SMS Strategies

How Email and SMS Marketers Are Actually Using AI (With Examples)

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Published on
Aug 23, 2023
Written by
Kayla Ellman
Kayla is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Attentive. You can find her binge-reading, baking from her (rapidly growing) cookbook collection, or exploring local hiking trails.

Check out these examples of artificial intelligence in marketing from brands that are using it successfully.

Marketers aren't shy about using AI to make their jobs easier. It’s helping them streamline their workflows—from ideation to content creation—and get things done in a fraction of the time.

And, as it turns out, consumers really don't mind if their favorite brands are using AI to communicate with them. More than half of consumers are comfortable with getting AI-generated messages, as long as they’re tailored to their needs and interests.

Whether you've fully embraced the technology or are just starting to explore it, there are so many opportunities to incorporate AI into your day-to-day work.

See how our customers are using Attentive AI™ to automate tasks like copywriting, image editing, and more, so they can save time, maximize their resources, and drive even better results.

To craft compelling text messages, quickly and easily

Magic Message powered by Attentive AI makes creating high-performing SMS campaigns a breeze. It generates copy in seconds that fits your brand voice, target audience, and goals. You can use what it comes up with as is, or take it and riff on more ideas.

LIVELY

Digitally native lifestyle brand LIVELY loves testing new things and is gradually working Attentive's AI tools into their content creation process. Magic Message has been a huge help for their small but mighty CRM team—almost like having an extra pair of hands to brainstorm and write text messages.

example of an SMS campaign powered by Attentive AI™

“We've used the copy assistant to help generate copy for our campaigns,” says Hayley Squire, Senior Manager, Lifecycle Marketing at LIVELY. “Whether we have last minute comms to send out, or we have multiple messages to schedule, it’s proven to be a big time saver for us.”

Neiman Marcus

Renowned luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has also seen benefits from using our copy assistant to support and scale their marketing efforts. “We love Attentive's AI tools, especially features like Magic Message that help us create relevant messages quickly,” says Linda Lopez, Senior Manager, Mobile & App Enablement at Neiman Marcus. “It saves us a ton of time in the drafting process and ensures we're sending the highest-performing messages. That’s important to us as we continue to scale SMS across all three brands in our portfolio.”

To take the guesswork out of writing email subject lines 

Our Subject Line Assistant is an evolution of Magic Message that uses your brand’s past performance data to suggest subject lines that'll drive opens. It eliminates the need for trial and error so you don’t have to write and test multiple versions manually.

Solo Stove

A great subject line can be the difference between an email that gets opened and one that doesn’t. But as any marketer can tell you, it’s hard to get that line of copy just right. Sometimes, you need to workshop it a little.

example of an email campaign subject line powered by Attentive AI™

Rather than starting from scratch for a recent email campaign, Solo Stove used our subject line assistant to generate a few ideas first. One option captured the timeliness of the promotion—the chance to get a free pellet adapter with the purchase of a fire pit for a limited time. But the brand decided to edit it slightly to capture the full spirit of the offer—the freedom to choose any product from their range of fire pits.

The AI-generated copy (Limited Time Offer: Fuel Your Fire with Dual Capability) got Solo Stove most of the way to their final subject line (Limited Time Offer: Fuel Your Fire Your Way).

To create and customize images for campaigns

Magic Message is more than a copywriting tool. You can also use it to quickly modify images from your product catalog to fit your latest email or MMS campaign. Simply describe how you want to customize an image, then AI will transform it for you.

Torani

As Assistant Marketing Manager at World Pantry, a full-service digital commerce agency, Megan Crowley manages SMS for multiple brands, including flavored syrup company Torani. With such a full plate, our AI tools help Crowley do more with less—like create on-brand images in a pinch. 

example of an MMS campaign powered by Attentive AI™

“Torani has a lot of lifestyle photography for us to choose from featuring their different syrup products. But for some flavors, there's a more limited selection. We've been able to use Magic Message to create great images that look like a bottle is sitting right there on a countertop,” Crowley explains. “This feature has been immensely helpful and has saved us from having to ask our partner or design team to come up with something new.”

