It’s AI or die!
AI marketing technologies have been around for a long time, but it looks like they are now achieving critical mass. The demand for AI-based marketing technology is currently about 12 billion USD, and that figure is projected to grow by more than 30% each year to reach 108 billion USD in 2028.
That’s one of the reasons why marketers are getting nervous.
75% of senior executives fear that they will go out of business within the next five years if they do not successfully leverage artificial intelligence, while marketing is the most likely department to see AI as crucial. In light of this, it is imperative that marketers invest more in spreading AI technologies throughout their operations.
Here’s a look at the top five areas where AI is supporting marketing efforts, as well as some of the leading companies in each field. Note that AI is an extensive area of technology, and there are many more applications to consider as part of your marketing stack.
1. AI Copywriting Tools
The smart marketer knows that they must be present on as many platforms as possible with content that is relevant to a particular audience. So copywriting needs to address both a number of media types (blogs, Google, and LinkedIn, among many others) and the types of readers that use a particular platform (for example, Instagram users prefer a different writing style than blog readers do).
In this time-consuming and complex environment, text writing AI allows a marketer to get their message across with a minimum of resources. AI writing software creates headlines, product descriptions, and even entire blogs with just a few clicks.
The top AI writing software tools automate A/B testing to optimize conversions, while they can also predict which copy versions will convert even before they are released to the audience.
For those who are skeptical, AI writing apps generally offer free trials so that a potential user can see how lifelike AI-generated writing has become. In only minutes, an AI writing assistant can create top-quality copy and shave literally hours of effort from each day’s tasks.
Anyword is one of the market’s leading suppliers of AI generated writing SaaS. It is super-intuitive to use and requires essentially no training. If one of your tasks is to generate top-quality copy, you can use Anyword to take on much of the load.
Anyword’s clients, which include some very well-known brands, like the fact that Anyword can get started on building copy with only two steps. The user simply needs to insert the URL so that the AI can analyze the marketing text on that page; select their industry; and indicate what kind of copy needs to be generated.
At the same time, Anyword can get really sophisticated. One of its unique characteristics is a Predictive Performance Score that grades all types of copy – including text that you input – according to its potential to convert. This allows you to compare your existing copy, be it part of your website, a social media channel, or a blog—to that created by Anyword.
The technology also includes options for Continuous Optimization, which automates optimized copy placement, and for a Custom Mode that can mimic the style of any copy and apply it to the text that you want to create.
2. Chatbots
At one time, there was great reluctance to use these technologies for anything except the most basic customer-facing activities, but things have changed.
Top corporations like Facebook, Twitter, Starbucks, Slack, and Lyft have incorporated chatbot technologies extensively.
There are a large number of applications for chatbots, including sales, customer service, and even as a virtual friend.
One of the most interesting developments in this area is the use of chatbots to perform surveys as a way to support user experience optimization. A leading survey research chatbot is SurveySparrow, which enables users to define surveys without requiring any coding.
Their platform has many advantages. It provides mathematical functions based on customized expressions while permitting real-time data analysis and cross-survey comparisons. SurveySparrow can be triggered to activate at various points in the customer journey – upon opening the page, scrolling down, or after a certain time period. The technology will also support branding customization and can integrate live chat.
In terms of interface, SurveySparrow employs a chat-type format which, they claim, can improve completion rates by up to 40%.
SurveySparrow lets customers choose from a range of survey types such as NPS, CSAT, and CES. The platform can also be used for managing employee and HR functions such as hiring and churn questionnaires, managerial reviews and worker satisfaction, and even scheduling issues.
To minimize setup efforts, the company provides question and online form templates, while surveys are delivered to the target audience through integration with other platforms like Slack, Intercom, and Mailchimp.
3. Experience Personalization
AI can adapt marketing efforts by combining numerous data points about a particular consumer and use this information to provide a customized experience. This permits a marketer to deliver a service that is optimally relevant and even pleasantly surprising.
For example, if your flight is delayed, an AI setup can:
- Identify you as somebody who has been inconvenienced
- Determine if you are still in the airport
- Offer you access to the VIP lounge, courtesy of the airline, through your mobile phone
Such a service can be conceivably done by a person, but would not be practical when hundreds of passengers are involved.
AI can also avoid delivering an unwanted offer by, for example, ceasing to provide such an offer when it has been rejected several times. It also helps that, with the widespread use of mobile phones, AI will serve only the messages that are applicable because the target is in the right location.
Experience personalization is also being applied to everyday Internet usage, and a leading provider of this technology is Optimizely.
Optimizely enables product teams to test, adapt, and deliver digital experiences based on user behavior. According to the data collected by Optimizely’s system, and with the help of AI, Optimizely customers can implement personalized user experiences on their websites, mobile apps, and other connected devices.
