Generative AI for Email Marketing: Applications & Examples
Generative AI has evolved beyond basic email content creation to enable real-time personalization, multimodal interactions, and cross-channel orchestration that responds to customer behavior. While 60% of CMOs plan to prioritize AI adoption by 2026,1 current implementations often miss critical capabilities like dynamic content adaptation and voice-integrated workflows that are reshaping email effectiveness.
The shift from segment-based campaigns to individual-level personalization represents the most significant change in email marketing since automation, with multimodal AI systems now processing text, voice, and visual data simultaneously to create contextually relevant experiences.
Discover the top 10 generative AI for email marketing applications with real-life examples.
Applications with text and image generation
1. Personalized text and email content creation
Real-time personalization represents a fundamental shift from batch-processed campaigns to dynamic content that adapts instantly based on customer actions. Unlike traditional personalization that relies on historical data, this approach processes behavioral signals as they occur.
Technical implementation:
- AI algorithms forecast subscriber engagement patterns before actions occur, enabling Netflix-style content recommendations in newsletters based on real-time preferences rather than demographics.
- Dynamic segmentation updates audience classifications continuously based on website visits, cart additions, and interaction patterns.
- Send time optimization analyzes individual recipient patterns to determine optimal delivery windows for each person rather than broad time slots.
Leveraging AI text generators to create custom email content would increase personalization and eventually increase customer satisfaction for your email campaigns.
AI text generation tools support generating personalized communication that would enhance the recipient’s engagement with your brand, potentially lead to higher open and click-through rates, and ultimately, improved conversion rates.
Figure 1: Moosend AI text generator feature example.2
Real-life example: WinstonAI by Dotdigital
Dotdigital has integrated a feature called WinstonAI into its platform that provides real-time feedback on email content and offers suggestions for enhancing engagement.
WinstonAI is integrated within the email editor and delivers personalized recommendations to refine email copy, adjust tone, and enhance overall content engagement.
It also assists in crafting more effective subject lines by analyzing previous ones and offering tailored suggestions to boost open rates and overall campaign effectiveness.3
2. Generate email subject lines
Generative AI enables the creation of engaging and compelling subject lines, designed to improve email open rates by capturing recipients’ attention.
- A/B testing: With generative AI tools, you can also automate the process of A/B testing by generating multiple subject lines for the same email and testing them on a small segment of the audience.
- Data analysis: This process starts by analyzing customer data, including previous email campaigns, recipient behaviors, and engagement metrics to understand which emails were opened, which were ignored, and the specific characteristics of successful subject lines.
- Understanding user preferences: These tools learn from the data to understand the preferences and behaviors of the target audience. It identifies patterns, such as words, phrases, or structures, that have led to higher open rates in the past.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): Generative AI utilizes machine learning algorithms that can understand and generate natural language texts to craft subject lines that sound natural, engaging, and are tailored to the audience’s interests and habits.
Figure 2: Brevo subject line generator example.4
Real-life example: Brevo AI Assistant
Brevo email marketing platform’s AI assistant feature enables generating personalized subject lines for email marketing campaigns. By entering a few keywords relevant to your marketing campaign, the AI assistant feature generates suggestions for effective subject lines, enabling you to create additional suggestions.
It also generates texts for email content and call-to-action and provides content improvement suggestions for increased engagement.5
3. Generate call-to-action (CTAs)
With generative AI, you can create personalized CTAs by incorporating user-specific data, such as a recipient’s name, past interactions, and preferences.
Generative AI can also generate multiple variations of CTAs for A/B testing, allowing marketers to test different versions and determine which performs better. To further refine future CTAs, generative AI learns from previous preferences and identifies possible improvements for more effective CTAs.
To ensure that the generated CTAs are both practical and consistent with the brand voice, generative AI follows brand guidelines and regulatory requirements.
4. Image generation
Visual generative AI tools can help create personalized images that you can include in your email marketing messages. Some of the examples of image generation include:
- Product visuals: Generative AI tools enable the production of realistic product images for email marketing, social media, and more.
- Branding: Leveraging generative AI, you can design brand logos and other visual components for your email content to enhance your brand voice.
- Advertising graphics: Additionally, AI can be employed to craft ad visuals for cold email initiatives, which would allow your campaigns to stand out and potentially boost click-through rates and conversions.
