With the latest development trend of Ai coming to all things on the internet, including Email Marketing, a lot of fellow Email Geeks have been worried that Ai is going to outcompete them. Here's my take on why that is not going to be the case.
"In the future, Ai will be able to do everything for us"
The lowdown
"Ai is here to stay, it's futile to even think we can fight it, and in every aspects of our lives Ai is going to be a factor going forward", I've said that before and I'll gladly say it again - this is not an article about Ai skepticism. What is however is an article about realism and embracing the new reality with an open mind, but certainly also with a level of logical thinking.
Logical thinking, that's what Ai is being praised to do. Logical thinking at lightning speed. But is that really all there is to it?
You see Ai comes in many shapes and sizes nowadays, understanding the different versions already gives you an edge in discussing it. We have categories like Descriptive,- Prescriptive,- Assistive,- Predictive,- and Generative Ai. All have their pros and cons, and while most modern Ai's use a blend of these categories, it's more often the case than not, that for each task that needs doing, one of these categories will most likely be the sole operator for that task. The point here is that although mighty powerful as Ai is, it still comes down to logical thinking to know and decide when and where to use it. You can't just sprinkle Ai over your entire Email marketing and call it a day.
And that's where we'll begin this claim "Ai is not going to be the death of email marketing", by looking into the various phases an email campaign goes through.
Creative phase
This is the phase we've seen the most disruption, especially on the content creation part. While that's all fine there are still a few caveats that, in our mind, needs to be ironed out before larger brands should start using it, and even at that point it still doesn't leave out human intervention.
Copywriting
It's no lie that most of us use Ai for formulations, idea creation, sparring and all things related to writing texts. This is true now and it will probably also be true in the future. Ai is simply faster at spewing out heaps of texts faster than any human will ever be able to. And that's where we're at now, especially with guidance and guardrails companies can get a long way having Ai formulate articles, product descriptions and so on. But it's only ever as good as the guidance you give it, it still needs human interaction to proof read what it came up with. 80% of the times it bang on, but it still makes up stuff, because it's most likely using Generative Ai, that needs to be held in check by a human.
Those last 20% is way too much for most larger brands, which is why using it for copywriting is at this time of writing still not good enough. So while we are looking into a future of less copywrite tasks that requires a human, getting those last 20% right is going to take a lot of time, before all these will be done by Ai.
Design
This is also a field where Ai has really taken up space. With the many advances being done on a daily basis on image,- and design creations is overwhelming. This is where I see Ai has come the farthest. In a split second users can prompt for a new image or design for your emails, giving many people access to solutions that before would cost more resources. Now they can do it in a whiff for pennies. It's most likely a combination of both Generative,- and Prescriptive Ai. But this is where I believe it misses the mark as well - sure it can miss an arm or a leg sometimes in an image, but when it comes to design, a good design learns from the past, but a truly remarkable design is looking into the future. It's being creative and bold. Ai can only look backwards from what it knows. So while most designs lean on the past, only leaning on Ai would lead to stagnation. We still need designers to look into the future and create something bold, even though it may an ever shrinking demand.
Again it comes down to those last few % when it comes to making up stuff that's wrong, which is also why most larger brands will still keep a tight guideline on what's being send under their brand name.
Execution phase
This is the phase where all the fine things that was decided in the strategy room now needs to be executed on and where this article gets a little more juicy in my opinion, because now we're venturing into a field that I have a personal bias towards and where the controversy of this article starts to appear.
Development
Email development is a hornets nest of navigating weird email clients. As a fragmented market of support for even the most common HTML tags, email marketing is a gauntlet most developers doesn't escape from unscathed. There isn't much logic that can be applied from common web development to email marketing, the reason has been lost to the sands of time, but it all stems from the nature of the industry being fragmented, with big players like Microsoft, Google and Apple all making their own decisions on what should and shouldn't be possible in an email. Much like web development was a bit fragmented at the beginning before it was harmonized.
