We transformed our standard nurture email flow into an AI-driven conversion powerhouse. Here’s what we did, what worked (and what didn’t), and what we learned along the way.
When our marketing team began discussing how we could strategically integrate AI into our workflows, we knew we wanted to achieve big results. But the thing about great results is that they don’t come about by trying everything at once.
With limited resources and unlimited possibilities, we had to figure out which AI applications would have the greatest impact.
Email marketing seemed like a natural starting point for us. We ran optimization tests on our nurture flows for years, but after a while the gains became incremental by a few percentage points here and there.
We needed something that would completely change the game. Something that had a significant impact on top-of-funnel metrics And practical applicability across our marketing team. But what – and how?
In a recent Marketing Against the Grain ConsequenceHubSpot VP of Marketing Emmy Jonassen and I share how we experimented with AI to transform our email performance. We will also explain to you how we achieved an 82% increase in conversion rates – plus all the lessons we learned along the way.
Identify the challenge
First, let me explain what we did before AI. Like most marketing teams, we approached email personalization through segmentation – grouping leads based on similar characteristics and then tailoring content to those groups.
For example, if someone downloads marketing-related content, we send them more marketing resources than sales content.
It wasn’t a bad approach. Essentially, however, these were group-level educated guesses. We said, “People like you usually want this,” rather than understanding what each person wanted to achieve. We wanted to do better.
The Hypothesis: Transition from groups to individuals
The more we looked at AI…