Generative AI tools can also craft personalized recommendations and optimized call-to-action buttons tailored to your target audience’s preferences and interests.
Figure 3: BayEngage image generator for email marketing.6
5. Multimodal AI integration
Multimodal AI processes text, images, audio, and video simultaneously, enabling email marketing that responds to diverse data inputs beyond traditional text-based signals. This capability addresses the limitation of single-modal systems that miss context from other communication channels.
Core capabilities:
- Voice integration: Email systems now process voice interactions from smart devices to inform email content, allowing customers to express preferences that automatically update email personalization verbally.
- Visual analysis: AI analyzes customer-uploaded images (product photos, style preferences) to generate relevant email recommendations
- Cross-modal learning: Systems combine data from operational sensors, transaction records, and customer feedback to create comprehensive engagement profiles.
Practical applications:
- Voice-activated email preferences on smart speakers.
- Image-based product matching for fashion and home decor emails.
- Audio sentiment analysis from customer service calls, informing email tone and content.
6. Response automation
Generative AI for email marketing can also support customer service processes by providing timely, relevant, and personalized responses to customer inquiries or actions.
These response emails are generated with autoresponders. When users submit questions or issues via email, this technology can employ an autoresponder to confirm receipt and address their concerns promptly.
Moreover, it is possible to create various email templates tailored to specific inquiries, such as refund policies and returns. Leveraging these autoresponders helps resolve users’ queries efficiently and enhances your email marketing effectiveness.
Automated response generation works by:
- Analyzing customer interaction: The process begins by analyzing past customer interactions, including emails, chat logs, and other communication forms.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP enables us to understand the intent behind a customer’s message and generate a contextually appropriate human-like response using natural language generation capabilities.
- Machine Learning (ML): Utilize ML algorithms to identify patterns, adapt to new types of queries, and refine response effectiveness based on feedback and outcomes.
7. Generative AI email builders and no-code solutions
AI-driven email builders create responsive designs that automatically adapt to user interactions and device characteristics without manual coding. This democratizes advanced email design for marketers without technical expertise.
Design automation features:
- Dynamic layout optimization: AI-powered template builders available on free plans automatically adjust layouts based on content length and device specifications.
- Content-aware design: AI suggests visual elements, color schemes, and typography based on brand guidelines and message content.
- Performance-driven iterations: Systems analyze engagement data to refine design elements for improved click-through rates automatically.
Advanced capabilities:
- Automated accessibility compliance (alt text, contrast ratios, screen reader optimization).
- Brand consistency enforcement across team members.
- Integration with existing design systems and style guides.
Real-life example:
Mailmeteor is an email productivity and sales automation platform with a Chrome extension that integrates directly into Gmail’s interface. The tool offers features like email tracking, automated follow-ups, AI-powered writing assistance, personalized templates, and mail merge capabilities for sending bulk customized campaigns.
Mailmeteor offers both free and premium tiers, supports integration with major CRM systems including HubSpot, Salesforce, and Copper, and provides additional access points through Google Sheets extensions and a dedicated campaign dashboard.7
Figure 4: Mailmeteor AI email writer dashboard.8
Applications based on audience interactions
Since the 2010s, traditional machine learning tools have been used to reach the right audience at the right time, through the right channel. While these capabilities still mostly rely on conventional machine learning, they are:
- Being augmented with generative AI,
- Relevant to email marketing.
8. Target audience selection
Traditional artificial intelligence tools enable you to effectively categorize your audience into segments by processing and generating insights from large datasets, including user behaviors, preferences, demographics, browsing, and purchasing behaviors, which would increase the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.
- By identifying patterns and correlations in user data, these tools can identify audience segments that share distinct characteristics or behaviors and generate multiple variations for email marketing campaigns.
- The role of generative AI in target audience selection enables dynamic segmentation, allowing for continuous updates of audience segments based on new data. This approach would ensure that the target audience selection remains relevant and accurate over time.
As generative AI systems learn from each campaign’s outcomes, these systems would adjust the algorithms to improve future audience selection.
This continuous learning process enhances the precision of targeting over time, which would lead to more effective campaigns in line with your email marketing strategy.
Real-life example: Campaigner’s dynamic segmentation
Campaigner’s dynamic segmentation system provides automated contact filtering capabilities that continuously update based on real-time criteria matching, enabling marketers to deliver targeted email campaigns.
