SendPulse Brings AI to Improve Email Marketing

Of all the digital marketing channels email marketing is probably one that has been there the longest and has always been a favorite of marketers both for driving revenue as well as for creating consistent brand recall. Technology has evolved over time and so did the way we approach marketing. E-commerce companies have been most successful when it comes to driving revenue through email marketing and availability of extensive consumer data, sophisticated segmentation and re-targeting mechanics makes email marketing all the more powerful. On the other end of the spectrum, B2B businesses have been using email marketing in different shapes and forms. While brand connect emails are common , most B2b businesses are investing significantly in sophisticated email automation systems for lead nurturing that can actually translate to measurable revenue.

However with all emails there has been some specific challenges. Deliverability and Open Rates have always been a challenge for email marketing and there are few factors that are continuously making email marketing difficult – overall increase in number of emails received, stringent filtering criteria form ISPs, Multiple default folders like Promotions and Updates inbuilt in services like Gmail, multiple form / channel factors, all are contributing to the cause. Email marketing services has been continuously improving themselves and bringing in new features to make marketing easier and more effective.

I have used multiple email marketing services from self hosted solutions to popular SAS services like Mailchimp, Aweber and StreamSend. Very recently while researching on new features in email marketing tools I came across SendPulse and the first thing that got my attention is that they are using AI ( artificial intelligence) to improve email open rates. The AI solution automatically choose the best time to send a message by predicting when the subscriber is more likely to interact with it. Based on the subscriber data and behavior the predictive analytics engine creates an user profile and AI is leveraged to optimize emails and other forms of communication for each profile so they deliver the maximum engagement.

The AI also automatically choose the optimal channel for delivery – email, web push, mobile push, SMS etc. The SendPulse platform actually goes beyond traditional email delivery only and allows multi channel delivery through web push notifications and sms as well. In this omni-channel world it is extremely critical that you are able to reach your target audience on their most preferred channel and in the right time – the comfort of managing them all under the same dashboard makes life so much easier.

Anyone who has played with email marketing for some time are aware what a crucial role subject lines can play in deciding the open rate and success rate of the campaign. The inbuilt AI in SendPulse also helps in automated subject line and content optimization.

The other factor that plays a crucial role in choice of such a tool is the cost and the market is highly competitive in that perspective. While AI and multi channel communication management is a big draw I decided to look at their pricing structure to get a feel of how sustainable it might be. For a fair comparison, I took four standard list size ( 5000, 10000, 25000 and 50000) to compare and looked at their monthly subscription packages with unlimited emails. ( Some of them like SendPulse also offers a Pay as You Go model and MailChimp has an enterprise/Pro-marketer package with a $199+ fees). All prices are in USD.

5000 10000 25000 50000
SendPulse 35 53 108 191
Streamsend 70 85 165 265
Aweber 49 69 149 Custom Quote
MailChimp 50 75 150 240

 

On the pricing front also, SendPulse looks most competitive amongst the compared services. Of course this comparison is purely based on subscriber list, you can also look at specific features while comparing the price.

AI has been the next big thing all across the digital landscape, from AI driven cars, to simple recommendation engines from use of AI in search algorithm to now AI in email marketing, it is indeed an exciting time for marketers. Modern marketing is data driven and contextual and the availability of extensive consumer data across all digital touch points opens up a great opportunity for marketing technology players to offer better services. SendPulse seems to be on the right track and am giving them a shot, it will be good to see how the other players catch up to it.

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Check out the About SRC Page for more details about Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury.

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