Look at the painting below. Think about how you would describe it. And with that in mind . . . How do you think AI would describe it?
The differences in its descriptions are stark.
Now, let’s move on to something less visual. Read the sentence below.
Of course, this was written by a rather famous human. We all know AI can’t organically come up with something like this. Even more, this beautifully poetic sentence makes you feel a certain way, no doubt. And while AI can understand emotional sentiment expressed by people, it can’t feel the feelings needed in order to write something so uniquely human.
Our unique understandings of the world are key drivers behind our own creativity. But in this era of marketing and data-powered optimization, we can’t rely on our creative instincts alone to drive sales. We still need technology to uncover what types of content will be most performant for our marketing campaigns. Connecting with more people—and driving more revenue from them—happens when you balance both creativity and data-fueled optimizations delivered by the best AI marketing tools.
AI for Email: Blending Beauty & Science
Let’s revisit the exercise we just did and apply a balanced approach to thinking about AI marketing tools to modern email campaigns.
Look at the great subject lines below. They’re all pretty interesting and effective, depending on whom they’re being sent to! Ultimately though, can you really tell which subject lines were written by a human and which are AI messages?
Let’s go a step further. Take a look at the well-organized retail email below. Was it written and designed by a person? Or was it written and designed by a specific AI for email tool?
The Answer: All of the effective email subject lines and the email design were created by Backstoke’s email AI generator. If that surprises you—or even if you figured as much—keep reading to unpack why . . .
Why Do Marketers Need AI? Why Does AI Need Us?
AI marketing tools will never create something as unique and beautiful as Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” AI for email can, however, assist marketers in creating the right content to connect with their subscribers, thanks to its exclusive ability to analyze and understand consumer data.
Success in today’s marketing world is dependent on two things: blending uniquely creative ideas with measurable steps toward optimization.
AI won’t replace you, but it’ll handle parts of your job, in order to make you a better, more results-driven marketer. This is because creativity still provides massive opportunities for marketers. In fact, 80.5% of marketers believe creative effectiveness is one of the most influential factors in the overall success of a campaign.
Additionally, according to Google, 75% of campaign results are attributed to the creatives within them (aka—the human creativity we’ve been talking about this whole time). The remaining 25% are dependent on choices made to optimize said campaigns (aka—the AI’s job).
Is Beauty in the Eye of the Algorithm?
If the previous sections and exercises have established anything it is that marketers need to adhere to a delicate balance of creativity and algorithmic optimization. Our upcoming webinar “Beauty is in the Eye of the Algorithm: A Crash Course in AI Techniques to Improve Marketing Performance” will show you how to do just that.
In this webinar, we’ll show how to blend creative and algorithmic approaches marketing, covering:
- The basics of today’s technologies behind the best AI marketing tools
- How these generative AI tools translate patterns and data into high-performing AI messages and email content
- How to blend Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision to apply to your campaigns
- How to craft actionable strategies to incorporate into your campaigns to maximize ROI
