Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels and consistently delivers one of the highest ROIs among digital marketing channels. As of 2020, the global email marketing market was valued at around $7.5 billion. It’s not the highlight of an entrepreneur’s typical daily schedule, but whether you like it or not, email is here to stay. Although its demise is often predicted, email continues to persist as the gold standard of communication in the professional space.
Even as the market grows, inefficiencies and limitations have frustrated email marketers since the dawn of the internet. Luckily, AI–powered email productivity tools have entered the scene to help make emailing a little less painful and much more efficient. Thanks to AI, email marketing’s value is expected to expand in coming years and is projected to reach an estimated value of $17.9 billion by 2027.
The Evolution of Email Marketing
The history of email marketing can be traced back to the early stages of the Internet, as businesses began to recognize the potential of email as a cost-effective and efficient marketing channel.
By the early 2000s, advancements in technology allowed marketers to create more visually appealing emails, track open and click-through rates, and implement segmentation strategies for better targeting. Email service providers began to emerge to manage and deliver email marketing campaigns on behalf of businesses.
In the 2010s, marketing automation platforms gained popularity, letting businesses automate and streamline their email marketing efforts. The importance of personalization and subscriber engagement took center stage, as marketers sought to create more relevant and targeted email campaigns.
However, email marketers faced several challenges that limited the effectiveness of their campaigns. Marketers had to rely on basic personalization techniques, such as using the recipient’s name in the subject line or email body. The lack of advanced tools made it difficult to deliver highly personalized content tailored to each subscriber’s preferences and behavior.
Crafting personalized subject lines and email copy required significant time and effort from marketing teams. As businesses grew and email lists expanded, it became increasingly challenging for marketers to manage and scale their email marketing campaigns without compromising quality and personalization.
The Impact of AI on the Industry
With critical inefficiencies, and automation and personalization at the core of most email marketing strategies, the door was left wide open for AI platforms like ChatGPT to supercharge the email marketing industry as a whole.
Ajay Goel, founder of the mail marge and mass email tool GMass, has long understood the utility that AI tools like ChatGPT could bring to email marketing.
“ChatGPT has made people rethink what AI can do, both professionally and personally,” says Goel. “Before ChatGPT, people were largely skeptical of what AI could do. Now, we’re wondering if there’s anything it won’t be able to do.”
