Email marketing is a time-tested tool for boosting sales and increasing customer loyalty. But even it, in an era of rapid development of artificial intelligence, isn't standing still — it's on the verge of major changes.

Imagine a world where a company knows exactly what each recipient of its newsletter likes: their interests, preferences, and tastes. Or where email marketers, copywriters, and designers can work many times more efficiently and faster. All of this is gradually becoming a reality — thanks to neural networks, whose capabilities grow every day. In this article, we'll explore how neural networks can help almost any business achieve better results in email campaigns and brand-to-audience communication, as well as in generating new and unique text and visuals.

How do neural networks work?

Imagine our brain as a team where each player is a neuron, and they all work together to help us understand what's happening around us. In the world of computers, neural networks work in a similar way. They consist of many small "players" or nodes that learn from the data they're "fed". It's similar to teaching a child by explaining things through examples, rather than making them memorize rules.

Today, neural networks are used by specialists in a wide variety of fields: analysts for processing large data sets, translators working with texts in foreign languages, creatives for producing unusual visuals and other content.

How to use neural networks in email marketing

Neural networks can help create emails that literally "hook" every subscriber, practically telling them to "subscribe". Plus, they can determine exactly the best time to send a message so recipients are sure to see it, open it, and start reading. They can also analyze the subscriber base. Let's go through it all in order.

Working with text

Neural networks have already achieved impressive success in writing newsletter copy. ChatGPT is one of the leading general-purpose AIs for working with text. Based on GPT technology (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which is trained on a huge volume of text data and has high accuracy in understanding and generating text, the chatbot is able to understand unusual user queries, including text with errors or unusual word choices. The neural network generates several variants of ready-made responses to a query based on the context of the dialogue, rather than by template.

ChatGPT and other services, already built into many popular email marketing platforms, offer impressive capabilities for cases when you need to write a lot of text for personalized newsletters or put together several campaign variants in a short period of time. In Russia, ChatGPT (including free access) can be used via bots on Discord or Telegram.

Image creation

Neural networks have succeeded not only in creating text, but also images (and are actively mastering video). Today, they allow you to quickly and efficiently create visual materials on the principle of "specify what you want and choose a style", increasing the efficiency of content creation.

  • Midjourney is one of the leading neural networks for image processing and bringing ideas to life, distinguished by high quality, detail in the images it creates, and support for different styles. Suitable for both beginners and professionals working with AI. A paid subscription is required, and all interactions take place via chat on the Discord platform.
  • Dream Studio and Dream by Wombo. Have good performance and make it easy and simple to generate attractive images on a given topic and then add them to a newsletter.
  • DALL-E 2. Thanks to the use of advanced algorithms, the neural network can extend images, adding new content to scenes that fully matches the original image.
  • Autodraw. Helps you instantly create a neat layout for an email or turn sketches into clean drawings that you can continue working on in the editor. This significantly reduces the time needed to create graphic content.

Audience segmentation

Neural networks can significantly improve the quality of audience segmentation in email marketing. They can analyze huge amounts of data about subscriber behavior — from which emails they open, to the time of day when they're most active, and even what type of content engages them. Based on this analysis, you can accurately predict what content will suit each part of the base, allowing you to create highly personalized audience segments.

AI-powered smart subscriber segmentation is already available in digital products like Mailchimp and HubSpot. The former uses predictive algorithms to determine the best time to send an email and behavioral segmentation based on subscriber activity. HubSpot lets you create the segments you need based on specific user actions on the site, integrating email marketing data with other touchpoints.

Delivery optimization

Delivering emails at the optimal time is key to a high open rate. This isn't always a simple task, since time zone information is assigned based on IP address. If a subscriber uses a VPN, the data won't be accurate. Artificial intelligence detects subtle changes in email-checking patterns, making email delivery more time-optimized even if the subscriber is traveling or using a VPN.

In addition, the effectiveness of newsletters is affected by the "cleanliness" of the address base. Keeping inactive subscribers on your list for too long can trigger spam filters and harm your brand's reputation. Automatic neural-network-based list cleaning services, such as Listclean, help remove disposable email addresses, spam traps, and incorrectly formatted emails in time, leaving only real people. This also helps increase open rates.

Instead of a conclusion

Neural networks are changing the way marketers approach writing content for email newsletters and deciding who to send them to and when. What used to take hours can now be done in a couple of minutes. The main thing to remember is that a neural network is just a marketing tool, not a full-fledged employee you can hand the work to and go have tea or coffee. This way, you'll spend less time on routine tasks and devote more attention and energy to the creative aspects of the work and complex projects.