As email marketers seek to harness the power of AI, it’s crucial to understand the distinction between two prominent types: predictive AI and generative AI.
Before diving into the AI landscape’s deep end, let’s strip it back a moment. You’ve probably heard the terms Predicative AI and Generative AI, and while they may sound complex, both AI approaches hold immense potential for enhancing marketing strategies and improving efficiency.
Let’s break down the key differences and benefits of each type to demystify the subject and explore how marketing managers can use them for smarter, more impactful email campaigns.
What is Predictive AI?
Predictive AI is a well-established form of artificial intelligence that analyses historical data using machine learning to forecast future outcomes. This offers marketers a powerful tool to optimise their campaigns. Here are the key benefits of predictive AI:
Data-driven decision-making
Predictive AI analyses customer data, such as purchase history, browsing behaviours or campaign interactions, to generate advanced insights. This helps marketers make better-informed decisions that drive results.
For example, if you knew which customers are more likely to generate the largest customer lifetime value, you could tailor your personalised communications to this segment and nurture them to become VIP customers faster.
Accurate predictions
By identifying patterns, trends, and correlations in vast datasets, predictive AI can forecast customer behaviours with remarkable precision.
And the ability of machine learning means that the more data it can analyse, the more accurate it becomes over time.
So, the more tailored the algorithms will become as your database grows and you drive more engagement from your customers.
Enhanced personalisation
Understanding individual customer behaviours enables highly personalised campaigns. Predictive AI helps you craft tailored messaging and product recommendations, delivering experiences that resonate on a personal level.
Improved customer experience
By tailoring marketing efforts based on predictive insights, you are likely to send marketing messages to your customers that they will engage with.
Therefore, these personalised experiences will improve customer satisfaction, increase engagement with your brand, and ultimately increase CLTV.
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI is a cutting-edge technology that takes a creative approach. It enables machines to generate original content, imagery, and even human-like text.
It offers marketing managers a host of new possibilities for building personalised, engaging campaigns. Here are the key points to highlight:
Content creation and curation
From articles, subject lines, email intro copy, social media posts, and product descriptions, generative AI automates the creation of high-quality, relevant content, saving marketers significant time and effort.
Design and imagery
With generative AI, marketers can create visually appealing graphics, logos, and images that align with their brand identity, streamlining the design process and making repurposing content across channels faster.
Personalised messaging
Generative AI can assist marketing managers in creating a series of personalised messages and responses for customer interactions, enhancing engagement and strengthening brand loyalty – all whilst keeping to your brand’s tone of voice.
A/B testing optimisation
By utilising generative AI, marketing managers can automate the process of generating and testing multiple versions of marketing materials, such as ad copy or subject lines, to identify what kind of messaging your audience engages with best.
We predict that 2025 will be the year of AI vs Human copy for A/B testing in email marketing.
How predictive and generative AI will shape the future of marketing
Generative AI is revolutionising the marketing industry, enabling professionals to work more efficiently and creatively.
However, the technology still benefits from the human touch. A marketer’s creativity and intuition ensure campaigns remain personal and distinctive, helping brands stand out in crowded markets.
It’s also becoming increasingly important for marketers to learn how to give clear and effective instructions to AI tools. The way you phrase your requests or prompts can significantly impact the quality of the content AI generates.
By learning how to guide these tools effectively, marketers can ensure the outputs are relevant, on-brand, and useful, helping them get the most out of AI in their campaigns.
By understanding the differences between predictive AI and generative AI, marketers can unlock powerful tools to simplify operations, refine strategies, and achieve better outcomes.
Whether leveraging predictive AI for data-driven decision-making or harnessing generative AI for creative content generation, AI is there to help us, not replace us, and there is still time to learn and immerse yourself in the new technology.
