Email campaigns are an essential part of any company’s marketing stack. Hubspot estimates that email marketing generates $38 for every dollar spent, putting it far ahead of other popular forms of marketing such as paid advertising and influencer marketing.
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One of the reasons for this is that emails are personal in nature. Anyone who decides to give you their address is qualifying themselves as being interested in learning more about what you offer. Offer them something they aren't interested in, and you lose the trust they've placed in you.
AI is increasingly emerging as a means of improving the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Email marketing is no exception. Here is how AI can help you realize greater ROI from your email campaigns.
Choose The Right Days to Send Your Emails
Email campaigns are usually a series of emails that build on top of one another. It's critical to begin your campaign on a day that is likely to generate greater response rates than others. Send your first email on a weekend or at a time when no one is there to pay attention to it, and your follow-up emails will not strike a chord with your recipient.
One of the biggest advantages that AI brings is the ability to consume a ton of data and detect trends within it. Specifically, AI can help you understand which days are the best for you to start your campaigns.
According to AI marketing platform Exceed, the best days to send an email that has a higher likelihood of response are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Emails sent on this day are 7% more likely to be responded to.
Weekends, especially Sundays, have the worst response rates. Sunday response rates dip to as low as 4%. Mondays lie in between with a 5.9% response rate, mainly because of inboxes filling up over the weekend. Fridays have a surprisingly high response rate as well, coming in at 6.2%.
Thursdays have a 5.2% response rate which is the lowest of all weekdays. The lessons here are clear: Send your emails on Tuesday and Wednesday when the weekend backlog has cleared, and people have some space to read your campaigns.
Follow-Up at the Right Time
One of the things that every email marketer worries about is following up. What is the right time to follow up that guarantees a positive response? Follow up too soon, and you haven't given your prospect the time to digest your email.
Follow up too late, and you risk being forgotten entirely. AI helps you narrow down that sweet spot between accounting for your prospect's busy schedule and being forgotten. The data from the study shows that 3 to 4 days is the right time to initiate the first follow-up email.
A lot depends on the nature of the prospects you're courting as well. In some industries, it makes sense to wait for longer, while some industries favor faster follow-ups. Ultimately, your AI will help you figure out what the ideal time is by crunching the numbers in your data.
Exceed's research shows that the probability of receiving a response after your first follow-up decreases drastically after 8 days, with response rates falling below 2%. Follow up within a week, and you can expect a 2.1% response rate, with a 5 days follow-up period eliciting rates of 2.5%.
Remember that the day you choose to follow up also plays a role in receiving a response. These numbers hold even for a second follow-up email. Curiously, response rates dip for these emails between 6 to 17 days. However, response rates rise to 1.7% beyond this timeline.
This doesn't mean you should wait for a fortnight to follow up a second time. Instead, follow up within 2 to 4 days of your previous email.
Craft the Right Number of Follow-Ups
Most marketing teams are afraid of increasing their unsubscribe numbers by sending too many emails. As a result, they give up after 1 or 2 follow-ups. However, data captured by Exceed shows that the right number of follow-ups is 10.
This seems like an absurdly high number, but it's true. When combined with the previous points about sending emails on the correct days of the week and spaced apart properly, it's possible to get someone who has ignored you 9 times to respond to you.
Again, a lot depends on individual data gathered by your time. AI-powered analytics can help you figure out the correct number of follow-ups as well.
Create Efficient Workflows
AI assistants have incredible potential, and we're merely scratching the surface with regards to what they're capable of. Insights gathered from your data can help you question your assumptions and create new processes that drive greater ROI.
The post How AI Can Boost Your Next Email Marketing Campaign appeared first on ValueWalk.
