Ritika Chakrabarty of marketing agency Stone Ward wants to make clients’ email marketing more human, but here’s her paradox: She uses artificial intelligence to do it.
Chakrabarty, the inbound marketing manager for the Little Rock firm, notes the incongruity, but says marketing has always been about identifying and engaging people likely to be interested in a company’s products or services. She and communications pros across the country are now using a concept called dynamic email to help clients communicate via technology that tailors responses to the actions of email users.
Dynamic email is basically “two-way relevant conversations between our clients and their customers,” achieved at what Chakrabarty called “a fraction of the cost of mass advertising.”
Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms using AI, “decision trees” and bots to respond to online actions have been in use for years, but Chakrabarty said businesses may never see a better chance to convert email users’ online data into growing sales.
“Relevancy and personalization have never been more important,” she said. “Dynamic email helps you stand out … and it forges a bond with consumers and increases conversions to your business.”
The agency’s CRM tool, SharpSpring, sees what links email users clicked on or ignored, helping clients “craft hundreds of emails catering to the preferences and actions of individual email users.”
Chakrabarty and Director of Media Services Brett Parker joined Stone Ward President Millie Ward to demonstrate these ideas for a reporter, delving into his email exchanges with Stone Ward and drilling down to what he opened and reacted to, including links he clicked.
Contrary to current wisdom, email is still a potent tool, she said. “Over 6.32 billion email accounts exist, and more than 60 percent of customers and particularly those 25 or older would prefer to be contacted by brands via email, and among Gen Z members polled, 85 percent have an overwhelming preference for email communications.”
Chakrabarty cited “the principle of humanness” a reminder that people are on the receiving end of emails, and their perspectives are all unique. Another core principle, relevance, focuses on past digital behavior, clicks on emails, blogs and websites, and years of sent emails, form submissions and the like. Prediction techniques, like Amazon purchase suggestions Netflix viewing recommendations, enter the mix along with data left in abandoned online “shopping carts” and uncompleted online forms.
“We as marketers need to stop treating everyone as the same person and adapt to what the consumer is interested in,” Parker said. “Though we know we should be doing this, we typically don’t have time to craft hundreds of different emails that cater to each unique individual. Enter dynamic email.”
Timeliness is another factor, and new technology offers the ability to change content in real time on any email message that hasn’t been opened yet.
Marketers can “talk when the timing is right for their target to hear it,” Parker added. “This is ultimately a win for both the consumer and the marketer.”
Email users see targeted efforts as less intrusive than the old email blasts to thousands of uninterested recipients, Parker said. Stone Ward uses “personalization fields (first name, last name, etc., also known as merge variables)” to “use dynamic text to show we have a personal connection to customers.”
It’s an ad cliche, but Chakrabarty says the time to act is now. “Collecting data for dynamic emails takes time, as you have to collect historical data. So starting now is always better than later.”
Ward, proud of her firm’s technology teams, put it this way: “We see the digital space as still very much the Wild West of marketing. Our job is to keep the silver bullets coming that will get our clients the results they’re after.” Her metaphor for dynamic email? “Guns a’blazin’.”
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