6 Ways Agents Can Leverage AI in Email Marketing
May 21, 2024
Categories:
AI
With so much attention rightly focused on digital marketing and social media, you might overlook the role that email marketing should play in an overall independent agency marketing strategy. We can become biased by our own visceral reaction to the ever-cascading amount of spam emails we receive and the increased need for vigilance for phishing scams.
It’s due to these headwinds that an agency should embrace artificial intelligence (AI) tools for an email campaign. With AI’s assistance, you can see meaningful results in email marketing by targeting the right audience with a more personalized approach.
Here are six ways AI can help you create more efficient and effective email marketing campaigns:
1) Segment your audience.
Be sure to split your email campaign between current agency clients and prospects. The most effective campaigns leverage personalized, data-driven messages that reflect individual customer preferences.
You can create hyper-personalized email content to drive engagement using AI algorithms. Firms like HubSpot or MailChimp employ AI to focus on segmentation, using machine learning algorithms to categorize leads and clients into specific segments based on their engagement history, demographics and preferences.
2) Use AI to shape your subject line.
Having compelling subject lines and engaging content is crucial, and AI can help you create that all-important subject line. AI-powered tools can analyze historical data and customer behavior to suggest optimized subject lines and content that resonate with recipients. This leads to higher open rates and click-through rates, as well as better effectiveness of the overall campaign.
Phrasee is one AI-powered copywriting tool specifically designed for creating engaging subject lines and personalized email content. It uses natural language generation algorithms to produce optimized, personalized email copy based on your target audience and campaign objectives.
3) Evaluate the performance of emails.
Analyze the efficiency of your emails using A/B testing, which compares two alternate versions of an email to ascertain which one provides better engagement measured by open rates, click-through rates and conversion. For example, using AI algorithms, Automizy offers an email marketing automation platform that incorporates A/B testing and subject line optimization.
4) Learn what your agency management system (AMS) or customer relationship manager (CRM) offer.
If you use an AMS or CRM, be sure to find out whether the company partners with firms offering AI solutions such as Salesforce, MailChimp and IBM Watson, which provide application programming interface (API) integrations to optimize your email marketing approach.
5) Follow the customer journey.
When a prospective client responds to your marketing email, what does that interaction look like? Using AI to track customer journey mapping, Google Analytics 360 allows you to review and optimize the entire customer journey via email interactions. The critical factor to stand out in the insurance industry is the client’s ease of doing business with you. The tools will show you how simple — or how complicated — your process is. Connecting the “last mile of electricity to the house” is the name of the game.
6) Take the long view.
Measuring the return is important for any business in assessing the effectiveness of its investments. However, in gauging the agency’s expenditure in using AI email tools, it requires some experimentation to arrive at the right recipe.
Remember that you must include a conspicuous opt-out option in every marketing email, which is typically an Unsubscribe link in a noticeable location. If the recipient opts out, the CAN-SPAM Act requires that they be removed from your email list within 10 business days and that you maintain and update your opt-out list.
In reviewing these tips, there may be a tendency to assume that a Main Street insurance agency can’t afford the cost of using AI tools. Actually, starting with an AI tool like ChatGPT, which is free, and understanding how to use prompt engineering is foundational. From there, explore what your email marketing objectives are and then investigate how you want to start out using AI tools.
When digital marketing first began to take off, many agency principals felt that their traditional advertising and referral networks would suffice. That is no longer the case. As Richard Baldwin, economist and Geneva Graduate Institute professor, said: “AI won’t take your job. It’s somebody using AI that will take your job.”
For insurance agencies, swap out “your job” with “your client” and you’ll understand why you need AI email marketing now. AI won’t take your client. It’s somebody using AI that will take your client.
