Introduction
Email marketing is a powerful way for franchises to connect with customers and build loyalty.
However, maintaining a consistent and personalized approach across different locations can be challenging.
This is where AI steps in—helping franchises automate, scale, and enhance their email marketing efforts to address these challenges effectively.
In this article, we will explore how franchises can leverage AI to:
- Improve their email marketing strategies
- Enhance customer engagement
- And drive conversions
Are you ready to transform you efforts with AI? We hope so because AI is the wave of the future. Not only that, it can help you market in ways not possible with manual effort alone.
Still skeptical? Keep reading…
Why AI is a transformative tool for franchise email marketing
Franchises often face significant challenges in maintaining consistent and personalized marketing across different locations.
For example, a franchise might struggle with offering unique promotions for each location due to the differing customer demographics and preferences.
Trying to figure out what to offer and how to offer it would be time-consuming on our own, if not impossible. But, with AI, we can understand what promotions to offer and where to offer them.
Analyze local customer data
AI helps by analyzing local customer data to provide relevant, location-specific offers automatically, ensuring that each campaign is tailored to its audience while still aligning with the overall brand.
Automate scaling efforts
AI can also help by automating personalization, ensuring consistency, and scaling your email marketing efforts effectively.
Maintain brand voice across content creation
Not only that but by creating a custom GPT, franchises can maintain their brand voice while automating content creation, ensuring every campaign aligns with brand standards.
Wondering how to create your own custom GPT to use in your email marketing? We have a comprehensive guide showing you how to create one. Check it out!
As you can see, AI is powerful. It can save you time. And it can allow your email marketing campaigns to be more effective. While the benefits are clear, you might still be a little fuzzy on how you can use AI in your email marketing campaigns.
To make things more clear, here are 7 ways you can use AI in your email marketing campaigns.
7 ways franchises can use AI in email marketing
Artificial intelligence offers franchises multiple opportunities to enhance their email marketing efforts.
By automating tasks, improving personalization, and ensuring consistency, AI can help franchises connect with customers more effectively and drive better results. Let us show you how.
#1 AI can personalize customer experience
AI can analyze customer data to create targeted and personalized campaigns, enabling franchises the ability to provide individualized content to their audience.
For example, AI can help generate personalized greetings or offer recommendations based on a customer’s purchase history, ensuring each email you send resonates with the recipient.
DailyStory’s segmentation features make it easy for franchise owners to tailor messaging to specific groups, helping to enhance engagement and drive customer loyalty.
Once audiences are segmented, AI can help deliver the most relevant content to each group by analyzing preferences and predicting which types of messaging will be most effective.
#2 AI-powered predictive analytics
AI-powered predictive analytics can help franchises understand customer behavior and anticipate their needs.
Why is predictive analytics so powerful?
Planning
Predictive analytics can alert a franchisee about upcoming inventory needs or an uptick in demand for a particular product, allowing them to plan promotions or adjust stock accordingly.
Forecasting
By analyzing historical data and customer preferences, AI can forecast which products or services are likely to appeal to different segments, allowing franchises to optimize their offerings to those segments at the right time.
Chances are your competitors are already leveraging predictive analytics to forecast demand and guide inventory decisions. If you want your franchise to remain competitive, you should look to similar tools to gain insights that will improve your email marketing effectiveness.
#3 AI can automate campaign creation and content generation
Creating email content that is both personalized and consistent can be time-consuming.
Spinning up an effective email campaign that is personalized to each segment of your audience could take weeks to pull together.
But with AI tools, like ChatGPT, you can spin up this content in a matter of minutes. All while ensuring that the content your creating is consistent with your brand voice.
Custom, on-brand content, created for your franchise that speaks directly to your audience increases ROI.
So if you are looking to create, iterate, and optimize email campaigns quickly, saving time and ensuring your messaging is consistent across all locations, then AI is the way to go.
#4 AI can optimize campaign timing and delivery
Timing is crucial in email marketing. AI can analyze audience data to determine the best times to send emails for maximum engagement. Competitor insights show that optimizing email timing is key to maximizing campaign success.
What time is the right time?
According to one study, the optimal timing for sending emails is early in the morning (4-6 AM) and late in the afternoon (5-7 PM). These emails have a higher engagement rate, and thus a higher return on investment.
Improve open and click-through rates
By sending emails when customers are most likely to open them, you can significantly improve open and click-through rates for your franchise.
Determine email timing
While the study earlier revealed the best time in general to send emails, AI can help you understand if the open rates for your emails correspond with the study’s findings.
Not only that, but AI can also help optimize your email schedule based on the findings of your own research data, so you are getting the most out of your campaign.
