Smart devices paved the way for new-age oil…

If humans time travel back to the origination of electronic devices, a bulky vacuum device which could alter the electrical impulse flowing through it was revolutionizing the world of computing. No one would have believed that majority of the world population would be able to access computing devices, computing device being an extension to their existence. Two key milestones in the world of consumer electronics were the launch of personal computers and smartphones. These two remarkable inventions broke all barriers and reflected unimaginable use cases in reality – from handy cameras to social connectedness.

From consumers perspective, mobile device serves as a trustable assistant, bringing worldwide services. Businesses leverage personal devices as a channel of sales and marketing, for instance, mobile devices are the retail real estate of e-commerce firms. At first, it seems that both sides are resonating well to the ecosystem with devices at its epicenter. Going deeper, both consumers and businesses interact continuously through different channels – own Apps or site, google platforms, social media – live stream of information is being transceived. Tech giants started perceiving data as the new age ‘oil’ which primarily affected the marketing landscape.

How can we leverage AI for marketing effectiveness?

Data gathered from a customer can be utilized for:

1. Product development
2. Personalized experience
3. Targeted advertising
4. Cross-selling

With large data flow, customers needed to be shown relevant information which otherwise would hit satisfaction scores badly. This being critical, marketers shall move from the segmented approach relying on intuitive heuristics to individualized preferences, personalizing value, and employing right channels for customers. From operational standpoint, human cognitive intelligence cannot deliver these activities at scale to engage customers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) shall be deployed to collect and derive insights from data at a much higher scale, it is an integration of human cognitive skills built as a software element. AI enables machines to interact with humans, understanding the complex language structure and providing right answers to the user’s queries. It becomes more powerful when new use cases are presented. AI can interpret thousands of data lines about a single individual profile which helping digital marketers target specific customer base efficiently. Traditional marketing techniques focus on reaching the customers with right products or services. Now, marketers started understanding how customers reach their premises, in other words, mapping customer journey. As AI takes up the role of data synthesizer, marketing teams can now work only on strategizing core marketing competencies and campaigns.

AI-powered use cases for better results!

Technological evolution created precedence in consumers’ minds that services shall be available to them around the clock. Customer service, during the customer journey, happens at two stages:

1. Pre-purchase wherein customers would want to know more about products
2. Post-purchase – Customers would require clarifications about purchased products. By automating them, firms would reduce cost structures and earn brownie points for customer engagement. Chatbots powered with AI communicate with consumers naturally and interface with multiple customers at a time. It can be scaled up to meet increased traffic without much difficulties.

Have you wondered when Amazon rightly found that ‘you have recently shifted to a new home’? The mastermind behind this prediction is AI. By unifying the data from an individual, AI understands the pattern. Based on this pattern, AI engine will predict the future behavior. This phenomenon is called ‘Predictive Analytics’. If marketers understand the next activity of a customer, they can just focus on activities surrounding customer’s interests. For instance, Cardlytics provides rewards platforms to financial institutions – the platform analyzes the customer spending behavior and curates a customized offers and deals.

As organizations started leveraging data from customers activities, it was inevitable moving from static to dynamic websites – the website or mobile App is individualized for customers. AI architects the content to be shared with each customer based on the past experiences with the customer. From marketing perspective, this process is attributed to ‘Personalization’. The key benefit of content curation is the recommendation engine which enhances the cross-selling and up-selling opportunities thereby increasing the customer lifetime value (CLTV).

AI – miles to go for better future!

The need of AI deployment in marketing is gaining momentum continuously. Companies of all scale wanted to exploit social media marketing and hence need some AI tools to increase the efficacy of the marketing campaigns thereby increasing the marketing ROI. As mentioned earlier, AI increases CLTV by engaging with the customers and reducing the customer attrition rate. Semantic searches are currently trending in the market which could optimize SEO strategy and gets customers straight to the intended pages. Going forward, tech giants will discover new impactful use cases of AI to empower their digital assets.

Gunjan Aggarwal

Expert in Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science

Gunjan is a head of Artificial Intelligence and Marketing Science where she advises businesses on how to build business cases and successfully manage AI and customer value analytics projects. Gunjan is a firm believer in data-based decision making and applying automation to improve customer experience. She helps clients design their customer data platforms with a customer-centric approach in order to bring business value to customer experience, marketing science, innovation, operational effectiveness and compliance.
She spends time each month doing pro-bono work to support women in the STEM field.