November 3, 2024

Biz Pedia Today

Easy Shopping, Happy Life

How AI Is Revolutionizing E-Mail Marketing

How AI Is Revolutionizing E-Mail Marketing

E-mail newsletters are a mainstay of customer relationship management, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve been ideal.

They’re both static and labor-intensive; the newsletters are often prepared weeks or months in advance of sending, then updated at the last minute with promotions and other tweaks that can cause substantial re-work and commotion. They’re adapted very little to the interests of unique customers, except perhaps with a few A/B tests that still result in little customization. And measurement of their performance tends to be in large-scale averages rather than through a nuanced view of what works with whom.

However, change is on the horizon. As Lindsay Massey, VP of Marketing at Victoria’s Secret, explained in an interview, “We wanted to move beyond a manual, one-size-fits-all content strategy and provide a 1:1 personalized experience at scale.” Victoria’s Secret used AI to do the job.

In its case, the firm partnered with a company called Movable Ink to provide the technology through a platform it calls Da Vinci.

Movable Ink CEO Vivek Sharma explained the goal in an interview, “Think about what is the story I’m telling every single customer, so that it’s correlated with what imagery, with what creative. Think about the best time to deliver it so that they’re most likely to respond. What’s the right frequency of communication? What sales channel preference do they have? What tone should be used within the set brand voice, like whether there should be a sense of urgency or joy?”

This is a radically different approach to e-mail marketing than what’s predominated over the past decades. But AI is making it possible. Movable Ink is among a vanguard of companies enabling it, along with rivals such as Waxwing and OneSignal. Sharma explained that the company combines four types of AI to do it.

First there is a vision model that uses deep learning to understand potential imagery and copy to use. Then generative AI writes copy based on customer preferences and past behavior. Third, a separate insights model gains that understanding, based on how creative is performing such as through driving people to new categories or higher levels of spend.

Finally, the fourth element is a prediction model that deploys classic machine learning to hone the offerings. That classic approach is more observable and explainable than a neural network, which is important when significant money and customer relationships are at stake.

The results have been compelling. Massey says that it tested “AI-powered personalization against our ‘business as usual’ manual approach, measuring the impact to total e-mail performance, customer engagement, and to our internal operations workflow.”

Based on that data, within a matter of weeks the company rolled out the technology to its total subscriber base and now includes AI personalization in nearly every campaign.

Massey claims the company has gone from “one version of an e-mail campaign on a given day to thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of versions, with less setup time.”

Another company trying this approach is L.L.Bean, which is also a Movable Ink customer. Devon Phelan, L.L.Bean’s Senior Manager of Digital CRM Programs, says, “We were looking for a process and a toolset that enabled us to expose the right products to the right subscribers without the opportunity cost of exposing anything except our top-selling products.”

L.L.Bean says this personalization has been responsible for “$14 to $15 million in analyzed revenue last year.” Moreover, Phelan recounts, “This past Monday, we sent one campaign that had nearly 1.1 million unique content variations. That would have been inconceivable before.”

E-mail marketing may not be the first thing that consumers think of when they picture AI, but it may become a facet of AI that touches them on a very routine basis. Both Victoria’s Secret and L.L.Bean say that there’s no going back.

link

Copyright © All rights reserved. | Newsphere by AF themes.