Tariff-Driven Cost Hikes: How AI Email Marketing Tools Help Retailers Protect ROI

Creating profitable retail campaigns has always been hard. Now, with rising tariffs and supply chain pressures, marketing teams face tougher decisions about where to invest their limited resources.  

Email marketing remains one of the highest-ROI channels available, with the retail industry witnessing a return of $45 for every dollar spent, higher than the average $36 across industries. Yet, for retail marketing managers, finding ways to stretch budgets and improve campaign performance is proving to be a big challenge. 

Thankfully, AI email marketing tools are creating new possibilities that help marketers maintain and even grow return on investment (ROI) in the face of escalating costs.  

Let’s take a look at what challenges tariff-driven cost hikes pose for retail marketers and how you can get more out of every email sent, using AI for email marketing. 

How tariff pressures are reshaping retail marketing budgets 

The economic ripple effects of recent trade policies are hitting retailers’ margins. With inventory costs rising and consumer price sensitivity at an all-time high, marketing departments are being asked to do more with less — driving the same (or better) results with tighter budgets. 

What’s driving retail cost increases in 2025? 

Retail businesses are navigating a tricky terrain right now, with: 

• Import tariffs affecting product costs across multiple categories 

• Rising shipping and fulfillment expenses 

• Increased digital advertising costs as platforms become more competitive 

• Higher customer acquisition costs due to privacy changes and market saturation 

For many brands, these compounding factors can create a significant increase in overall operating costs — with much of that impossible to pass along to price-conscious consumers. 

Why email marketing remains a high-ROI channel 

Email marketing targets both new leads and existing customers, drives repeat sales and is relatively low-cost to scale (especially with AI-powered optimization). That’s why despite budget constraints, email marketing continues to deliver one of the highest ROIs of any digital channel.  

Email's enduring advantages also include: 

• Direct ownership of the customer relationship 

• Low per-contact costs compared to paid media 

• Ability to segment and target with precision 

• Measurable performance and clear attribution 

The key takeaway: Email is uniquely positioned to help retailers weather economic headwinds, but only when you maximize efficiency through smart automation and AI. 

Using AI email marketing tools to maximize efficiency 

When budgets tighten, efficiency becomes the biggest priority for marketing teams, and automation becomes a force multiplier. AI email marketing tools help you do more with less by automating campaign creation, optimizing performance, and uncovering insights that would be hard to spot or implement at scale manually. 

1. Build a centralized asset hub 

The faster you can get from ideation to campaign publishing, the sooner you’re likely to achieve your target ROI. However, marketing teams that work with multiple docs, spreadsheets, and DAM systems struggle to create comprehensive campaign briefs and collaborate on campaigns, slowing down the entire process. 

Your AI email marketing platform can solve this for you, serving as a single source of truth for all assets, brand guidelines and campaign requirements.  

• Typeface’s Brand Hub is where you can easily import your existing email layouts, brand rules, creative assets, and other documents making them accessible to all stakeholders while also training AI on your brand identity. 

With this centralized asset hub, collaborating on campaigns becomes easier across teams and regions, and all the content produced adheres to brand guidelines, whether created by team members or AI. 

2. Create campaigns tailored to customer journeys 

With tariff-driven cost hikes, both customer acquisition and retention become a challenge as prices soar. Email marketing plays a crucial role in nurturing customer relationships in times like these, allowing you to create value beyond just sales pitches and staying top-of-mind between purchases. You can engage with different customer segments in ways that they can relate to, depending on their lifecycle stage, purchase behavior and preferences. 

Using AI for email marketing means you don’t have to spend hours brainstorming for the perfect message for every journey stage and every customer segment. 

Typeface lets you create single-touch emails (like product launch promos), monthly newsletters, and full customer journey campaigns with the same ease. 

To create an email campaign, share the campaign brief in Typeface Chat. This should typically include: 

• Campaign goals 

• Audience 

• Brand Kit 

• Other details like product information, announcements, and so on 

You can even share your existing email design templates. The Email Agent can then turn this brief into a single-touch email in your pre-designed email layout or a series of emails for the entire customer journey, depending on your goals.  

Our AI Agents understand the context from your content briefs to suggest relevant themes and creatives quickly. You can also edit your email mockups with different messaging, subject lines, or visuals without leaving the platform. 

The Email Agent collaborates with the Brand Agent to capture your saved brand guidelines and generate consistent, on-brand outputs. 

3. Personalize email campaigns to improve conversion rates 

With the ever-increasing competition in retail, a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing isn’t going to cut it. Retail marketers find that targeting everyone with the same messaging does not sell.  

Case in point: many market surveys over the past few years have shown that Gen Z and Millennial consumers value sustainability more than older generations and are willing to pay a premium for sustainable brands. If you don’t diversify your email marketing strategy and focus only on discounts or Buy One Get One (BOGO) offers, it may appeal to the price-conscious consumer but won’t resonate with young buyers. 

AI-powered personalization tools use consumer behavior, purchase history, and interests or preferences to dynamically populate subject lines, generate relevant visuals, and tailor messaging.  

On Typeface, you can save different audience segments or import existing audiences from your Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).  

Our AI Agents refer to saved audiences to create targeted variations of your emails based on different customer preferences or shopping behaviors. The result?  Improved click-through and conversion rates without requiring manual editing or image personalization for every segment. 

Using email personalization AI, you can generate hundreds of variations across dozens of products in hours vs. days, scaling your campaigns at unprecedented speeds. 

