How to leverage AI in marketing: three ways to improve consumer experience

AI in marketing is a way to offer customers a digital and personalized consumer experience. This content is tailored to consumers’ needs, offers better segmentation and build relationships with consumers on their terms. As the number of marketers and customers aware of the opportunities offered by AI increases, we can expect it to become more frequently used in sales. And for that reason, it is useful to know how to use it effectively for your own company.

From the article, you will learn, among others:

• How marketers can use AI to increase sales and improve consumer experience.
• How to apply AI to customer segmentation.
• How to use AI to establish relationships with customers on their terms.
• How to use AI to create content tailored to your group.

As many as 70% of customers argue the trouble-free transfer of their affairs between individual channels and departments, as well as adapting the actions taken from previous interactions, is very important to convince and trust a given brand. That is why the majority of customers (62%) declare that they are open to companies that use AI, which can significantly improve these processes and thus increase the level of service.

So if you're considering how to use AI to personalize your consumer experience, then you're in the right place. Let's think in detail about how marketers can take advantage of the opportunities offered today by AI.

How can marketers use Artificial Intelligence?

As a marketer, you have the data you need to create value. You just need to start by clearly defining how to use new solutions. Here are three ways to use AI in digital marketing:

1. Use smart segmentation to identify the target audience.
2. Establish a relationship with customers on their terms.
3. Deliver tailored content to each segment of the target group.

1. Use of AI and smart segmentation to identify the target group

Target group segmentation is an important part of all marketing activities. It is difficult to convince the consumer, if you do not know who you want to convince at all.

In the past, marketers have set a general goal, asking themselves questions such as: "Do we want a higher level of awareness, commitment, retention, profits or something else?" They then manually estimated the optimal target group for the campaign.

Today, AI and Predictive Analytics allow marketers to accurately identify the best target group. The process is faster and more accurate - it can also help identify new segments of this group that are characterized by the same attributes. This approach allows customers to present a more individualised offer to customers, thereby creating a unique, personal bond that would be difficult to achieve without AI.

How does this whole process look like in practice? A travel clothing retailer who divides its customers into avid camping holiday lovers and hikers can use AI segmentation to identify many specific types of customers. AI can help him identify a group of "lux-campers" looking for comfortable tents and a high level of comfort, or "trail enthusiasts" who buy the most technically advanced equipment. Once identified, it can apply individualised campaigns to them, emphasizing the advantages of a travel coffee maker useful to "lux-campers", or a new watch with GPS, which will find recognition among "trail enthusiasts". The information AI provides will suddenly turn out to be much more accurate, and the relationships established with customers more durable.

AI can also help in determining the actions that clients from individual segments can take after receiving the message intended for them. Let's start by answering yes/no to a few simple questions. For example, after you send an email:

• Will the target group open it or not? 
• Will the client read it carefully? 
• Will the client decide to purchase a product from the brand? 
• Will the client cancel the subscription?

With answers to the above questions, you can better customize the content of the message. For customers who usually do not respond to your emails, you can encourage them to update their communication preferences so that they only receive content that's useful to them. For customers who respond to your messages, membership in the loyalty program can be the ideal way to develop a relationship with each other.
In conclusion, here are some ways to use AI for more accurate customer segmentation:

• Summarize the characteristics of your main target audience - who they are and what its members are.
• Use AI to perform deeper analysis and identify new personality types.
• Treat these personality types as sub-segments and give them personalized messages.

2. Use AI to establish relationships with customers on their terms

Detailed segmentation of the target group is a good start, but as a marketer, you also need to communicate the right messages delivered through the right channels and at the perfect time. You can use email, mobile devices, desktops, laptops, as well as social media. AI can help you prepare perfect messages, determine their quantity and choose channels to maintain the right level of customer engagement.

By analysing the number of messages sent to clients and comparing it to the number of active clients, you can get an image showing the target audience's preferences for interacting with your messages. For example, some customer groups will not simply use specific channels. AI can help you predict this phenomenon. Someone who is unlikely to open the email will not be persuaded by a notification sent to the phone or to a social media account. The same applies to optimizing the time of shipment of content, to reach the customer when he or she is most likely to pay attention to your message.

In conclusion: here's how AI can help you reach your customers where they are:

• Verify to who, when and through what channels you send messages.
• Use your preference centres and AI to gather information about customer preferences related to frequency, channels, and time of sending messages.
• Run A/B and multiple-choice tests to measure the effectiveness of AI-optimized campaigns compared to previous results.

3. Use AI to provide each segment of a target group with content tailored to its needs

Once you have identified the correct target audience and when and where you can reach it, go to create engaging content. Previously, you could have used content with special offers or other creative elements that changed depending on your specific attributes. We call this approach the use of dynamic content. It is a good solution, but often requires time-consuming manual work. Thanks to AI, this can change.

For companies offering thousands of products and having hundreds of thousands of customers, AI can help determine a number of product recommendations that are tailored to the expectations of each segment of the target group. AI-based product recommendations take into account the behaviour of web browser users and product similarities, introducing customers to products they most likely buy.

In addition to products, AI-based campaigns can also include personalized banner ads that can get customers to take specific action. With the increase in the number of information obtained by AI, the content of your offers or campaigns can be dynamically personalized. The whole process is simple and requires the creation of dynamic fields on the website, in the mobile application or in the e-mail brochure. AI will then fill them with the right bids for the target group segment.

In conclusion, here's how to use AI to properly determine the amount of personalized content:

• Create different offers for each segment of your target audience. 
• Use multiple tags or metadata to identify the groups for which individual offers should be intended.
• Insert dynamic fields in your content, associated with tags and metadata.
• Use automated, AI-based recommending engines and machine learning processes.

Artificial intelligence and marketing - a link for many years

Along with the expansion of the offer for customers and the increasing possibilities of establishing contact with them, the demand for personalized consumer experiences and the nature of marketing materials will also grow. That is why we are convinced that AI will stay with us for years to come.
To stay one step ahead of the competition, marketers should treat AI as a tool to help them better segment customers, achieve a higher level of consumer engagement and use dynamic content strategies. All these elements, as well as many others, will soon become an important part of the toolkit used by each marketer.