I have yet to see any of the Ai's that claims to be able to generate perfect email code, be able to support MSO coding for Outlook, darkmode across platforms, take into consideration that Yahoo is doing something odd at the moment, and still come out with a minimized mobile friendly code that works - It's hybris to think that it won't come in the future, but I think the change is going to come from platforms harmonizing their HTML support, rather than Ai solving the complexity as it looks now. Right now complexity kills, simplicity scales.
Translation
Translation is a field I believe is massively occupied by Ai already and is something that people in that field is coming to terms with. The fact that you as a marketer can, with a click of a button, have all your content translated into your markets is a remarkable feat of accomplishment. Now is it perfect? I'm not sure, I would have to be an expert in all languages to give that analysis, however in the few languages I am proficient in(yes I took French for the better part of my school years), I'd say it's almost there. With the knowledge of language and your text it uses Descriptive,- and Assistive Ai to translate that into another languages.
It really depends on a whole lot of small details, and which Ai model you choose, but the fact that of the matter that you deliver a master text, is giving the Ai all the materials it needs to succeed. Sure there are some formulations, nuances and tone of voice that sounds a bit odd on some models, but it's getting ever closer to where I'd personally consider it to be good enough, if you have multiple languages you have to support and limited resources.
Automation
The title in itself is a bit odd, but essentially it covers all the setting from campaigns, flows and in general data management. Here I believe Ai is going to have an ever growing presence as time unfolds. The title in itself hints at something that's automated, logical and full of data assessment - something that's on Ai's home turf. We're already seeing many platforms steer towards assisting and suggesting better settings, timings and flows based on hard cold data. It's very much Predictive,- and Assistive Ai that's at play here and one that can have an immense impact if done correctly.
I believe the job of a good CRM manager or Marketing Automation Specialist is helping set the right strategy and constantly fine-tuning this part of the field, with deep insights and knowledge about the brand and the audience. Because making decision based on cold data will only ever get you so far, you need a human aspect and understanding in order to make decisions towards what actual human beings would appreciate in the end.
Delivery phase
This is the phase we enter when the email has been sent out and now comes judgment-day on whether it will work or not. Here we'll take a look at what Ai's are doing in the inboxes we all hope to land in.
Now in an earlier article, Ai in the inbox - is it a blessing or a curse, I did write about our fears for Ai in this particular area could mean the death of Email Marketing as we know it, casting it into the many other marketing channels that is at the whims of an algorithm, deciding whether your content gets viewed or not. In short our fears was that with the introduction of Ai's in the inboxes writing summaries on emails, a dystopian scenario would be where an Ai had made the entire email campaign and another Ai was filtering it out in the users inbox. All of it voided of human touch, which is what email marketing prides itself upon - the ability to be personal and to an extend, a human connection.
But a great point was being made by Gyula, a fellow email geek:" If these Ai's in the Inboxes just once gets their assessment wrong on an important email - the whole justification for the platform comes crashing down and people would stop using it all together." You see unlike any other platforms, email inboxes are personal to the users - it's their domain where they can choose what content they get and what content they don't get(for the most part). If an Ai assistant would suddenly start messing with that relationship, it won't feel personal to the user as they seize to have control.
Also spam filters have been around for ages in the inboxes, which could to some extend be interpreted as Predictive Ai in a way, because it's taking a look at the content and judging whether it's relevant for the user or not(it's actually machine learning, but for this case it'll suffice). The point is we've been dealing with these algorithms for ages in Email Marketing, and I'd argue we're even more relevant after its implementation.
Before we as a society come up with a better way of getting important personal information delivered to us, email is going to be the one thing we count on.
Closing remarks
Ai has come a long way, and it surely is inevitably clawing its way into our everyday lives. For Email Marketing, just as so many other industries, that means a heightened level of speed and to some extend a better product, although I'm still very skeptical about that coding part from what I've seen so far.
The dystopian nightmare of Ai's creating email to Ai's will most likely never happen, because we human beings need some things that is ours, simple as that.
I'll close the article with my opening statement "Ai is here to stay, it's futile to even think we can fight it, and in every aspects of our lives Ai is going to be a factor going forward", but having closely examined the shifting winds out there I'm positive that Email Marketing will still be around, albeit be it improved version, in it's original form as the platform where human communication still exists.
