know every single lead is being followed up on. Plus, you get feedback about engagement. This kind of smart automation helps brands better connect with their customers. And it frees up valuable time to focus on strategy.
Another benefit of AI is intelligence-driven personalization that’s mapped to the customer journey. The newest incarnation of marketing platforms takes the basic if/then model (e.g. if a customer takes this action, then send this email) and replaces it with a customer-journey model guided by machine intelligence that monitors every email interaction with subscribers and learns from them to create personalized experiences. These machine learning–based systems personalize based on where the subscriber is in the decision-making process, offering the opportunity for more effective messaging.
In addition, machine learning–based systems allow marketers to set more useful goals, like optimizing for engagement. The software finds the engagement tactics that worked to turn similar subscribers into customers and then recommends or undertakes those tactics. They collect valuable feedback, too, since they’re able to handle both traditional structured data, such as your email list, and unstructured data, such as social data.
Email artificial intelligence is the next step in marketing automation. It has the potential to optimize email engagement and ROI. With the revolution in data science, machine-informed campaigns let your business connect in a personal way with every singe subscriber for segment-of-one personalization. Marketers need to be watching for these developments to stay on the cutting edge of email marketing.
Looking to take your email marketing to the next level? Contact Filament today.
