• by Jess Nelson , March 22, 2018

Online classifieds site Gumtree adopted a marketing technology platform to optimize email copy with artificial intelligence, to boost email open rates.

Gumtree is the most used online classifieds site in the United Kingdom -- used by a third of Britons online according to Matt Button, Head of CRM and Social at Gumtree. Even though it’s a widely-used website, Gumtree noticed its email engagement rates steadily declining.

“We needed to reverse the trend --- and fast,” states Button. “We identified that we needed to revitalize our CRM strategy and bring in something to get our customers’ attention in order to actually make them want to open our emails.”

To fix decaying email open rates, Gumtree turned to fellow British marketing technology company Phrasee. Headquartered in London, Phrasee powers an automated language generator for email marketers.

Since incorporating Phrasee’s technology to generate email subject lines, Gumtree has seen a 35% increase in open rates.

Utilizing neural networks and deep learning, Phrasee has developed technology that predicts the performance of marketing language based on the phrases used and the emotions they generate. The artificial intelligence algorithms in its marketing technology platform write and test email subject lines, body copy, and calls to action enhanced to elicit the strongest response from subscribers while still staying on brand.

As a customer of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Gumtree implemented the Phrasee Salesforce AppExchange app into its marketing technology stack. Phrasee is ESP-agnostic, meaning that it can be incorporated into any software an email marketer uses, and is in no way restricted to just Salesforce.