#5 AI can segment audiences
Audience segmentation is essential for creating relevant and engaging content.
Use can use AI to segment audiences based on a number of data points:
- Customer behavior
- Demographics
- Preferences
This level of segmentation might take you days or weeks to determine if done by hand, which means you probably aren’t going to do it. But AI can do this in seconds. With your audience segmented, you can deliver targeted content that resonates with each person who opens your email.
When you send the right message to the right people at the right time, you not only increase engagement, but you also increase trust. That increase in trust will ultimately lead to an increase in conversions and greater customer lifetime value.
#6 AI can enhance A/B testing and optimization
Even with all the advancements that AI offers, we still need to test what works with our specific audience. That is where A/B testing comes into the picture.
But developing one email campaign let alone two or three is hard enough.
This is where AI can really shine and help you out. AI makes it easy to generate multiple variations of subject lines, content, and calls to action.
These variations allow franchisees the ability to test different elements of their campaigns to see what works best.
With AI-driven insights, franchisees can continuously optimize their campaigns to ensure maximum impact.
#7 AI can automate SMS campaigns for cross-channel consistency
In addition to email marketing, franchises can use AI to automate SMS campaigns for a consistent cross-channel experience.
Automating SMS campaigns helps ensure that messaging is consistent, timely, and relevant, providing a seamless experience for customers.
This also helps increase return on investment (ROI) by boosting customer engagement and loyalty.
Those are 7 ways franchises can use AI in their email marketing. If you are still not convinced AI is the wave of the future, here are 8 more ways AI can be used in email marketing.
Tools and AI features for franchise email marketing
By now, we hope you see that AI tools can help franchises automate and optimize their email marketing efforts. We just need to make use of these tools in our daily and weekly marketing efforts.
But how? What should you look for?
To make the most of AI, franchisees should look for tools that offer:
- Scalability
- Personalization
- And integration across multiple marketing channels.
Tools that can do these tasks well are those that are worth adding to your email marketing arsenal. These tools will help you achieve better marketing outcomes in a lot less time than traditional tools.
Tips for getting started with AI in franchise email marketing
Getting started with AI can feel overwhelming, but breaking it down into manageable steps can make the process easier and more effective.
Here are some practical tips to help franchises smoothly adopt AI for their email marketing campaigns.
Start small and scale
For franchises new to AI, it’s best to start small by implementing AI in one area, such as personalizing emails or automating repetitive tasks.
Once comfortable, franchises can scale their use of AI across other areas of their marketing strategy.
Create a custom GPT for franchise campaigns
Creating a custom GPT can be used to create personalized content for specific campaigns.
This is an excellent way for franchises to maintain brand consistency while automating content creation.
We mentioned it earlier, but it is worth mentioning again, we have created a detailed article that will walk you step-by-step through how to create a custom GPT for your email marketing campaigns.
Train your team on AI tools
To get the most out of AI, franchise teams need to be trained on how to use these tools effectively.
Don’t just roll out AI tools to your team without helping them understand how to use them. That is not going to help your marketing efforts, and it will most likely frustrate your team.
If you are going to invest in AI tools, and we believe you should, you should also invest in training so that your team can use these tools to their full potential, maximizing the impact it will have on your marketing efforts.
Monitor, adapt, and improve
AI-driven campaigns should be continuously monitored to determine what is working and what isn’t.
By using AI tools like ChatGPT to iterate based on feedback, franchises can adapt and improve their campaigns over time.
You can simply load your campaign and the analytics from it into ChatGPT and ask it to analyze the results and provide ways in which you could increase your ROI.
Take the advice and implement it into your next campaign. Do this over time and you should see advancement.
Once you have run multiple campaigns and received the data from each, you can provide ChatGPT all that data (make sure it is anonymous) and it can help you understand which types of campaigns work best for your audience and brand.
Benefits of using AI for franchise email marketing
AI-driven tools can help franchises create personalized, scalable, and efficient marketing campaigns that drive results.
With AI, franchises can manage campaigns across multiple locations, ensuring consistency while allowing for localized customization.
By using AI in your email marketing, your franchise can grow its customer base and improve its marketing efforts.
Conclusion
AI is transforming the way franchises approach email marketing, making it easier to personalize content, optimize timing, and maintain consistency across locations.
Understanding how franchises can use AI in email marketing can help them stay ahead of the competition and better engage their audience.
We hope you see that by leveraging AI tools, franchises can enhance customer engagement, improve efficiency, and drive better results.
The time to incorporate AI into your franchise marketing strategy is now, not later.
