Email Marketing in the Age of GEO: 4 Strategies To Stick To

The rise of generative engine optimisation (GEO) has been emphatic, with the strategy set to become the most popular way to find information online in the coming years. 

The underlying data shows that GEO is already well on its way to becoming a dominant source for information retrieval among users. McKinsey data suggests that half of consumers already use AI-powered search today, and its adoption could impact $750 billion in revenue by 2028. 

Generative engine optimisation is an evolutionary improvement on search engine optimisation (SEO), but while SEO utilises a “crawl-index-rank” model where bots scan pages for keywords and backlinks, GEO focuses on semantic embeddings, where artificial intelligence models learn the context and “intent” of online content to shape their generated responses. 

Not only has this transformation already begun to reshape the marketing landscape, GEO is also winning over consumers thanks to its superior contextual convenience compared to traditional SEO. 

Statista forecasts suggest that the number of adults using generative AI for online search purposes as a first port of call will accelerate to 36 million by 2028.

But what does this mean for email marketing strategies? There are many ways that email-focused lead generation can complement GEO that may not be immediately clear for professionals looking at approaches to maximise their AI impact. With this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at four strategies to stick to when it comes to successful email marketing. 

1. Adapting to changing user behaviour

At a glance, you could be forgiven for believing that GEO and email marketing aren’t directly related. After all, generative engine optimisation focuses on repurposing content published online, while email marketing is delivered directly to the inboxes of leads. 

However, the transformative potential of GEO has meant that email marketers must adapt quickly to shifting user behaviour and expectations online. 

Data suggests that around 30% of Bing Chat interactions are multi-turn conversations that have the potential to reshape expectations, while 45% of Gen Z consumers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE say that they trust generative AI recommendations for shopping experiences. 

This means that email marketers must work to ensure that their strategies remain desirable in an age where consumers can access recommendations off the back of a single prompt. 

Because of the capabilities of generative AI, it’s important to work harder to build a personal connection with your leads, and using the technology to resonate more with your audience can make all the difference in growing your marketing efforts. 

Adapt your email copy, images, and product recommendations to suit your leads based on customer journey stages and behavioural data. 

Platforms like HubSpot’s AI assistant can create unique subject lines, copy, and visuals for recipients based on their actions, tailoring the tone, languages, and calls-to-action to match the user. This can help to maintain a level of engaging copy that ensures email campaigns remain more relevant than GEO answers. 

2. Refine your approach

At its best, your email marketing campaigns can complement your GEO content strategy by supporting thought leadership and insightful content. However, it’s important to ensure that you monitor your API closely to ensure that your efforts aren’t impacted by generative engines. 

By integrating an email API into your website or application, you can refine your strategy by filtering invalid addresses and improving the quality of your mailing list. 

This can support a holistic overview of your API usage, allowing you to see how many verifications you perform over time with the help of bespoke charts, improving the actionable insights available to you when it comes to managing responses and understanding the statistics associated with conversion rates. 

The GEO landscape is constantly evolving, and using an API to track deliverability, open rates, and click-throughs, you can adapt quickly by adjusting your strategy based on the available information. 

3. Embrace machine readability

Email newsletters can be the perfect complement to GEO because sections can be created in a way that optimises machine readability. 

Because generative engines use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), snippets of newsletter text can be pulled to answer questions from leads. This means that you can benefit from creating a dedicated section of your website to house monthly newsletters as a means of fostering higher levels of lead generation over time. 

Many companies already upload their email newsletters online, and with the right format, it can be easy to grow their reach as text is extracted by AI engines. 

However, to encourage more machine readability, focus on adapting your newsletter structures toward “answer-first” formatting. In practice, this means that you can set up a direct, one-sentence answer that seeks to solve trending industry questions or common queries that users may have. 

The great thing about answer-first formatting is that it provides you with an opportunity to showcase your expertise for your target audience while anticipating the type of queries that leads may be asking generative engines. 

While the best newsletters will remain hyper-personalised, creating a more generalised newsletter that features a question and answer or listicle structure can make it far easier for AI to interpret, while subscribers can also benefit from making use of an easy-to-digest text. 

One example of a company already listing newsletters online in a GEO-friendly manner is Axios, which adopts a listicle format for greater effect. 

4. Autonomous segmentation

If GEO is well on its way to becoming the most popular means of retrieving information online, then email marketing holds a strong advantage by possessing the potential to cater directly to leads on a bespoke level that generative engines are unable to replicate at scale. 

Because of this, focusing on intelligent segmentation can make all the difference between caring for your conversions or losing more prospective customers to GEO. Thankfully, AI can support more effective segmentation strategies by identifying behavioural patterns rather than demographics, making it easier to predict future actions. 

Firms like Bloomreach Engagement already deploy predictive analytics for autonomous customer segmentation based on factors like purchase intent, churn risk, and engagement levels to provide a level of service that most generative engines can’t keep up with. 

This level of bespoke customer care can also extend to managing leads, automating follow-ups, and undertaking repetitive tasks to help marketing professionals focus more on their creative output and the quality of their copy. 

Riding the generative wave

Generative AI is not only transforming the quality of tools at the disposal of marketers but also rapidly changing how leads consume information online. 

This calls for an adaptive approach when it comes to email marketing that can match changing expectations and even surpass the level of service that audiences have come to expect from GEO by implementing a high level of personalisation. 

While the technology is growing at a rapid pace, email marketing still remains one of the most effective ways of nurturing leads and establishing a higher level of brand awareness and loyalty. By learning from the emergence of GEO, this approach to marketing can be taken to new heights, ensuring that brands continue to nurture their relevance long into the future.