Phrasee uses AI to automatically write email subject lines. These subject lines sound human, but perform better than subject lines humans write.
UsingAI in email marketing, Virgin Holidays raised open rates by 2%, a bump that was worth millions in new revenue. Additionally, writing subject lines now takes minutes, not weeks like it did before. That frees up the brand's marketers to work on higher-value tasks.
Here's how it all went down.
維珍假期開始使用Phrasee幾年ago. The company had no culture of testing,says Saul Lopes" rel="noopener" target="_blank">says Saul Lopes該品牌的CRM,殘雪和忠誠。
"What was happening is I was waiting on copywriters [...] to get back to me on subject lines. Everyone has an opinion. And everyone thinks they can write the winner subject lines."
Lopes met with Phrasee, saw the tool's capabilities, and understood the value immediately.
"In the first two minutes I wanted it,"he told Computerworld" rel="noopener" target="_blank">he told Computerworld. "I saw the ability to save time and test a lot more, rather than a human giving me two or three variations that are pretty similar."
In the past, approving subject lines and doing no testing took weeks. That's no longer the case with Phrasee.
"Suddenly, I had 10 subject lines that were brand compliant in one minute," says Lopes. All these subject lines are now being rigorously tested, too.
The part about brand compliance is important. Virgin Holidays knew that AI could write subject lines more efficiently. But could a machine match the brand's fun, quirky voice? Turns out, those fears were overblown. Virgin Holidays fed their brand guidelines and tone of voice into Phrasee.
The tool was "on brand from day one," says Liam Savage, a CRM executive at the company. "Being at Virgin, the message is very key. We have to be very on brand. It's very quirky. For Phrasee to be able to deliver that keeps everyone happy.”
The subject lines written by Phrasee look so much like a human that even a human can’t tell the difference between human-generated and AI-generated subject lines. Well, Lopes can a little—but not in the way you would expect:
"It's actually sometimes a little more adventurous than our humans do in terms of tone of voice.”
That’s because Phrasee usesnatural language processing (NLP)andnatural language generation (NLG), two AI technologies, to understand sophisticated language and generate human-sounding copy at scale. The company also usesmachine learning, another AI tech, to continually improve the tool’s performance.
In short, Phrasee “understands” what makes an effective, human-sounding subject line, creates subject lines based on that information, and improves itself based on what it learns from how its subject lines perform.
For Virgin Holidays, this powerful combination of AI technologies produces real world results. Lopes says the brand has generated several million more in revenue thanks to the tool.
Sounds like it makes dollars and cents to us.