How AI is Shaping Local Email Marketing for Multi-Location Brands

It’s easy enough to market specifically for a single local customer base, but what about for ten? Or one hundred? For brands with multiple locations, local email marketing can quickly become unmanageable and fall to the wayside despite its importance. 

Fortunately, generative AI is positioned to reshape the present and future of marketing for multi-location brands. Let’s get into the tools and capabilities AI brings to the table. 

The AI Advantage: Transforming Email Marketing Strategies

Generative AI use, both from consumers and businesses, is going to grow. The worldwide AI market is set to hit almost $67bn in 2025, with the United States alone accounting for a third of that. 

As AI technology gets better and better, more businesses, both big and small, will scramble to get in on the growth. We’ve already seen virtual assistants and chatbots all around us, enhancing customer service and automating time-consuming processes.

To understand how AI improves local email marketing, it helps to know the basics behind tools like ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs). These systems are designed to understand and generate human language, which makes them ideal for automating segmentation, content creation, testing, and more.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) 

Most AI chatbots, virtual assistants, translators, and search engines fall under NLP. These models of generative AI are focused on natural communication with humans.

Large Language Models (LLM)

LLMs are also used for NLP tasks, like language generation, summarization, and translation, but they take things a step further. LLMs learn by processing billions of words and data points to understand nuance and make connections, like the human mind. 

They can accomplish a variety of tasks, such as data processing and application, content generation, and more, all within an instant. For businesses with multiple locations, LLMs can be an incredible tool for fast and reliable marketing customization. 

7 Key Applications for AI in Local Email Marketing

Applying AI for local email marketing could make understanding customers and engaging them accordingly effortless. 

Here are seven ways multi-location businesses or providers with many distributors could drive more engagement, convert more leads, and build more sales with generative AI. 

1. Smart Segmentation

An LLM could streamline the process of segmenting your email subscribers and suggesting tailored content for them. Generative AI could be applied to rapidly identify trends and preferences across your branches’ local markets, advise how many segments you actually need, and suggest how to approach each segment effectively. 

The AI could also be applied to continuously test and refine your segments, keeping them up to date and correctly sorting customers into them as you grow.

Example:

A national pet supply chain uses AI to segment customers by region and pet type. In colder climates, customers receive winter gear recommendations for dogs, while warmer regions get flea and tick prevention tips. 

2. Automated Email Sequences

Engaging new customers and reminding old ones you exist are critical to growth. However, setting a schedule for automated emails and hoping for the best can lead to gaps in engagement. 

You can use AI tools to analyse your marketing data and identify which customers across all your branches are ideal candidates for an email. Combined with segmentation, AI can make automated email sequences more effective and more timely, thereby converting more potential leads. 

Example: 

A national HVAC company uses AI to automate seasonal email sequences across different climate zones. Customers in Chicago receive furnace check-up reminders in early October, while customers in Phoenix get AC maintenance tips in April. AI analyzes weather patterns and past service schedules to trigger the right email at the right time, resulting in a 40% increase in off-season bookings.

3. Performance Tracking and Reporting

Email analytics across multiple branches can be conflicting and make spreadsheets a nightmare. AI can process and simplify data in a heartbeat, allowing you to quickly determine what tactics are driving results and where. 

Example:

A multi-location furniture retailer uses AI to track email performance by region and product category. The system identifies that emails featuring outdoor furniture perform significantly better in southern stores but underperform in the north. Based on these insights, the marketing team shifts inventory focus and tailors promotions regionally. The result: a 25% increase in email-driven revenue in just one quarter.

4. Content Planning and Personalization

Generative AI tends to sound a bit robotic when it writes content for you, but using it to plan and help localize your email content is another story. With its data processing capabilities, it can rapidly suggest ideas to personalize your local email marketing for each of your segments, or even individual customers. 

Then, you can add your brand voice to these outlines and output targeted content while still being uniquely you. 

5. Automated Reputation Management

Staying out of people’s spam boxes takes a lot of monitoring and refinement. Automating your reputation management with AI can take the stress and mundanity of the job off your shoulders. 

Try applying AI to keep your email strategies up to date and pruning out recipients that have opted out, entered invalid addresses, or are unengaged completely. 

Example:

A multi-location retail brand was struggling with high bounce rates and spam folder placements. After deploying AI for list hygiene, they saw a 30% improvement in deliverability within two months by removing invalid addresses and inactive subscribers.

6. A/B Testing

The simple form of A/B testing uses two email variations to test customer response, but why stop there? Generative AI could be used to design and localize any number of email templates, depending on your location, scale, and testing needs. 

Then, you could even rely on AI to measure the click-throughs and automatically select the most effective version, or versions, for your goals.  

7. Product or Service Recommendations

You could apply AI to automate your recommendations for new customers and old. By processing data such as where the customer is and what products or services they’ve viewed, you can have AI segment clients into different recommendation paths and prepare a tailored email. 

Example:

A multi-state lawn care company sends personalized service reminders. Customers in northern states are reminded to prep for spring seeding, while southern customers are nudged toward summer weed control. AI automates both the recommendation and timing based on weather and location history.

More Tips for Using Automation in Email Marketing

The key to making the most of AI is thinking of it as a time-saving assistant, not a full-out replacement. 

• Use it to plan, not to create. AI-written content almost always sounds generic. It can do the legwork to get you started with ideas, but it can’t replace your voice.
• Trust, but verify. AI wants to be helpful, sometimes more than it wants to be correct. Have some checks set in place to ensure the information and data given to you by AI is accurate. 
• Work with someone who knows AI. It’s one thing to say, “ChatGPT, segment my email campaigns,” but it's another to know how to work with AI in a successful and efficient way. Having someone on the team who can get the results you want from generative AI will maximize its time and cost-saving potential.

Unlock the Power of AI with Best-In-Class Local Email Marketing Solutions

As generative AI spirals upward, the main question we all have to ask is, “How can I make the most of this?”

If you’re ready to overhaul your local email marketing with AI tools today, but aren’t sure where to start, look no further. PowerChord partners with multi-branch brands to unify their customer experience and maximize their lead potential with digital marketing solutions tailored to them. Our best-in-class marketing platform can help optimize your marketing strategies, such as AI application, and connect you with customers along every step of the sales journey. 

Reach out to our team today to get started.