Typeface even lets you localize campaigns for different markets with custom imagery, translations, and targeted messaging that resonates with local customers, while maintaining your core brand elements. 

4. Repurpose existing content into newsletters and promotional campaigns 

As cost hikes tighten marketing budgets, retailers need to find ways to reuse and repurpose existing marketing assets rather than creating net new content every time. This not only increases the reach and lifespan of your high-performing, high-value content but also saves you some precious resource hours.  

Still, marketers are often skeptical about manual content repurposing, unwilling to invest time in repackaging old content into new formats when there’s already so much to do. 

But that’s about to change.  

Now, with AI agents to assist, there’s nothing holding you back from leveraging existing content for new campaigns. The Typeface Email Agent lets you easily repurpose blog posts, web pages, product descriptions, or pre-approved images into informative newsletters and promotional campaigns, without having to put in any extra work. 

• For instance, if your clothing retail brand just published a blog post about the upcoming summer fashion must-haves with links to products from your catalog, you can turn it into an engaging newsletter for your trend-watching subscribers, without having to build from scratch.    

Another good way to put AI repurposing to work is by generating promotional emails from your offer documents.  

The Email Agent can pick messaging themes and relevant offers for different audience segments to create variations of product promotions or discount emails, driving both engagement and sales. 

• Case in point: If you are an electronics retailer offering store-wide discounts for the holiday season (clearly documented), the AI can intelligently select which offers and products would interest specific customer segments. For young buyers, it could tailor the messaging to include offers on smartphones and tablets, while for stay-at-home mothers it could pick up offers on kitchen and household appliances. 

5. Email A/B testing and campaign optimization 

Traditional A/B testing is slow. Retail marketers cannot afford to spend weeks testing campaigns to optimize performance, especially with limited resources. AI email marketing platforms make sure that you can quickly A/B test your campaigns with different subject lines, messaging, calls-to-action, and imagery to identify what works best for each segment. 

Typeface lets you generate multiple email variations with different elements at enterprise scale, so you can test campaign performance in half the time it normally takes. 

To access performance insights, connect your email marketing automation platform with Typeface and optimize campaigns with data-backed decisions.  

Implementation tips for email marketing managers 

What should you look for in an AI email marketing platform? 

 Choose platforms that: 

• Offer a full suite of tools to generate everything your email campaigns need, from visuals to copy 

• Allow quick personalization and localization to scale campaigns across various segments and markets effortlessly 

• Integrate seamlessly with your CRM and email marketing platforms 

• Let you control brand voice and creative boundaries 

• Support modular content and versioning for quick testing 

• Require no technical expertise so your existing team can scale production without added costs or effort 

What are the first steps to integrating AI into your workflow? 

1. Start small: Try AI subject line optimization, welcome emails, AI re-engagement or AI cart recovery flows. 

2. Evaluate impact: Review lift in open, click, or conversion rates for these campaigns. 

3. Scale: Apply learnings to broader AI lifecycle email campaigns and AI drip flows. 

What email marketing metrics show AI is working? 

 Key metrics include: 

• Higher open and click-through rates 

• Reduced unsubscribe rates 

• Increased revenue per email 

• Faster testing cycles and optimization loops 

To be able to attribute the results and ROI to AI, compare results against historical baselines to show an incremental lift. 

Frequently asked questions around AI email marketing tools 

How do AI email marketing tools help retailers maintain ROI under economic pressure?   

AI tools protect ROI by improving efficiency and performance simultaneously. They reduce campaign creation time by nearly 40-60%, enabling teams to do more with fewer resources. Performance improvements typically include higher open rates through personalized subject lines and offers, which can also increase revenue. For retailers facing margin pressure, this combination of cost savings and revenue growth is essential for maintaining profitability. 

Can AI-generated content maintain our brand voice while delivering personalization at scale? 

Yes, AI does a great job at maintaining brand consistency. Typeface’s AI can be trained in your brand voice, learning from your existing high-performing content, approved messaging guidelines, and tone preferences. The key is setting up proper guardrails and review processes initially through our Brand Hub. 

Many retail brands find that AI actually improves brand consistency by eliminating the variability that comes from multiple team members writing content manually, while still enabling personalization. 

Do we need to hire AI specialists, or can our existing team manage AI email marketing tools?  

You don’t need to hire any experts to integrate AI into your email marketing workflow. Anyone on your team can build email campaigns using our AI Agents. The interface is extremely intuitive and simple. All you have to do is type in your request on Typeface Chat in conversational language and the AI decides the next steps for itself. It understands context and can also ask follow-up questions to get more information where needed. This eliminates the need for any complex email prompt engineering or technical expertise. 

How do we balance automation with the creative control that's crucial for our retail brand? 

Successful implementation involves maintaining human oversight for brand-critical elements like campaign strategy, visual design, and key messaging. A lot of this can be automated on Typeface, such as adding image styles, text rules, color palettes, and other brand-specific creative controls in the Brand Hub. Once trained, the AI ensures that all generated content adheres to these rules.  

However, having a stringent human review process gives you the best of both worlds. 

Maximize retail email marketing ROI with Typeface 

 AI email marketing tools help retailers not just protect but improve email ROI by reducing waste, improving targeting, and streamlining execution — exactly what's needed in a high-cost environment. 

Now’s a good time to explore these capabilities as a practical way to modernize and future-proof your email marketing.  

Sign up free  to experience the power of AI firsthand, or get a demo to see how it fits into your marketing strategy.