The platform enables users to create complex segmentation logic by combining multiple dynamic segments with Boolean operators, as illustrated by a time-interval filtering example that identifies contacts added within specific date ranges, excluding recent additions. The system supports various segmentation parameters, including:
- Temporal filters (date ranges, recent activity periods).
- Behavioral criteria (purchase history, link clicks, workflow completion).
- Demographic data (geographic location, email provider).
- Engagement metrics (soft bounces, sign-up form sources).
Key functionality includes the ability to target new subscribers with previous campaign content, segment customers based on specific product purchases for targeted communications such as recall notices, filter contacts by geographic proximity for localized campaigns, and create follow-up sequences based on previous email engagement patterns.
9. Delivery time selection and optimization
Marketing email delivery time optimization with generative AI involves using artificial intelligence to analyze user data to predict the most effective times to send marketing emails to different segments of your audience. This process aims to increase email open rates, click-through rates, and overall campaign effectiveness:
- Data collection: The process starts by gathering data from various sources, such as past email campaign performance, subscriber engagement patterns (when they typically open emails), users’ demographic information, and general market trends.
- Identifying patterns: With machine learning algorithms, AI systems analyze the collected data to identify patterns and correlations. For example, it might learn that certain segments of your audience are more likely to open emails early in the morning, while others engage more in the evening.
- Predictive modeling: Based on these patterns, it develops predictive models to forecast the optimal sending times for each segment of your audience.
10. AI-powered email warm-up and deliverability optimization
Email deliverability has become a specialized AI application addressing the technical challenge of inbox placement. AI-generated warm-up emails operate without platform-specific signatures, using customizable strategies with detailed monitoring for deliverability optimization.
Technical approach:
- Predictive spam avoidance: AI analyzes content patterns that trigger spam filters before sending.
- Reputation management: Automated warm-up sequences build sender reputation through gradual volume increases and engagement optimization.
- ISP-specific optimization: Different strategies for Gmail, Outlook, and other providers based on their filtering algorithms.
Advanced features:
- Real-time deliverability scoring with adjustment recommendations.
- Automated domain reputation monitoring and recovery protocols.
- Integration with email authentication protocols (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) for technical compliance.
Real-life example: Warmy.io
Warmy.io is a specialized email deliverability optimization platform that employs automated email warm-up services to enhance sender reputation and improve inbox placement rates. The service operates by systematically engaging real users across multiple languages and topics to establish credibility with the email service provider.
The platform’s core technology utilizes AI-powered personalization to generate contextually relevant warm-up messages, automatic email archiving to maintain inbox organization, and topic-specific warm-up campaigns tailored to particular industries or audiences.9
What is generative AI for email marketing?
Generative AI enhances email marketing by enabling brands to create highly personalized, dynamic, and engaging content at scale. Leveraging large language models (LLMs), it generates tailored text, images, and product recommendations based on user data, enhancing customer engagement and conversion rates.
With generative AI, email marketers can:
- Prioritize automation: Reduce manual effort and optimize workflows.
- Enhance creativity: Craft compelling, brand-aligned content.
- Deliver hyper-personalized experiences: Engage customers with relevant messaging.
- Improve marketing outcomes: Increase open rates, click-through rates, and customer retention.
Personalization is key; 78% of consumers are more likely to repurchase from brands offering personalized content.10 By integrating generative AI into email marketing, brands can redefine customer communication and drive meaningful engagement.
Benefits of generative AI for email marketing campaigns
Generative AI enhances email marketing by improving efficiency, personalization, and engagement:
Increased email marketing efficiency
By automating the creation and optimization of email content, generative AI minimizes the time and resources needed to execute effective email campaigns.
It can generate subject lines, body content, and personalized images at scale while allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creative direction rather than manual content creation.
Additionally, AI-driven A/B testing and analytics streamline the process of optimizing campaigns. This automation and efficiency can transform email marketing from a time-intensive task to a more streamlined, effective process.
Smooth adaptation to real-time changes
Generative AI systems are capable of adapting to real-time changes in customer behavior and market trends. For example, suppose a sudden spike in interest in a specific product or topic is detected. In that case, it can immediately adjust the AI-generated content of outgoing emails to follow this trend.
