[Tech Talks] How to Use Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? At its core, AI is about using data analysis to make better business decisions. We are all likely to increasingly find ourselves working alongside AI, helping us to be more efficient and effective in our jobs. For marketers, this will typically be in the form of platforms or dashboards that allow marketers to manipulate and visualize data and use that information to develop the most effective campaigns.

Charles Ng, Vice President of Enterprise AI at Appier, shares some of the ways that AI can be applied to marketing to maximize efficiency and drive business results.

Here are some ways that AI can be particularly useful in solving marketing challenges, which are often common across industries and organizations. They include effectively using data, identifying when and how to reach customers and effectively personalizing content and messaging.

Marketing tends to naturally accumulate large amounts of data on customer behaviour which can be incredibly useful, but also difficult to manage. A report by Salesforce in 2019 found that marketers are juggling an average of 16 different data sources, up from 10 just two years before.

For many marketers, this data remains siloed, so the first thing AI can do is pull multiple data sources into a single place. These sources might include website and app activity, loyalty program information, search engine traffic and so forth. Combined, the data provides complete profiles.

With these profiles, AI can quickly pinpoint specific needs and interests. For example, someone who works in finance might also own a dog and enjoy wine. With these insights, the next thing AI can do is predict future actions.

Our customer might look at a wine-tasting vacation to France - when she can travel again!- meaning that in addition to flights and hotels, she might also look for pet sitting services and boutique shopping experiences in Paris.

AI can also inform marketers about the best channel to reach the customer, with which product, and when. On Sunday evening, she is browses flights on her tablet. On Monday morning, she receives a push notification on her smartphone to remind her to purchase a ticket before seats sell out.

With AI, marketers can also quickly adapt messages to individual customers at a much greater scale than they can manually. This includes text, images and specific product features. Personalized calls-to-action convert up to 200% better than generic versions, an encouraging number for marketers investing in AI to help them improve personalization.

Finally, consumers consistently provide data about themselves, and AI improves over time as it has more data to learn from. It will continue to uncover more hidden insights and patterns that marketers can’t find manually. Consistently anticipating the needs of customers and delivering relevant content at the right time via the right channel leads to meaningful, long-term relationships that translate to business growth.

Neogence is a beauty brand in Taiwan that wished to use AI to identify valuable prospective customers to drive traffic to its website on Singles Day, one of Asia’s biggest annual online shopping events. Using AI to track user interests and predict behaviour, it was able to achieve this goal, but the AI was also able to uncover insights that the brand had not been aware of before. For example, people who were most likely to buy from Neogence were also particularly interested in environmental issues. This finding led to Neogence developing a new line of environmentally safe products and building the brand by arranging community beach clean-ups along Taiwan’s coastline. This is a great example of how AI can directly contribute to data-driven strategic planning and business decision-making.

Marketers know that customer habits, preferences and purchasing behaviour change rapidly, and this has been reinforced by the ongoing global pandemic situation. People are adjusting quickly to new ways of living, working, socializing, shopping and so on. AI can help marketers keep up with and stay ahead of these changes, providing consumers with the most relevant products and services when they need them most.

About Appier

Appier helps businesses solve challenging problems with artificial intelligence. We are a technology partner to some of the world’s leading brands, helping them effectively implement and leverage AI to drive business growth. Our suite of enterprise-grade products helps organizations maximize data, uncover hidden insights and personalize customer outreach. Appier was established in 2012, now extends across 15 offices in APAC and Europe, and has been recognized as a leader in AI by Fortune Magazine and others. 

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