Artificial Intelligence – The Next Big Thing in Marketing Automation

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” – Sam Altman

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken our world by storm. Love it or hate it, you just can’t ignore it. The purpose of the inception of AI was not to replace marketers, but to augment them and to automate their manual tasks. About 51% of marketing leaders are already using AI, with more than a quarter planning to pilot in the next two years. These folks are the ninja marketers that believe in smart work and how to make optimal use of the technology that comes their way so that they can tackle more stuff that’s on their plate. If you’re still questioning if the artificial brain needs a place in your marketing automation platform, here’s a quick read for you to make a conclusive decision.

How does Artificial Intelligence work in marketing automation?

The artificial brain now plays the most significant role in marketing automation. Chatbots creating content, AI-powered PPC advertising, personalized website experience, push notifications, AI churn predictors enhancing customer engagement, AI-driven customer insights to determine customer’s behavioral patterns, and automated image recognition, are just a few ways in which marketers make use of the artificial brain. The introduction of Siri, Google Home, and Amazon echo has spoilt us and it’s only going to get better and more enhanced. Marketers also make use of machine learning for personalized searches to provide customer-centric content. They layer geo-targeting on top of this personalization for tailored location-based marketing, making it a hyper-personalized experience. iBeacon is another fascinating way of providing location-based information and services to iOS devices. iBeacon is Apple’s implementation of Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) wireless technology. Therefore, the possibilities are almost endless if only you’re willing to embrace AI and implement it in your marketing automation tool.

How does the statistical picture for AI’s future in the marketing world look?

IDC estimated that by 2019, 40% of digital transformation initiatives will use AI services and by 2021, 75% of enterprise applications will use AI. Forrester predicts that by 2020, businesses with data-insights-driven teams will grab $1.2 trillion from peers without that culture. According to McKinsey’s State of Machine Learning and AI, tech giants including Baidu and Google spent between $20B to $30B on AI in 2016, with 90% of this spent on R&D deployment, and 10% on AI acquisitions. Without a doubt, AI is going to be everywhere. Adopting AI trends is the need of the hour for marketers to ensure they derive the highest ROI from their marketing efforts.

How can AI deployment in your marketing automation software benefit you?

Now that we’ve established that AI becoming a mainstream capability in marketing technology is a reality, here are 6 benefits of incorporating AI into your marketing automation platform:

1. Meticulous Persona Definition: It’s essential to get a clear understanding of what charms your prospects into giving you their undivided attention. Clear and explicit persona definition can get you halfway there. AI tracks and observes the external and internal data on the behavioral patterns of prospects/customers, and produces real-time personas. This helps marketers create well-defined and elaborate personas to power through perceptive campaigns.

2. Pertinent Content Creation: Once you’re done with persona definition, you’d surely know your audience better to determine the kind of content that would attract them to your website. These could be blog posts, eBooks, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, vlogs, what have you. AI makes it easier for you to identify high-performance keywords as it senses the kind of content that you’re looking to share and also archives and recycles old content so that you won’t have to recreate it every time. This kind of smart content becomes easier for the customers to respond to as well.

3. Targeted Lead Generation: In one of its studies, Marketing Sherpa found out that 73% of leads are not ready to buy when they first give you their contact details. The one that buys from you is a sure-fire customer, but the one that peruses is a prospect who may buy one of these days or someday. AI helps you separate those customers from the prospects. It identifies the leads that have a higher conversion potential. AI also gives you recommendations for touchpoints that are most relevant to the specific customer. It gives these recommendations on the basis of the behavioral patterns of these leads and not a ‘one-size-fits all’ kind of a recommendation. This makes it easier for marketers to devise a smoother lead nurture path for each lead. AI makes the lead generation process more targeted and fruitful, with improved lead quality and reduced cost per lead.

4. Effective Data Collection: AI-enhanced marketing automation tools are capable of collecting data from all possible sources. Since it can work with and around an extensive range of data, the customer personas that AI defines deliver more specific and advantageous results.

5. Swift Response Time: Since AI-integrated marketing automation platforms acknowledge queries with hyper-personalized emails almost instantaneously, the response time reduces proportionally. AI does not let you miss out on any opportunity to interact with your customer as a result of the observations of their behavioral pattern, needs, preferences, interests, etc.

6. Elevated Cost-Related Benefits: If you adopt AI in your marketing strategies, you can bid adieu to over-the-top expensive automation programming and administration because AI does not fail to reduce the cost per lead. Due to the improved lead quality, you can expect a greater ROI and a better justified marketing budget.

It’s safe to say that Artificial Intelligence is the genie all marketers have waited for all along. Don’t shy away from AI because it’s as mainstream as it gets. Incorporate AI into your marketing automation software, and you’d know that it really is the new normal.

Do you want to become an AI-powered marketer?