Beyond the ability to fill product photography gaps, “Attentive's AI tools have definitely made the planning and message-creation process faster and easier, so I can focus more of my energy on other tasks," adds Crowley. "The copy assistant is great and helps us avoid sounding repetitive in our messaging. I just type in a few words and it generates ideas for me in seconds. And I love that I have the freedom to use the copy as is or make tweaks.”

To maximize revenue from seasonal promotions 

Automated Campaigns helps you create and schedule seasonal and urgency-building campaigns through the combined power of generative AI and automation. The tool tells you exactly how many messages to send, to who, and when, to get the best results (with the option to edit the output as you see fit).

JAXXON

Men’s accessories brand JAXXON wanted to make sure they were getting the most out of high-traffic holidays, and they were curious to see how Attentive AI could help boost their SMS strategy. They decided to run an A/B test for Memorial Day weekend—a big summer shopping moment—sending Automated Campaigns to half of their SMS list, so they could compare the results with their existing strategy. 

example of an SMS campaign powered by Attentive AI™

Automated Campaigns saved JAXXON valuable time and effort by using data from past performance to determine the best messaging, cadence, and segmentation strategy. It also performed better than the brand’s standard SMS campaigns, achieving a 249% increase in overall ROI from their Memorial Day messages. 

“Testing new strategies is part of our culture at JAXXON, so we were interested in the idea from the beginning,” says Peter Bacon, VP of Marketing at JAXXON. “After reviewing the results, we’ll be integrating automated campaigns into our overall retention strategy more often.” 

To deliver personalized recommendations to subscribers

Automated Campaigns can also generate personalized product recommendations for each of your subscribers. The machine learning tool suggests items based on their purchase history, product views, and items they've added to their cart recently.

OLLY

We recently partnered with the OLLY team on an experimental email series. We used Automated Campaigns to send their subscribers personalized recommendations at a regular cadence, with the goal of driving net-new revenue between holidays, announcements, and other big campaigns.

Not only did these automated emails require minimal effort to create and send, but they also performed just as well as OLLY's standard marketing emails—generating over 40% of a typical month's email revenue for the brand

example of a personalized email campaign powered by Attentive AI™

"We don't send a lot of promotional emails. We mostly focus on sending product-forward email campaigns that aren’t necessarily evergreen,” says Rebecca Tran, Retention & CRM Specialist at the ​​gummy vitamin and supplement brand. "Being able to create personalized emails like this, on a bi-weekly or monthly basis, that are low lift but still contribute to our revenue, is really great for us." 

Jennifer Peters, Senior DTC Manager at OLLY, agrees that being able to speed up the creative process—which currently takes anywhere from four to six weeks—while still sending on-brand emails that bring in significant revenue, is an exciting prospect. "We've learned from testing with both email and SMS that simplicity and clarity are king," says Peters. "That's what this experiment represents, and I think the numbers speak for themselves."

Kitsch

Hair care and accessories brand Kitsch has also experimented with using Automated Campaigns to send messages with AI-generated product recommendations. Just like any other SMS campaign, the copy is the same for each subscriber. But the suggested product and link are tailored based on their individual likes and interests, so it's uniquely relevant to them.

example of a personalized SMS campaign powered by Attentive AI™

If there isn’t enough data to populate a personalized recommendation, Automated Campaigns will identify your bestsellers and recommend those instead. 

To drive conversions with conversations managed by AI

Attentive Concierge™ powered by Attentive AI takes your two-way SMS conversations to the next level. It leverages trillions of data points to help you engage customers, answer their buying questions, and generate more revenue in real time. 

Affliction Clothing

Affliction Clothing is using Concierge powered by Attentive AI to make sure their subscribers’ messages are never left unread. In one playful interaction, a subscriber asked for product recommendations in the form of a poem, and the AI delivered on the spot, including direct links and a discount code to shop. 

example of a Concierge conversation powered by Attentive AI™

While a real customer support agent could've come up with a creative response like this, too, it probably would've taken at least a few minutes by comparison. 

Not only does Concierge make sure your customers’ questions are answered instantly, in your brand voice, with responses that don’t sound robotic. But it also increases your customers’ cart size by identifying up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

Still pretty new to AI and want to learn more about how it can help you with your marketing efforts? Check out The Marketer's Guide to Using AI.

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