Email beats the algorithm: How artificial intelligence is boosting email marketing

*Gracias a la IA el email marketing está consolidando su evolución de lo transaccional a lo relacional.
*No se trata de una cuestión de volumen, sino de establecer una conversación con lógica de negocio.

Brands operate in an ecosystem where attention has become a scarce commodity, and changes in platform algorithms make it difficult to impact their audiences. In this volatile environment, email marketing stands out as one of the few channels that still offer control over the message and its reach. While its essence and mechanisms have remained virtually unchanged for decades, the power and potential of email promises to continue growing thanks to artificial intelligence.

This technology can help brands strengthen their relationship with consumers through a highly perceived channel. Email is the medium through which 63% of users prefer to be contacted by brands. SMS is the preferred option for 44% (up from 32% in 2023).
Social media, on the other hand, is losing ground, according to a study by the payment platform Square, conducted in 2024 among 6,000 merchants and 4,000 consumers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Email Marketing: A Personal Terrain
This is because, as explained by the marketing automation platform E-goi, email is a channel that, despite being used as a commercial tool, still feels personal. The inbox is an intimate space under the control of the user, who decides what to open, when to open it, and how to interact. Email provides a sense of privacy and relevance, something that is often lost, for example, on social media, and allows for conversations away from public scrutiny. It is also where consumers expect to receive their most important communications.

This means that the content received from brands, if well-crafted, personalized, and useful, is understood almost as a service, rather than as advertising. While it’s true that brand messages compete with others in the inbox, whether personal or commercial, email is a quieter and more stable channel.

Its characteristics and user perception can be capitalized on, not from a transactional perspective, but rather from a relational perspective, that is, with an approach based on relevance and value delivery. «The key is no longer volume, but relevance,» says Iuri Ferreira, Email Marketing & CRM Specialist at E-goi.

«A well-crafted email is not a campaign, but a structured conversation with business logic.»

71% of consumers expect companies to offer personalized interactions, and 76% are frustrated when this doesn’t happen, according to data found by McKinsey in recent years among American users. Furthermore, 65% of customers consider personalized promotions one of the main reasons for making a purchase.

But, just as an advertisement alone is no longer enough to impact consumers, email marketing must be part of a comprehensive strategy. Due to its characteristics, however, it functions as the central axis of the customer relationship: it connects the physical store with the online store, activates SMS, enhances WhatsApp, feeds the CRM, and strengthens loyalty. E-goi points out that while other channels capture attention, email consolidates and converts it, uniting the entire consumer experience.

Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
With the integration of artificial intelligence solutions, this experience can be improved. For example, this technology enables the evolution of segmentation to dynamic microsegmentation, as it facilitates the creation of audiences based on behavioral patterns, emerging interests, propensity to convert, or intent to unsubscribe.

It also enables real-time content personalization, predicting the best time to send communications, automatically generating subject lines, accurately recommending products, evaluating writing, and performing performance analysis and diagnostics and receiving recommendations.
In practice, all of this can translate into more opens, more clicks, or more sales.

However, artificial intelligence will not replace either creativity or human intelligence. Without a strategic approach, email marketing will not deliver results that bring brands closer to their business objectives, no matter how much technological integration is employed. Relevance and the contribution of real value must be at the heart of this strategy.

To achieve this, there are a series of basic aspects that must be addressed, as E-goi points out in its ebook on email marketing. These include:

Organizing the database: Performing ongoing contact maintenance to boost communication effectiveness by eliminating inactive or duplicate contacts.
Segmenting with intent: Based on behavioral data (last purchase or recent clicks) and contextual variables.
Automating with relational and business logic: Creating welcome, abandoned cart, or reactivation flows, and testing different versions of content for promotional campaigns.
Applying AI gradually: Prioritizing tools that generate immediate and measurable impact, such as suggestions or automatic content generation.
Measuring, interpreting, and redesigning: Periodically reviewing key metrics, eliminating what doesn’t work, and reinforcing what does.
In this sense, the most notable transformation that artificial intelligence is generating in email marketing is its evolution from a mass-mailing channel to one focused on personalized and effective communication. Through artificial intelligence, the medium is reinforcing its relevance for brands at a time when it’s no longer enough for them to simply capture attention, but rather need to build sustainable relationships.

Source: www.reasonwhy.es