How AI Martech is Shaping Marketing’s New Era – CMSWire

The Gist

• AI martech trends. AI is transforming customer targeting by improving predictive analytics, segmentation and personalization.
• Content creation. AI marketing tools are accelerating the brainstorming process, helping generate fresh ideas for content like ebooks and whitepapers.
• Human-AI synergy. AI in marketing is balancing the roles of machine learning and human insight, revolutionizing customer retention strategies.

A group of marketing executives are seeing several trends in how marketers are using artificial intelligence (AI) in their martech toolkit — from customer targeting, acquisition, and retention to brand promotion and metrics. They say marketers are using AI marketing tools to improve the planning, execution and results of their campaigns. The execs shared details on each of those AI martech trends with CMSWire:

1. AI Martech in Customer Targeting

At the recent Kentico Connection user conference in Nashville, Tennessee, CMSWire caught up with Scott Brinker — the VP of platform ecosystem at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based

To improve the accuracy of customer targeting, marketing teams are relying on AI for predictive analytics, segmentation and personalization, said Monica Ho, CMO at the San Diego-based multilocation marketing platform SOCi.

AI algorithms enable marketers to analyze past customer behavior and preferences to create more personalized product recommendations for online shoppers, increasing conversion rates, she said.

Those AI algorithms are helping marketing departments identify key behaviors, trends, and usage patterns, which “historically has been a challenge,” said Heidi Bullock, CMO at the San Diego-based customer data platform (CDP) Tealium.

“The key to success is to ensure the AI algorithms are being applied to quality data, so it is critical to look at data completeness, freshness, and also accuracy,” she said.

Clare Dorrian, CMO at the San Francisco-based CRM platform SugarCRM, said generative AI tools will help marketers “cut out weeks of extensive research,” quickly curate target segments and lists, and identify the highest potential audience segments to target — to ensure maximum reach and impact from their marketing efforts.

Related Article: 4 Rules to Preserve Brand Trust When Using AI in Digital Marketing

2. AI Martech in Customer Acquisition

The natural language interface of generative AI tools is allowing marketers to self-service tasks, such as developing an email based on data on a particular customer segment and raw content, said Brinker with HubSpot.

Joy Corso, CMO at the Holmdel, New Jersey-based cloud communications company Vonage, said generative AI means there will “never be a lack of content or ideas in marketing departments.” 

AI, she said, is accelerating how marketers brainstorm fresh topics for content, such as ebooks, whitepapers, and social posts, and making it easier to personalize customer content and conversations — “even on a massive scale.”

“Marketing has shifted away from 100% human-created content,” Corso said. “The challenge now and ahead will be to find the right balance of human and AI work to keep our content unique, on brand, unbiased, and factual.”

Perla at Kentico agreed that marketing pros are working with AI to generate content ideas as well as for copywriting. AI can then help them repurpose and personalize the content for different audiences, channels and verticals. 

He also said more digital and data mature companies are testing ML to identify customer behavior patterns that lead to specific actions on a website — with AI predicting which visitors are more likely to perform an action, such as placing an order.

For customer journey optimization, marketing teams are using AI to improve outcomes, such as conversions and lifetime value, by using analytics to guide customers to end conversion events, rather than pushing them down a brand-based predefined path, said Jonathan Moran, head of martech solutions marketing at the Cary, North Carolina-based analytics software company SAS.

“All of this is rooted in reinforcement learning,” Moran said.

Ho with SOCi said AI is helping marketing teams identify potential customers and optimize lead generation strategies. ML algorithms help identify the most promising leads, streamlining the sales process and improving conversion rates.

Related Article: AI in Marketing: More Personalization in the Next Decade

3. AI Martech in Customer Retention

When marketers use ML tools to enable customer retention, it is similar to using them for customer acquisition, said Brinker with HubSpot. The difference is the context. 

“It’s the same motions,” Brinker said. “Am I applying this from an acquisition perspective or retention perspective?”

For churn prevention, marketing teams can use AI to track signals showing if a customer is considering replacing their product or service — and propose steps to mitigate the risk, said Perla with Kentico.

AI is helping marketers identify known and unknown patterns about customers to calculate churn and spot at-risk buyers or VIPs and ensure they have optimized programs in place, said Bullock with Tealium.

Moran at SAS said marketers are using AI tech — such as natural language processing (NLP), text and voice analytics, and sentiment analysis in chatbots — to infer customer preferences and emotions. Brands can then understand, direct, and respond to customers, without human interaction, for retention.

By employing generative AI tools to create tailored messages for distinct customer segments, marketers can offer more relevant content and drive increased levels of both customer engagement and loyalty, said Mairead Maher, CMO at the customer and employee experience platform Poppulo.

Ho with SOCi said marketing teams are employing AI chatbots to automate customer service to enhance engagement, reviews management, and brand reputation, improving customer satisfaction and retention.

Corso at Vonage agreed that AI-based “conversational commerce” is helping marketers power customer interactions that create new and personalized experiences, raising engagement and retention. 

Related Article: A Game Plan for Generative AI in Customer Experience & Marketing

4. AI Martech in Brand Promotion

Marketing teams are working with AI to accelerate the development of their creative catalog for promotional campaigns, said Brinker with HubSpot. They then can use AI to run campaigns with different targets and creative variations, learning what works with each segment — without the marketer “throwing all the switches.” 

Moran with SAS said marketers can work with AI to take advantage of geofencing and retail beacons to deliver mobile customer messages and offers. 

Marketing teams are looking to AI tools to identify complex consumer patterns to optimize brand strategy as well as calculate the ideal advertising spend to save money and drive conversions, said Bullock with Tealium.

Ho at SOCi said marketers are depending on AI to analyze user data and create more targeted and personalized advertising campaigns, enhancing the effectiveness of promotions and click-through rates.

With AI, marketing teams are streamlining the creation and scheduling of their advertising campaigns and social media efforts across different platforms, said Corso with Vonage.

5. AI Martech in Metrics

AI is democratizing the access to data and utility of that data for marketers, said Brinker with HubSpot. Generative AI is enabling front-line marketing pros to get answers to their data questions as well as reports to accelerate the process of developing and iterating campaigns.

Perla with Kentico said marketing teams are looking to AI tools to immediately notify them when their metrics are out of their expected ranges, such as a sudden decline in leads from specific web pages.

“AI can improve your reaction time,” Perla said. 

AI visual and voice biometrics are improving customer experience by reducing identity theft issues and from a point-of-sale, kiosk, or ATM perspective, said Moran with SAS.

Bullock at Tealium said marketers are using AI to expedite many of the normally time-consuming tasks related to marketing metrics, making it faster to find critical insights and act on them, improving business outcomes.

For marketing departments, it’s “expensive and time consuming” to collect data sets on all of their customers, but with AI doing the heavy lifting of analyzing data, marketing teams can focus on creating valuable insights “behind the data,” said Corso with Vonage. 

Corso said marketers are turning to AI to systematically scrutinize historical data, identify key performance indicators (KPIs), and strategically implement the derived insights to elevate the quality of customer interactions.

Dorrian with SugarCRM added that marketing pros are deploying AI tools to identify compelling customer insights, including the marketing-generated leads most likely to convert and opportunities most likely to close — prioritizing both marketing and sales resources where they’re “most likely to win.”

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