This agility ensures that email marketing campaigns remain relevant and timely, which would improve the customer engagement rates.
Customer experience
The combination of personalized content, timely communication, and visually appealing emails contributes to an enhanced customer experience. Customers are more likely to engage with emails that feel relevant and valuable to them, and this positive interaction with the brand strengthens their loyalty and satisfaction.
Additionally, AI-driven automated responses ensure that customers receive timely and helpful support, which would further enhance their experience and relationship with the brand.
Data-driven insights
With generative AI, you can also analyze engagement and performance data that would provide actionable insights. Marketers can refine strategies based on AI-driven insights to improve engagement and conversion rates.
AI-driven analysis can identify patterns and trends that may not be immediately apparent, which would offer a deeper understanding of customer behavior and preferences. These insights drive more informed decision-making and enable continuous improvement of email marketing strategies for better results.
Challenges of generative AI for email marketing
While generative AI offers various benefits for email marketing, it also presents several challenges that marketers need to consider:
Security and ethical issues
Ethical and privacy concerns in generative AI for email marketing revolve around the responsible collection, use, and management of personal data, and transparency in the deployment of AI technologies. These concerns are critical due to the potential for misuse of data and the implications of AI-generated content on user perceptions and trust.
AI-powered email platforms implement privacy-first frameworks, such as anonymizing user data and restricting AI model training on sensitive information, to comply with GDPR and CCPA.
Generative AI copyright concerns are another issue you must acknowledge when using generative AI products. To mitigate copyright concerns, you should identify the most suitable use cases for your business and follow generative AI ethical codes.
To learn more about the ethical concerns and risks stemming from generative AI, check out our ethical concerns of generative AI and risks of generative AI.
Overly relying on automation
There’s a risk of becoming too dependent on generative AI for email marketing content creation, which could lead to a loss of personal touch or authenticity in communication.
AI-generated content can sometimes feel robotic or generic, which reduces its emotional appeal. Marketers should combine AI insights with human creativity to maintain authenticity.
Lack of integration capabilities
Integrating generative AI tools with existing email marketing platforms and workflows can be technically challenging.
Ensuring smooth integration requires both technical expertise and resources, which might not be readily available in all organizations.
Best practices for effective generative AI implementation
To leverage the potential of generative AI for email marketing while navigating its complexities, consider the following tips:
Build on the right foundations
Email marketing is one application among hundreds of generative AI applications. Most of these applications can be built on a common enterprise generative AI technology stack. AIMultiple recommends:
- Large businesses to leverage such a standard tech stack to leverage economies of scale,
- SMEs to use best-of-breed solutions to keep their costs down and progress fast without needing to hire in-house generative AI teams.
Prioritize data privacy and ethics
Ensure your user data collection, storage, and processing practices comply with data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA.
Be transparent with your audience about the use of AI in your email campaigns and maintain ethical standards in content generation to build trust and respect user privacy.
Focus on data quality
The effectiveness of generative AI for email marketing relies on the quality and relevance of the data it’s trained on. Ensure that your data is accurate, up-to-date, and in line with your target audience to generate meaningful and compelling content.
Continuous monitoring
Regularly monitor the performance of your AI-enhanced campaigns, collect feedback, and adjust your strategies based on insights gathered.
Continuous learning and adaptation are key to optimizing the use of AI in email marketing.
Train your team
Ensure your marketing team is knowledgeable about the generative AI tools you’re implementing.
Training on how to use these tools effectively, interpret their outputs, and integrate AI-generated content into campaigns is essential for success.
Balance AI and human oversight
While generative AI can automate many aspects of email marketing, human oversight is crucial to maintain brand voice, ensure content relevance, and make strategic decisions.
Testing and experimenting
Leverage A/B testing to experiment with AI-generated content, subject lines, and send times.
Testing allows you to compare the performance of AI-driven strategies against traditional methods and refine your approach based on empirical data.
Staying informed
As the field of generative AI for email marketing is rapidly evolving, staying informed about the latest trends is essential for effectiveness.
Be prepared to adapt your strategies to leverage new capabilities and maintain a competitive edge.
By following these tips, you can effectively utilize generative AI for email marketing campaigns, fostering personalization, engagement, and efficiency while navigating the challenges and complexities of generative AI technology.
Reference Links
Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE and NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and resources that referenced AIMultiple.
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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