Hyperpersonalization through AI in E-Mail Marketing

This year's OMR Festival showed that artificial intelligence is the central topic in the marketing industry. With the rise of ChatGPT, AI has already arrived in everyday life. But what are the resulting trends in marketing? We want to show you how AI will change the way we think about e-mail marketing.  

When we think about personalization in e-mail marketing today, the first thing that probably comes to mind is the personalized e-mail subject line. But a personalized e-mail campaign often requires more effort than we may think. For example, it often requires time-consuming research of stock photos and adapting them to the company-specific color, layout and brand concept. Several days or weeks can pass before the idea is ready to be sent out by e-mail.  

Will AI make such process steps superfluous? The answer is yes. But will it also make us humans redundant? Absolutely not!  

There is already AI that can generate target group-specific images. This requires precise text descriptions, so-called prompts. The more precise the prompt, the better the result of the image generation. Today's AI is capable of generating prompts on its own. We, as humans, can provide AI with keywords, and it utilizes these optimized prompts to generate images. What opportunities does this present for marketing?   

Classic personalization becomes obsolete, and thanks to AI we are entering the age of hyperpersonalization. AI will independently take over target group analysis and generate personalized content based on the target group. The limits are infinite. Every customer could receive an email with different text or images hyperpersonalized for them by the AI.    

But anyone who now claims that the human factor will be irreplaceable is mistaken. Already today, we can hardly distinguish AI fakes from real images. This is particularly clear in the case of speech AI. With just a three-second sample, AI can already simulate a voice with all its facets. In just a few years, customers will no longer be able to tell whether the content of an email or the voice in call center is real or machine generated.  

Maybe a few years ago we thought that AI tools could be a nice add-on. Now we must accept that AI will fundamentally change the way we work in marketing. Important in this process will be trust and empathy. Our customers should feel taken seriously and valuable even despite machine processes. Along the way, we need to promote transparency and courage. Because in the end, it won't be AI that takes our jobs away, but a human being who has learned to deal with AI.