Email Marketing and AI Use Cases

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years, you’ve likely noticed that the digital marketing space has been taken by storm by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The speculative potential of AI in digital marketing has fueled a hype cycle that has fueled hyperbole, stoked (irrational) fears, and left the industry in a state of perpetual FOMO (fear of missing out).

What’s the gap between hype and reality?

Make no mistake: AI has lots of potential and many powerful applications to your marketing that you can use today. However, AI is still a new technology, and many organizations are just beginning to figure out how to integrate it into their tech stack and existing processes.

Adoption of AI technology is high, with HubSpot reporting that 48% of marketers use AI for content creation. This widespread adoption is matched only by a sense of uncertainty about the impact of AI, as 60% of marketers reportedly are concerned about the impact of AI generated content on their brand's reputation.

The so-called Uncanny Valley effect is something many of us have felt since the rise of ChatGPT. Social media is filled with sightings of AI-generated comments and posts—both subtle and not-so-subtle—and, coupled with inherent concerns about the use of AI content, we’re left to ponder: how do we make the most of this new, powerful technology?

The answer is the careful, considerate, and even restrained use of this technology to assist and enhance our existing processes. AI isn’t a panacea for our marketing woes, nor is it a replacement for the humans who make up modern marketing teams. However, AI is a powerful tool, and when applied to your email marketing, it can be a huge advantage.

The key to seeing through the AI hype cycle is to consider the practical applications and use cases of this technology today. In this post, we're going to focus on how marketers can apply AI to email marketing today in a responsible, effective way. Let’s ditch the hype and dig into real-world use cases and examples.

Optimizing Email Content with AI

The potential of generative AI to assist in email marketing content optimization is truly revolutionary. It’s easy to imagine how we could scale email marketing content creation using AI tools—from rapid iteration of subject lines to the wholesale drafting of email content. We are already seeing a response to the power of AI in marketing through the adoption of processes like content supply chains. Engineering quality while leveraging generative AI’s ability to produce quantity is key.

AI is already proving to be a life-saver in a few key use cases for email marketing. Let's dig into the following use cases:

• Subject Line Generation
• Preheader Text Optimization
• Alt Text Generation
• Copy-writing Assistant

Subject Line Generation

Did you know that 64% of recipients decide to open or delete emails based on subject line alone? It's hard to overstate the importance of crafting catchy yet authentic subject lines. As you've no doubt experienced, brainstorming subject lines can be both fun and daunting. The challenge compounds as you try to craft subject lines for dozens if not hundreds of emails in your marketing automation system.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be used to analyze the contents of your email and craft a subject line. It’s worth noting that tools like Knak are integrating subject line generators directly into their product, providing customers with a list of options to choose from and the ability to customize tone.

If you don’t have access to a tool like Knak, you can still generate catchy subject lines using ChatGPT. While a basic prompt may work, I recommend providing additional instructions to ensure high-quality output. By specifying the tone, voice, and even the use of emojis, you’ll get a far better output. Here's an example of a subject line prompt that may work for you.

Subject Line Prompt Example

ChatGPT's output

Preheader Text Optimization

Preheader or preview text is often forgotten during the email content creation process. It's easy to forget to add preheader text when you're focused on subject lines and body copy. Yet, it’s a critical component of email marketing, featured prominently on mobile devices, with studies showing that emails with preheader text have a marked increase in open rates compared to those without.

Thankfully, generative AI can help us craft winning preheader texts and coordinate them closely with subject lines. Together, you can have AI create a one-two punch combo for subject lines and capture your users’ attention to encourage them to open your email. Again, tools like Knak do this for you out of the box, but if you’re using a tool like ChatGPT, make sure to include instructions to pair subject lines and preview text together as part of an enticing narrative.

Preheader Text Optimization Prompt Example

Alt Text Generation

Accessibility is important, and features like alt text in an email go a long way toward ensuring everyone can enjoy your email content. Alt text is descriptive text that appears if images fail to render or if the user is using a screen reader to consume content. While the majority of marketers agree that email accessibility is important, only 8% rigidly adhere to following accessibility best practices.

Alt text, then, is well worth crafting but, like preheader text, can often be overlooked during the content creation process. Generative AI tools have a remarkable ability to analyze images and provide descriptive text. The simple step of adding descriptive alt text goes a long way toward making your content accessible to everyone. Email tools like Knak make this easy by allowing users to add alt text directly from the creation platform itself.

AI tools like ChatGPT can help you with this process as well. You can use a simple prompt and paste the image directly into the platform to get descriptive alt text.

Alt Text Prompt Example

[Instructions]

Write me a description of the attached image. It will be used for alt text within an email and needs to be short, only describe the action in the image, and written at a grade 4 level.

Copy-writing Assistant

While generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be fantastic copywriting assistants, it’s important to resist the temptation to rely too heavily on them for all your copy. It may just be me, but I find GPT’s default style easy to spot—whether it’s the frequent use of “delve” or idiomatic phrases like “in the constantly changing world of {insert industry here}.”

If creativity and authenticity are your objectives, you’ll want to use a focused approach with GPT instead of entirely outsourcing your copywriting process to AI.

One way email marketers are using AI to help with copy is through integrated persona analysis with content creation. The idea is to provide the AI tool with information about your key persona and examples of content that have resonated with that audience in the past. Then, you provide the tool with information about the marketing campaign and messaging you want to send via email.

From there, you can have the AI tool provide ideas for an approach and even get it to help with a first draft. This can rapidly speed up the iteration process and give you ideas when you’re staring at the infamous blank page. The approach holds promise for personalization strategies, such as utilizing Marketo’s dynamic content feature, by giving you ideas on how to tailor the same general message to different audiences.

Copy-writing Assistant Prompt Example

Spotlight: Email Marketing and AI Translations

If we’re talking about practical applications of AI in email marketing that you can apply today, the use of AI-driven translations may be among the most useful. For businesses operating on the global stage, generating personalized and culturally relevant content in multiple languages is a challenge. Rather than clumsily copy-and-pasting into Google Translate, you can use AI-powered translation tools to do this at scale.

Email creation tools like Knak can help marketers instantly translate content into 75+ languages. This offloads the heavy lifting of translation to capable AI models, allowing your team to focus on reviewing and making minor tweaks. One of the strengths of these models is their ability to localize content—something many traditional machine translations struggle to do—allowing your team to create truly personalized content.

The Future of AI in Email Marketing

What’s the future of AI in email marketing operations? While this post focused on features that are immediately and readily available, we’re just scratching the surface. The potential of AI in email marketing is, simply put, incredible.

We don’t have to look much further than beta programs and prototypes to get a glimpse of jaw-dropping features. Knak has launched a beta program using its AI developments to accelerate the campaign creation process. Imagine bringing a campaign brief and prompt to your email creation platform and, in return, getting suggested content and recommended templates.

For example, if you need a webinar email and bring it to Knak AI, you’ll get ideas on what type of templates to use across all your webinar emails—from invitation to follow-up—and tailored content based on your brief. The result is a content starting point far closer to the finish line than the starting line, with the content itself designed and ready for human involvement.

This isn’t the speculative future of email marketing—this is the type of work that is going to revolutionize it. Want to get in on the fun? Request access to the Knak AI Beta Program and become a pioneer in email marketing and AI.