How to Automate Email Marketing with AI

Email marketing remains the highest-ROI digital channel — €36 returned for every €1 spent, according to Litmus's 2025 State of Email report. But most businesses leave money on the table by sending generic blasts instead of personalised, behaviour-triggered campaigns. AI changes this by making sophisticated email automation accessible to businesses of any size.

What AI Changes About Email Marketing

From Batch-and-Blast to Intelligent Automation

Traditional email marketing: segment your list, write an email, send to everyone in that segment, check open rates. AI email marketing: the system observes individual behaviour, predicts what each subscriber wants, crafts personalised messages, and sends at the optimal time — automatically.

The Key Capabilities

• Smart segmentation: AI groups subscribers by behaviour patterns, purchase history, engagement level, and predicted lifetime value — not just demographics
• Content personalisation: product recommendations, dynamic content blocks, and messaging that adapts to each recipient's interests
• Send time optimisation: each subscriber receives emails when they're most likely to open and click, based on their individual patterns
• Subject line optimisation: AI tests and predicts which subject lines will perform best for each segment
• Automated sequences: welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, post-purchase follow-up, re-engagement campaigns — all triggered by behaviour

How to Implement AI Email Marketing

Step 1: Audit Your Current Email Performance

Before adding AI, benchmark your current metrics: open rate, click rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, and revenue per email. You need a baseline to measure improvement against.

Step 2: Set Up Behavioural Tracking

AI needs data. Ensure you're tracking: website visits (pages viewed, time on site), email engagement (opens, clicks, forwards), purchase history, abandoned carts, and content downloads. AI workflow automation connects these data sources into a unified customer view.

Step 3: Build Your Core Automated Sequences

Start with the four highest-impact automated sequences:

1. Welcome Series (triggers: new subscriber)
3-5 emails over 2 weeks. Introduce your brand, deliver value, guide toward first purchase. Welcome sequences generate 320% more revenue per email than promotional emails (Omnisend 2025 Email Marketing Statistics).

2. Abandoned Cart Recovery (triggers: cart abandonment)
3 emails over 72 hours. Reminder, social proof, then incentive. AI optimises timing and offer personalisation. Recovers 5-15% of abandoned carts.

3. Post-Purchase Follow-Up (triggers: order confirmed)
Order confirmation, shipping updates, delivery confirmation, review request, cross-sell recommendations. AI selects cross-sell products based on purchase patterns.

4. Re-Engagement (triggers: 30-60 days inactive)
Win back subscribers who've stopped engaging. AI identifies the optimal re-engagement timing and offer for each subscriber.

Step 4: Layer On AI Personalisation

Once your sequences are running, enhance with AI-driven personalisation:

• Dynamic product recommendations in every email based on browsing and purchase history
• Content blocks that change based on subscriber segment and engagement history
• AI-generated subject line variants tested across segments
• Predictive send timing for each individual subscriber

Step 5: Optimise Continuously

AI email marketing improves over time as it accumulates more behavioural data. Review performance weekly for the first month, then monthly. Pay attention to: which sequences drive the most revenue, where subscribers drop off, and which personalisation elements have the biggest impact.

Results to Expect

Based on Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp benchmark data for 2025:

• Open rates: 25-45% improvement with send time optimisation and personalised subject lines
• Click-through rates: 50-100% improvement with dynamic content and product recommendations
• Revenue per email: 2-4x increase with behaviour-triggered sequences vs. batch sends
• Unsubscribe rate: 20-40% decrease (more relevant = fewer opt-outs)
• Time saved: 10-15 hours per week on campaign creation and management

AI Email Marketing Tools vs Custom Solutions

Platform-Native AI (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign)

Built-in AI features for send time, subject lines, and basic personalisation. Good starting point, but limited to what the platform supports.

Custom AI Email Automation

Custom-built solutions that integrate your email platform with your full customer data stack — CRM, website analytics, purchase history, support interactions. This enables deeper personalisation and more sophisticated trigger logic than any single platform offers. ANET Studios builds custom email automation that connects with your sales pipeline and analytics for a complete picture.

Sources Cited

• Litmus — State of Email Report 2025
• Omnisend — Email Marketing Statistics 2025
• Campaign Monitor — Email Marketing Benchmarks 2025
• Mailchimp — Email Marketing Benchmarks 2025

Ready to Automate Your Email Marketing?

ANET Studios builds AI-powered email automation that integrates with your existing email platform, CRM, and e-commerce tools. We design intelligent sequences that send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Book a free email automation consultation and we'll show you which automated sequences will have the biggest impact on your revenue.