To assist with optimization, Optimizely allows testing methods including multi-page, server-side, A/B, and multivariate, while user analysis triggers include clicks, visitor actions, and page views.
Optimizely provides features to make the entire process of personalization and optimization easier for the customer. This includes a visual editor and built-in platform security measures. Optimizely also delivers a statistical engine for running experiments and implementing analysis tools using real-time information and preset benchmarks. It should be noted that Optimizely uses a cloud-based technology to reduce resource requirements for the systems of its clients.
Optimizely integrates with various third-party software packages such as Google Analytics, Clicktale, and Adobe Audience Manager. In addition, it provides a Rest API to permit users to customize the platform as they see fit.
The company claims that more than 1 million experiments have been run on its platform, while its technology can increase ROI by up to ten times. Optimizely’s clients include 26 Fortune 100 companies, as well as the Gap, StubHub, IBM, and The Wall Street Journal.
4. Programmatic Advertising
Ad platforms such as AdWords, Facebook, and Twitter have created a whole new way of purchasing ad spots in the form of programmatic advertising, which is the automated process of buying and selling ad inventory through an exchange.
Programmatic advertising involves RTB (real time bidding) for ad inventory on numerous media such as video, social, and mobile.
In a dynamic environment like RTB, some form of artificial intelligence is compulsory; however, AI enables more than just a marketplace. By sifting through big data, advertisers can more easily and rapidly understand the effectiveness of their ads and adapt immediately to deliver tailor made spots. For example, AI can analyze a visitor’s behavior and send them personalized ads based on their actions at that exact point in time, or in the future.
TubeMogul, which is part of Adobe Advertising Cloud services, is a leading programmatic advertising software platform. It allows the organization, execution, and optimization of advertising campaigns by companies and ad agencies. TubeMogul runs video, connected TV, native, display, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) ads both to stationary and mobile devices. Their technology relies on AI to personalize ads according to user behavior and so increase their clients’ ROI.
Enabled by TubeMogul, ads can be run on websites, smartphones, social media platforms, and more. It also provides the unusual ability to purchase programmatic TV ads, in addition to premium ad inventory through the real-time bidding process. Moreover, TubeMogul permits companies to import their own direct deal or programmatic ad inventory. Because it is a cloud-based solution, TubeMogul does not create noticeable lag on the advertiser’s system, yet it is still robust and fast.
TubeMogul clients really enjoy the system’s interface, which is highly intuitive despite its sophisticated capabilities. In particular, TubeMogul’s reporting functions are easy to set up and provide highly granular information, as compared to competing solutions that require extensive configuration efforts.
TubeMogul integrates with a variety of other technologies so that the creation and monitoring of campaigns goes rapidly and smoothly. This extensive selection includes Amazon SNS, Salesforce, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Connect.
5. Email Marketing
Email is more than 40 years old, but AI is breathing new life into this universal medium. This is for good reason – 93% of B2B marketers use email, and almost 60% believe that it’s the best medium for eventually generating revenue.
We all know that some emails can be annoying to receive, or can get completely ignored, so AI is attempting to solve the problem. In this way, AI can assist marketers in reaching higher opening rates, click-through rates, and ROI.
Various methods are currently being used and developed to address this issue. Some AI platforms can optimize subject lines, which are crucial for attracting interest. According to this article, personalized email subject lines increase the chance of engagement by 26%.
Subject line optimization technologies experiment with different variations and track their performance, often in real time, as emails are sent and consumers open them – or don’t.
Personalization is also being leveraged to increase engagement. AI technology can insert the addressee’s actual name at various places in the email, making the usual “dear customer” into something to be avoided.
In other cases, predictive analytics can assess the type of product that an individual consumer might be interested in and include information about those products in a personalized communication. AI will also handle follow-up emails and retargeting by analyzing information resulting from previous engagements with individual consumers.
An interesting and very successful approach to reaching improved engagement has been created by Seventh Sense. It seems that, to optimize the effectiveness of marketing emails, it’s essential to know the best time to send them. To address this issue, Seventh Sense uses behavioral profiling to choose the right schedule for sending emails to individual contacts. They leverage artificial intelligence to analyze this timing based on when contacts are generally opening emails.
Seventh Sense has been designed to work for HubSpot clients based on their HubSpot contact database (although it can also be integrated with Marketo). The system constructs a predictive model for each contact based on the activity and analytical information provided by HubSpot.
Seventh Sense customers include SAP, the Daily Wire, and AppsFlyer.
The Easy Way to Ease into AI
Of all the AI marketing tools mentioned above, AI writing is probably the most user friendly way to get started with this growing and essential area of technology. After all, everyone knows good copy when they see it, and conversions can be analyzed immediately to measure improvement.
Want to see AI writing software in action? Anyword offers a 7-day free trial of its Starter plan.
