How Small Businesses Can Use AI for Email Marketing
- Andrea Gross
- Oct 16
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 31
Generative AI is Helping Small Businesses Be Better Email Marketers
Email marketing is a highly effective communication channel; however, it requires expertise that many small business owners lack the time or staff to master. Fortunately, the advancements of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini have enabled business owners to develop refined marketing strategies like never before. Email marketing is complex, and knowing when to seek expert help will save you time, allowing you to focus on running your business.
How AI Can Help Your Email Marketing
AI can help small business owners improve their email marketing strategies in several ways. It is essential to note that generative AI will utilize any data you upload to train its model.
A Little Nudge: Never upload personal data, as you may be violating data privacy laws, such as the GDPR, by sharing sensitive customer information with a third-party model that you do not control.
Create A/B Tests for Subject Lines and Copy
Use AI to optimize your email campaigns by testing various subject lines, body copy, and calls-to-action. Always review and refine content created by AI. Computer-generated copy has a tendency to become generic-sounding and robotic.
Create Customer Journeys
By inputting non-personal information, such as a description of your ideal customer, details about your products or services, and goals, you can ask AI to outline multi-touch marketing campaigns. These campaigns, often referred to as “journeys,” may include onboarding, nurture, or retention campaigns. AI will not be able to implement these campaigns within your email service provider (ESP); it will only provide you with a roadmap.
Summarize and Analyze Data
AI can help you review complex concepts like a competitor’s strategy or analyze large data sets for trends. Utilize AI to help brainstorm product recommendations and new audience segments.
Remember, the information provided by AI is based on public data and patterns. Humans should always review generated content for accuracy, as AI can sometimes be incorrect. It will also take human creativity to apply generated insights to your marketing strategy.
Optimize Email Send Times
Some ESPs have AI functionality, like send-time optimization, built in. With send-time optimization, emails are sent automatically at the exact right time using machine learning to predict when each individual user is most likely to open the message.
This increases the chances that your customers will open your emails, which increases the likelihood that they will convert. It’s important to note that not all ESPs have the ability to perform send-time optimization. When send-time optimization is not an option, a human will need to analyze data to determine the optimum send time through A/B testing.
The Unforgettable Human Element
While AI can perform many helpful functions, humans still play a vital role in its successful implementation as part of a larger marketing strategy.
Brand Voice: Generative AI does a good job of sounding human. However, it cannot completely capture your unique brand voice, write with empathy, or understand the nuances of your business and how you communicate with your customers.
Legal Advice: AI tools should not be used to verify legal compliance or validate the accuracy of proprietary customer data. These tools may inadvertently make recommendations that go against laws like GDPR.
Prioritization and Integration: It requires human knowledge and skill to prioritize your marketing plan. A person or team of people is also needed to implement strategies into your ESP or customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
Email Development: While generative AI can write code, it isn’t perfect. It cannot account for variations in user devices, screen sizes, personal settings such as dark mode, and the unique rendering issues imposed by different email clients (e.g., Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail) that professional email developers can address.
When It’s Time to Hire An Expert
The decision to hire a professional to help with your AI implementation and marketing strategy is about managing the time involved with and potential risk of using tools ineffectively. You already have a lot on your plate, so it’s important to recognize when you may need some extra help.
You have great ideas, but struggle to prioritize executing them. A marketing expert can help you take those AI-generated strategies and turn them into a step-by-step roadmap that aligns with your goals.
You need to ensure you are legally compliant. Working with a legal professional ensures that your business is compliant, allowing you to build and maintain your customers’ trust.
You are ready to execute more complex marketing strategies. A professional has the experience to build the technical framework that supports advanced, high-volume, AI-accelerated marketing automation, ensuring the system can grow as your business does.
Conclusion
AI tools are a great assistant available to small businesses. They save time and accelerate creativity. But without human expertise to guide the strategy, ensure compliance, perform the final creative edit, and manage technical implementation, you risk wasting effort on generic content and broken emails.
Ready to transform AI ideas into scalable results?
Schedule your free 15-minute consultation today to discuss how Little Nudge Marketing can help create a custom, human-led strategy for your next email marketing campaign.
