Redbubble’s mission is to create the world’s largest marketplace for independent artists to sell their creations. Founded in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, today Redbubble connects over 700,000 artists and designers across the planet with millions of passionate fans.

One would assume that a business at such a massive scale would require an equally sizable team to wrangle customer communications, and yet Josh Geiser, the senior manager of Redbubble’s CRM, lifecycle and mobile, refers to himself as a one-person email marketing team—with AI as his trusty sidekick.

“I’ve experienced firsthand how AI has revolutionized the way I work on a daily basis. AI technology, like the tools in Iterable’s AI Suite, has significantly improved my efficiency, effectiveness, and overall results in email marketing.” ~ Josh Geiser, Senior Manager – CRM, Lifecycle and Mobile at Redbubble.

On Iterable’s Activate tour, Josh revealed the Iterable AI advantage to Redbubble’s marketing strategy and shared his thoughts on the future of AI as we know it.

The AI Advantage for Small Teams

To Redbubble, AI stands for Assisted Inspiration because of the way the team embodies the idea of AI as a collaborator. For Josh, it’s like having a creative partner in the digital realm, boosting creativity, brainstorming, problem-solving, and facilitating learning.

In fact, this tiny—but mighty—Redbubble email marketing team has identified several key benefits to adopting AI technology, like ChatGPT and Iterable’s AI Suite.

1. Enhanced Audience Segmentation

Once Redbubble started using Iterable’s Brand Affinity to score customers based on their sentiment, the team has seen a 10% increase in open rate and a 12% increase in click rate since implementation.

This was accomplished by tailoring messaging according to how loyal a subscriber is to Redbubble. The brand’s most loyal fans receive certain promotions to reward them for frequent purchases, while newer users who are labeled as neutral or unscored are sent messaging that shares the value of Redbubble to improve engagement and incentivize a first purchase.

Not to mention, Iterable’s Brand Affinity scoring has also aided in email list hygiene, enabling easier identification of loyal and positive subscribers and improved confidence that Redbubble messages are reaching the right audiences.

2. Optimized Send Times

Redbubble’s use of AI isn’t limited to email, of course. As a global company, the team communicates with artists and their fans via multiple channels, so they needed a way to send messages to specific regions at the exact moment when users would interact the most. That’s when they turned to Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO).

With this AI-fueled feature, Redbubble can automatically determine when best to communicate with their customers, based on their individual engagement behavior. Since implementing STO in April 2023, Redbubble has achieved a 30% open rate increase for its promotional push notifications. Now the team’s cross-channel marketing campaigns can reach millions of users at the perfect time, giving them the confidence that their messages resonate 24/7.

3. Personalized Recommendations

Redbubble also leverages AI for email personalization by integrating automated feeds that pull in website content and product recommendations. With combining Iterable AI with its handlebars helpers and other logical operators, the team can not only achieve more dynamic personalization, but also cycle through a variety of creative imagery based on the time of send.

This is especially helpful for recurring sends, since content is automatically updated rather than requiring manual changes. This keeps campaigns fresh and shows more breadth and depth of all the products that Redbubble offers, substantially improving engagement and email effectiveness, including a whopping 28% increase in click-through rate.

4. Simplified Coding

In addition to enabling personalized recommendations, AI tools can provide clear and concise explanations of technical topics and offer code examples. This has allowed the Redbubble team to absorb more advanced information at different learning styles and paces.

For instance, Josh uses ChatGPT as a teaching assistant to explain how Iterable’s handlebars logic is working behind the scenes to deliver smart content and product suggestions. In the example below, ChatGPT breaks down each element of the code and details how it’s working within a campaign.

In cases like these, AI empowers teams with personalized learning, adaptive content, and practical skill development. It offers tailored and focused guidance, resource recommendations, and around-the-clock assistance. This way, even the smallest of marketing teams can produce big results, all on their own.

The Future of AI at Redbubble

At Redbubble, AI’s role has grown from assistance to a full-fledged partnership. The future of AI-driven personalization will become more refined, adapting content to individual preferences with unprecedented accuracy.

As for Josh’s personal AI wishlist, he looks forward to expanding Redbubble’s use of Iterable’s AI Suite for a variety of use cases, including creative content creation with Copy Assist, AI-assisted journey building based on user behaviors with Next Best Action, and much more.