How AI-powered features are revolutionizing marketing automation platforms

Like much marketing technology, many marketing automation platforms (MAPs) are being enhanced with new AI-powered features. 

One reason for this is the need to improve personalization and drive it to all parts of marketing. A recent survey shows 73% of respondents — both consumers and business buyers — expect companies to “understand my unique needs and expectations,” while 62% expect companies to anticipate their needs, and 56% expect offers to always be personalized, according to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report, 5th edition.

AI-powered MAPs help businesses identify potential customers and automate the process of capturing leads and nurturing them to sales readiness using channels like email, social media, webpages and display ads. 

Download your free copy of the new report Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide now.

They can also bring customers and prospects to customized landing pages and through other experiences designed to move them down the purchase funnel. These platforms integrate tightly with CRMs and CDPs, continuously collecting more data about leads to fuel insights and further personalization, with artificial intelligence and machine learning driving aspects like segmentation, content creation and campaign optimization.

One of the primary uses for AI is better automating customer journey orchestration. This can include recommendations for next-best-channel, next-best-content and next-best-offer. Some vendors also offer dynamic personalization powered by AI and segmentation fueled by AI, where the system can, for example, predict a contact’s likelihood to respond to a certain offer.

Here is a list of some of the features from our new report Marketing Automation Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide:

• Suggest next-best actions.
• Automatic campaign optimization.
• Lead and account scoring/prioritization.
• Create email body copy and subject lines.
• Create forms and landing pages.
• Create intelligent campaigns.
• Send time and channel optimization.
• Understand frequency with which prospects are being emailed.
• Create predictive reporting models.
• Suggest/generate content personalization for emails and website experiences.
• Generate creative for email campaigns.
• Personalize landing pages on the fly.
• Assist or write copy for campaigns.
• Generate content for email, SMS and push notifications.
• Personalize messaging.
• Predict suitability of individual profiles for campaigns, such as excluding customers with high return rates from certain campaigns.
• Help discover new unique audiences and prospects.
• Create chatbots to contextually answer customer questions reflecting a brand’s personality and tone.
• Generate conversation summaries and provide a chat interface to prepare salespeople for conversations and meetings with customers and prospects.
• Suggest customer journey design.
• Generate content for automated 1:1 sales emails, saved responses and direct email.
• Anomaly detection.
• Customizable scoring.

Not all of these are available on all platforms, so consult our new report for more information and tips on determining if you need an AI-powered MAPs, picking and vetting vendors and more.