How CleverTap Improves Customer Engagement With AI in Marketing

Artificial intelligence (AI) helps marketers scale their efforts aimed to improve engagement and customer experience (CX). Let’s look at how you can use AI-powered marketing tools such as CleverTap to enhance customer engagement. We’ve also got exclusive insights from Anand Jain,  co-founder and chief strategy officer at CleverTap.

In the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has helped organizations improve various functions, and marketing is one of them. With the help of AI-based methods like machine learning (ML), deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP), we have seen some significant improvements in content curation, email marketing, digital advertising, analytics, and overall customer experience (CX).

Over the years, marketers have integrated AI-powered tools in their martech stack to boost customer engagement and improve other marketing aspects. In this article, we will look at how you can use tools such as CleverTapOpens a new window and other similar applications to improve customer engagement by introducing AI in your marketing activities.

1. Create Customized Messaging

One of the biggest hurdles in increasing customer engagement is the lack of proper resources that can attend to customers when they’re actively looking for help, for example, the customer service department. AI-fueled tools such as chatbots are capable of automating certain aspects of customer service at scale. Similarly, recommendation engines help marketers automate customer retention by identifying upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

Both these applications can give you a sneak peek into user behavior when you extract the right insights and help customize your messaging accordingly. But you need the right set of tools in your marketing stack to be able to do that. Anand JainOpens a new window says, “Today, the use of AI is moving beyond chatbots and recommendation systems and is setting the stage for the next level of relationship marketing at scale. Going hand-in-hand with AI, it is important for companies to have an integrated technology platform like CleverTap that can properly manage data strategy and operate at scale.

“Combining the power of AI with the right platform enables marketers to better understand user behavior and interests to create more meaningful messaging and personalized campaigns that boost customer engagement and drive customer lifetime value.“

Learn More: How Will AI Shape Personalization in 2020?Opens a new window  

2. Deliver a 1:1 Omnichannel Experience

Your target audience is available across different channels and on various devices. While multi and cross-channel marketing were effective a few years ago, consumers now expect the brand to deliver personalized CX. To stand out in the age of fierce competition, you must send the most relevant content, product, or offer at the right stage of the buyer’s journey. AI-powered omnichannel marketing helps you do that based on the customer data collected during various interactions.

While explaining how brands can maintain consistent messaging throughout the funnel across different channels, Jain recommends, “In an omnichannel world, data is coming from all directions, both online and offline. It is important to combine and store this data within the right tools that enable the data to be actionable. Consolidating data within an AI-powered platform like CleverTap allows companies to seamlessly integrate, store and analyze data, as well as generate insights and enable micro-segmentation for marketers to leverage when devising strategic campaigns orchestrated across multiple channels.

“For example, if a user launches an app for the first time, with minimal insight into that user’s behavior, there is not a lot the company can do outside the standard request for an email. This is where AI-powered platforms can help marketers leverage insight from previous user behavior data to understand and guide new users across multiple channels with consistent, thoughtful marketing interventions. This ultimately leads to increased brand loyalty and repeat customers.“

3. Optimize Customer Interaction Moments

It’s not enough to personalize the offerings according to the user’s behavior and preferences. You also need to connect with them at the right time so that your message is loud and clear. Send time optimization (STO) is a feature that allows you to do that based on past user data. Jain says, “Customers have a short window of attention, and in today’s connected landscape, they expect timely, relevant, and valuable messages from brands.

“By using AI-powered platforms, marketers can better determine the best time to send an offer, what kind of offer to send, and what channel to send it on, in order to get the best results. Consumers embrace personalized experiences with brands, and as AI advances, marketing will continue to get more personalized.“

AI-fueled features such as triggered campaigns, push notifications, A/B testing, etc. help you smoothen the onboarding and retention process, increase product usage, and prevent user churn, just by connecting with the user at the right time during their journey.

Learn More: How Companies Can Use AI to Give Customer Communications A Personal TouchOpens a new window  

4. Create Automated Segments

The success of personalization lies in the segmentation. To boost customer engagement, apply different segmentation criteria. For example, you can categorize your userbase according to their age, gender, location, likes, interests, etc. Machine learning can further help marketers create micro-segments by grouping people together based on their prominent interests or preferences.

Behavioral segmentation is another robust segmentation criteria, and with the help of RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) analysis, you can categorize people based on their past product purchases and usage. Also, these segments need not be static. With the help of AI, users are automatically moved between segments as their behavior changes.

And lastly, with the help of real-time user behavior, you can segregate users based on their in the moment app/product usage. This can help you suggest relevant content, bring the user back to the app, or address cart abandonment issues.

5. Understand User Behavior

Descriptive analytics helps organizations understand the performance of their marketing activities. AI-powered predictive analytics analyzes user data and enables marketers to project future user behavior, revenue, and performance and tweak the campaigns accordingly.

While discussing the impact of AI in the field of analytics, Jain said, “There are several use cases in drawing meaningful insight when leveraging AI in analytics. One of them could be uncovering cohorts of a company’s most profitable customers or discovering a new group of users who show a positive anomaly – like rapid growth.

“One example to note, CleverTap’s client, Fandango Latin America, uses AI analytics to predict future outcomes based upon past user behavior. They then use that data insight to further segment their audience. Using CleverTap’s Intent-Based Segmentation feature, Fandango Latin America proactively micro-segments its install base of almost 1 million users based on the likelihood of uninstalling the app. They then send targeted campaigns to these micro-segments of 2,000 to 3,000 users to reduce uninstalls and lower campaign costs significantly.“

From the perspective of descriptive analysis, marketers can visualize user behavior by creating cohorts for different purposes such as onboarding, retention, registration, feature usage, and product stickiness. You can monitor the behavior of cohorts for a prolonged period to better your segmentation and targeting.

Learn More: AI: The Magic Ingredient for Customer Experience in 2020Opens a new window  

Closing Thoughts

The introduction of AI in marketing has certainly been a blessing. Driving customer engagement used to be a slow and jagged process, but AI-powered customer engagement tools have simplified the process and have enabled marketers to scale it to a higher level.

In this article, we have looked at a few ways that can help you boost customer engagement. By using tools such as CleverTap, you can get a more refined view of the buyer’s journey, understand analytics, create funnels, and customized journeys, and use other segmentation and omnichannel marketing techniques to improve CX.

Do you already use AI-powered marketing tools in your marketing stack? Tell us which ones and why on LinkedInOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window .