Cutting through all the market noise to connect one-on-one with your customer. Knowing exactly what they need, when (and even before) they need it. And stopping them from going anywhere else to get it. This all used to fall within the realm of best guesses, even for the most prescient marketing pro. But these days, with the right AI tools in place, it’s something every marketer can achieve.
Here are just a few of the areas where advanced analytics and insights can make a huge difference in your marketing ROI.
The better and more precisely you can divide a given audience into specific groups with similar needs, expectations, and behaviors, the better you will be able to create, and cater to, targeted customer segments. Manual segmentation is nothing new, of course, but AI-augmented techniques not only let you study a seemingly infinite number of variables, far beyond basic demographics and trade zone statistics, but they also do so with much more accuracy and impartiality, identifying patterns that human professionals may overlook or simply not be able to spot. You can then use this information to identify segments where the likelihood of conversion, upselling, cross-selling or other retention strategies is more promising. Even just in marketing email campaigns, well-segmented and personalized emails have been shown to drive over 760% more revenue than their one-size-fits-all counterparts.
The more you know about past consumer behaviors, the more accurately you can predict future actions and build marketing initiatives around them. For years, marketers would debate stated customer intentions trying to determine, often on little more than an educated hunch, how they would translate into real-life follow-through. But with predictive analytics, artificial intelligence now incorporates advanced tools like sentiment analysis to interpret subtle cues like tone of voice, cadence and volume, among millions of other data points, in every single interaction with a customer.
A 2019 Harris Poll/RedPoint Global study shows that 63% of consumers now expect personalization to be part of the standard service they receive. Yet 44% of marketers identify personalization as an ongoing challenge. The real question, then, is how to bridge this gap. And the stakes are high. One impersonal move can sever a customer’s relationship with a brand for good. In fact, a full 37% of consumers say that the lack of a personalized experience can be a dealbreaker. On the upside, when personalization is done right, the payoff is massive: an Epsilon report shows 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase brands that offer a personalized experience. Recent market data suggests that customer experience will become the key brand differentiator, more so than even price and product. With the breadth of knowledge gleaned from AI applications, marketers can employ a variety of techniques to personalize content based on accurately segmented data for a smooth, seamless experience that makes consumers feel they are heard, understood, and valued.
In multi-channel attribution, every customer touchpoint, every channel, and every device along their journey is analyzed and rated comparatively to other touchpoints in terms of the likelihood they will lead to conversion. The advantage of a multi-channel approach as opposed to other models is that it doesn’t erroneously attribute buying decisions to any one touchpoint. The drawback is the sheer amount of data required in as near real-time as possible to optimize the outcomes and subsequent spending. This is where the power of AI comes in. AI-driven multi-channel attribution provides the kind of big-picture clarity moments that are simply beyond human capacities, thereby clarifying the direction marketing efforts should take and making the resulting data more reliable and useful.
One of scariest statistics out there for a marketer is this: only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain. The rest simply walk away. AI is the key to preventing customer churn (also known as customer attrition). Algorithms can analyze thousands (if not millions) of pieces of data to provide the kind of real-time context that can make all the difference in turning the customer experience around. It therefore becomes possible to identify high-risk segments and adapt marketing initiatives accordingly. When you consider that a 5% in increase in customer retention can translate to 25% to 95% higher profits, every insight that can be gleaned from AI matters. Over the longer term, AI is particularly effective at identifying the kinds of customers that are worth keeping, based on the high value they bring to a business, helping to build overall sustainability.
We’ve seen that the benefits of AI to the marketing community are far reaching and will only become more essential as more and more professionals embrace the technology. But recognizing the need and actually making the leap are two different things. That said, trendwatchers are predicting that AI is poised to become a must rather than an option in the very near future, going so far as to say that it will soon be a natural part of marketers’ day-to-day lives, as AI systems grow more intuitive and democratized across all skill levels. In other words, more than ever, the time to make that leap is now.
What types of marketing challenges are you facing? To learn how our SaaS AI business platform Kepler can give you more ROI for your marketing efforts, don’t hesitate to contact us.
