How Will AI Shape Personalization in 2020?

AI-powered personalization can create a pool of loyal, engaged customers who keep returning to your brand. In this article, we discuss:

• What is AI personalization in marketing?
• Five ways in which AI can help you make personalization a priority
• Personalization trends to remember, and examples from Swisscom and GAP
   

Did you know that the global volume of consumer data flowing across the internet is expected to reach 212 exabytes per month Opens a new window in 2020? With so much data available, it’s easier and even more of an imperative for marketers to personalize their campaigns as per the needs of specific customer segments.

But how do you scan the data and extract valuable insights? How can brands act on insights at the right time, given the sheer volume and scale? This is where AI comes in. AI-based personalizationOpens a new window can help to target campaigns towards specific audience types, improving relatability and impact. Let’s consider how you can leverage the power of AI personalization in 2020.

Learn More: 5 Ways AI can Revolutionize Customer ExperienceOpens a new window

Understanding AI-based Personalization in Marketing

AI already plays a major role in marketing campaigns, in some form or the other. For example, an AI engine can scan the data from multiple leads to assign them a priority score. AI can also assist in programmatic advertisingOpens a new window by matching ad space to the right content.

AI personalization refers to the categorization of different customer data sets and extracting valuable insights from them. These insights are fed into an automation engine that can take action without human intervention. A good example of AI-powered personalization is the tailored playlists created by Spotify based on a customer’s listening habits. AI personalization can be applied to enhance your marketing campaigns in five interesting ways.

Learn More: The Future of AI in OOH Advertising – PersonalizationOpens a new window

How AI Will Impact Marketing Personalization: 5 Use Cases

Personalization should be a priority for marketers in 2020. A survey Opens a new window of 3000+ consumers in North America revealed that 63% expect personalized services and want promotions/offers tailored to their needs. AI can help you achieve this by consolidating data streams from multiple channels and identifying actionable trends. Here are five use cases to remember:

1. Embedding AI-powered chatbots on your website to collect data for personalization
 

The first step for successful personalization is to gather comprehensive and accurate data sets. Unfortunately, traditional website forms aren’t always up to the task. Visitors might want to share data apart from the specified fields. The data sharing process will also depend on the type/demographics of the visitor interacting with your website.

An AI chatbot addresses this by delivering a customizable conversation flow, tailored to meet the needs of individual visitors. This data can be fed into your CRMOpens a new window platform to enable later-stage personalization.

2. Implementing AI to personalize the micro-elements of content
 

Marketers must pay special attention to the smaller, “micro” elements of content to garner a reaction from customers. In all this content clutter, this is essential for marketers looking to stand out. AI can help tweak micro-elements such as the greeting, the subject line emails, follow-ups, etc. to personalize the conversation.

Salesforce’s AI engine, Einstein, is an excellent example of how AI personalization can improve the micro-elements of content. Automated email campaigns come with AI-recommended subject lines that are geared to effective targeting.

3. Retargeting customers using AI algorithms
 

This is particularly relevant for e-commerce. A website visitor will spend time browsing products, clicking links, exploring different catalog pages, and adding/removing items from the cart. This behavior can reveal valuable insights for e-commerce marketing. The AI personalization engine analyzes visitor behavior and re-targets adsOpens a new window accordingly.

Match2OneOpens a new window is a platform that leverages AI personalization for e-commerce (among other sectors). It predicts which prospects would be interested in your product based on website behavior and targets/retargets ad content accordingly.

4. Sharing personalized mobile content based on real-time events
 

The audience using your mobile app typically comprises high-intent customers. This implies that they are already interested in your product/service and are ready for conversion. AI can help monitor audience behavior and detect any exceptional event – such as cart abandonment, a product on the wish list becoming available, clicking on the same product description multiple times, unusually long intervals between purchases, etc.

Depending on the event type, the AI triggers a personalized mobile notification. This message needs to mention the customer’s preferred product/service variant so that they feel their tastes are being acknowledged.

5. Studying customer sentiment to create unique audiences
 

Sentiment analytics applies Natural Language Processing (an AI technique) to generate insights from raw, unstructured data. For instance, customer feedback on your social media page will carry words with positive or negative connotations. Sentiment analysOpens a new window is can detect these words and phrases to give you an accurate picture of how your customers are feeling.

Based on these insights, you can create unique audiences for your social media campaigns. If customers with a particular designation find your product “difficult to understand”, you can launch a series of how-to guides and spread the word on social media by targeting this specific group.

Learn More: 4 Ways AI is Revolutionizing Personalization and Customer Experience in RetailOpens a new window

The State of AI Personalization and Examples to Learn From

A 2019 survey by Arm Treasure Data and ForbesOpens a new window found that the majority of marketers are struggling to achieve the level of personalization they need.

The survey covered 200+ marketing decision-makers of which only 21% said that their efforts were “highly successful.” AI technology can help bridge this gap by making it easier to extract meaningful insights and act on them. It’s no surprise, therefore, that a quarter of companies in the survey believe that AI personalization is critical.

And, the benefits of utilizing AI in marketing personalization are well-documented. Take a look at these two examples:

1. Switzerland-based telecommunications company, SwisscomOpens a new window , was looking to give customers a personalized digital experience to stand out against the competition. It partnered with Adobe Experience Cloud Opens a new window to learn from website visitor behavior. By monitoring the number of visitors, sales, downloads, and uploads, it made micro-elements like Calls to Action and banner colors more impactful. This improved performance by 40% on average.

2. GAP Opens a new window also turned to AI to personalize its marketing strategy. It built a proprietary customer data platform (CDP) and implemented AI techniques for customer resolution, segmentation, and clustering. GAP has also partnered with AI startup, AmperityOpens a new window , to further strengthen its tech stack. As a result, the company’s digital marketing uplift efficiency increased by 50% from 2018.

Learn More: Hyper-Personalization – The Role of Data and TechnologyOpens a new window

The Way Forward in 2020: Key Takeaways

Clearly, AI can make a big difference in your personalization efforts as you look at enhancing customer experiences in 2020. To get started, we recommend that you:

• Build a strong foundation of data to help the AI engine learn
• Ask your existing martech vendor about their AI competencies
• Designate an AI Center of Excellence to drive research and development
•  Partner with AI-first marketing vendors and agencies in 2020
   

The rewards of effective personalization can be considerable. What you need to do is conduct research, stay focused on evolving customer needs, and utilize AI technology to make sense of the data available. This will help to transform your campaigns for wide yet targeted reach in 2020, driving conversions like never before.

Have you experimented with AI personalization for your brand? Tell us about your experiences on LinkedInOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!