Businesses these days, however small or big, run on data-driven digital marketing. This leads us directly to one of its most popular and effective forms known as'email marketing'. And it has seen huge growth over the years. Research shows a whopping 91% of email users as active users that interact regularly. And the number of these exchanges are expected to increase in the coming years. Marketers are now in fact starting to utilize the growth by optimizing this channel with artificial intelligence or AI.

There's a science behind getting people to open your emails. One tech startup is helping companies master that. London-based marketing technology software company Phrasee uses artificial intelligence to deliver human-sounding copy for companies like eBay and Domino's. The software injects AI-optimized language into a company's email subject lines, push notifications, and ads to boost clicks and conversations from copy. And it can do it all in matter of minutes.

Machine learning has changed the game for email marketers. Once hyped as the'next big thing', it is now being put into practice by a wide range of businesses to improve the effectiveness of email. Here are just six case studies that demonstrate its success. Language plays a huge part in why consumers respond to marketing (and why they don't). To figure out why its email engagement rates were declining, Dell partnered with Persado in 2016.

Tone of voice is key for a brand like Virgin Holidays, especially when it comes to grabbing the attention of email subscribers. Previously, the company has relied on copywriters to encapsulate its quirky and adventurous attitude. However, with email campaigns taking up extensive amounts of time and resources (with little pay-off) – the strategy was failing to work. I recently heard from Saul Lopez, Customer Lifecycle Lead at Virgin Holidays, about the brand's decision to bring AI into the mix, specifically to optimise subject lines using AI marketing technology from Phrasee. Here's more on the reasons why this approach has turned around the travel brand's email strategy, plus a few general benefits of using AI.

Virgin Holidays used AI to prove the value of overhauling its email emarketing as it prepared for a full-scale transformation of how it communicates with consumers. Saul Lopes, Virgin Holidays' customer lifecycle lead, admitted that when he first joined three years ago its email marketing setup was "complex"; it was using three different tools to send emails, it had a marketing and CRM team without any data analysts, it was only able to do limited personalisation and there was "no culture of testing". He wanted to do a full digital transformation of how the function worked, but with his plan costing lots of money and requiring a huge shift in skills and mindset, he was instead tasked with proving what success would look like on a small scale before the company would commit. The AI took away all of the bullsh*t. We are no longer led by human ego or human bias but by numbers and results.

Saul Lopes, Virgin Holidays customer lifecycle lead, took a leap of faith on artificial intelligence as a tool to improve the brand's email marketing efforts by working with UK AI start-up Phrasee, and has seen that faith rewarded with over the past three years. Virgin Holidays increased email open rates by two percentage points which generated several million pounds in revenue, though Virgin will not disclose the exact figure. Tnooz asked Lopes what led him to Phrasee in the first place, how the system was deployed, and how else Virgin Holidays applies AI in its marketing efforts. Lopes says that the first motivation for employing an AI system to generate subject lines for the brand's marketing campaigns was overcoming system and staff limitations. "We had legacy IT systems and technology in place, and we wanted to change our approach and process. Virgin Holidays has about 200 communication types and sends about 22 million emails annually. I was looking for quick wins to supercharge our email marketing without infrastructure changes. "It made sense to address changes to subject lines first.

You can now book your dream holiday without lifting a finger, thanks to a new Alexa update. Amazon's virtual assistant has learnt a new'skill' that allows its users to search for and book holidays using just their voice. The feature lets users search through millions of travel options in a split second, developers have claimed. But the skill is still in its first edition and can so far only be used to book Virgin Holidays. Amazon Echo's virtual assistant Alexa can now be used to search for and book holidays without lifting a finger Amazon Echo is a voice-controlled smart speaker that works alongside a smartphone app.

Have you ever wanted to bottle-up and save that feeling when you have had a great vacation? Now, that joyful excitement of travel can be bottled in'Holiday Spirit' -- a new rum that's crafted using artificial intelligence. According to Joe Harrod -- a big data analyst and Artificial Intelligence expert -- Virgin Holidays used IBM Watson's linguistic AI to interpret millions of social media posts to pick out key emotions associated with holidays. IBM Watson then analyzed thousands of rum reviews to uncover which ingredients elicit different emotions and sensations in reviewers. The second data set analyzed the language and tone of 5,000 rum reviews and tasting notes found online.

Cheers! Raise a glass to the revolutionary new "Holiday Spirit" rum that puts the A and I into a Mai Tai. Virgin Holidays has unveiled the world's first "data-distilled" drink created by Artificial Intelligence – a bespoke booze they say is "infused with real emotions from holidaymakers around the world''. Sir Richard Branson's firm enlisted IBM's Watson, the world's most intelligent super-computer, to analyse the thoughts and feelings of more than 15 MILLION holidaymakers from their posts on various social media platforms. The predominant getaway emotions were then matched to more than 5,000 rum flavour descriptions and reviews to create a one-off rum recipe that was distilled at the Foursquare plant in Barbados . For example, Watson concluded happy equals vanilla, excited means sugar cane, curious can be matched with cinnamon and relaxed equals coconut. The project was overseen by UK rum guru Ian Burrell to ensure that a recipe derived from Artificial Intelligence was accurately distilled. Using his master blender skills, Ian carefully replicated the digital emotions expressed to create what Virgin Holidays hopes is a smooth, sweet and lightly spiced drink that captures the home of rum, the Caribbean. A Virgin Holidays spokesman said: ''We've long been known for creating the'perfect blend' when it comes to holidays, so we set ourselves the task of translating this into something tangible. Bottling the holiday spirit and creating a blend informed by joy, excitement, curiosity and confidence perfectly encapsulates the Virgin Holidays experience.'' Ian added: "The Virgin Holiday Spirit has a subtle vanilla flavour, medium sweetness, hints of coconut and is naturally caressed with cinnamon and allspice.