Why the Subject (Lines) of AI Matters
From book titles, to newspaper headlines, to click-bait personality quizzes, a first impression often determines success or failure for engagement.
The email marketers’ equivalent to this challenge is their subject lines. How this short piece of text is crafted will determine whether a customer opens a message or ignores it—or worse, deletes it and marks it as spam. That puts a lot of pressure on a select few words, not to mention the fact that marketers still have the rest of the email on their plates.
But with AI-powered subject lines that are automatically personalized to customers and aligned with the content of your emails, marketers can alleviate the demand from this small yet critical element of their emails. Discover how AI can not only increase your subject line efficiency, but generate copy that is sure to resonate with your customers and motivate them to click into your next message.
What Makes an Effective Subject Line?
When it comes to email content, marketers have become wise to the fact that personalization is always a critical component. While mentioning discounts or promotions are a surefire attention-grabber for every customer, relying solely on those methods is unsustainable and does not contribute to lasting brand loyalty.
As a result, there is no effective one-size-fits all messaging when it comes to email content or subject lines. Whether it’s product recommendations and loyalty messaging, or the copy in a subject line, the key to customer engagement and retention will always lie in true personalization.
This is where the AI stands out, making this level of creative generation and productivity scalable for marketers. At a high level, the AI will create countless on-brand subject lines based on the creative assets within the email itself. From there, it will predict and optimize the subject line that will resonate most. At all times, marketers have their finger on the pulse of the process and are able to approve, reject, and edit any of the subject lines the AI generates.
Which AI to Use for Subject Line Generation
A compelling case has been made for using AI to craft subject lines. But at the same time, marketers are surrounded by countless options, from free open-source generators to the additional capabilities many vendors are adding to their existing martech solutions. When choosing an AI for your subject lines, here are a few things to look out for:
Data-Backed Copy
Data-driven personalization is a non-negotiable for content, and marketers must uphold the same standard when it comes to their subject lines. The subject line is small but mighty, and if marketers aren’t applying the same level of personalization to this copy as the rest of the message, they will miss a valuable engagement opportunity and risk customers never clicking into the rest of the email.
To achieve meaningful and personalized subject lines, the copy needs to be tied to the tailored creative content within the actual email. As the email content would already be personalized to customers’ preferences, history, and future affinities, a subject line that is uniquely crafted with the same data and insights would resonate just as effectively. Don’t settle for just quick copy; seek tailored, effective AI-generated subject lines with the right tone.
Unified Workflow
In the same way that the content and the subject line should be in sync, marketers will work most efficiently if their AI workflow is similarly unified. When possible, choose an AI solution that can support every element of the email, from subject lines and frequency optimization to in-message content. By leveraging an all-in-one AI approach, workflows will be streamlined and outputted content will always be supporting the same hyper-relevant story for customers.
Stay in Style
Every brand has different tones, principles, and carefully thought-out style guides that govern how they communicate with customers. Keeping these consistent guidelines at the forefront of messaging is crucial to maintaining a cohesive brand presence for customers to know and love.
Your AI-powered subject lines need to point back to that existing brand presence and style. Whether it’s never including emojis, retaining a casual and friendly tone, or preserving that precious Oxford comma, the AI solution you choose should support your style guide.
The Benefits of AI-Powered Subject Lines
With all of these factors and pitfalls to keep in mind, is avoiding AI for subject lines simply a safer bet? Certainly not, and here’s why:
Scaling creativity is only possible through AI. As companies grow and customers accumulate, it becomes manually impossible to have the utmost personalization and creativity in every part of your marketing messaging. AI takes care of the data-combing and personalization automatically, giving marketers far more bandwidth to fine-tune their strategies and creative endeavors.
Growing effectiveness is every marketer’s dream for their messaging. Rather than creating one-hit-wonder subject lines and relying on guesswork for effectiveness, the benefit of using AI is that copy will continually grow in relevance. As the AI constantly learns and adapts, marketers can be assured that their subject lines will only get better over time.
Time to Generate Click-Worthy Subject Lines
The right AI solution can make all the difference when it comes to creating subject lines that customers can’t resist. Don’t let your valuable email content go to waste—make sure that subject line is just as relevant and engaging as the rest of your message.
To discover more use cases for AI in your marketing strategies and tactics, explore the related resources below.
