Kristina: What trends are you watching in AI currently?
Mary Schneeberger, Marketing Experience Practice Lead, Avionos: One trend I'm currently watching is responsible AI. There has been a complete transformation in how we protect sensitive customer data and leverage AI to drive automation, intelligence and efficiencies in business. When companies use AI to support business decisions using sensitive data, it's important they govern their AI processes to ensure their algorithms are making accurate, bias-free decisions while protecting customer privacy. Mitigating risks from AI-driven decisions will become mainstream.
Another trend to note is content generation. Creating, managing and optimizing content is a huge time investment for marketers. AI is increasingly being used to generate content for templated content like news articles, press releases and data sheets, allowing marketers and content editors to focus their time on strategic, long-form copy.
Kristina: Are marketers using AI in the best ways currently? How can their use of AI improve?
Mary: Marketers have come a long way in adopting AI for campaign automation and optimization - think about the strides taken in programmatic advertising, email, account-based marketing (ABM), campaign performance analysis and forecasting. However, there is still the core piece of customer data unification and activation based on that intelligence that marketers need to leverage for personalized, omni-channel experiences.
Marketers should invest in tools and governance processes such as real-time customer data platforms (CDPs) that will enable them to create customer-driven campaigns rather than marketing-driven campaigns. In doing so, marketers will be able to offer experiences that meet customers with the right content and offers at the right time on their preferred device or channel.
Kristina: Many marketers probably know how to use AI for campaign scheduling and optimization - how can they use AI to better understand their customer base?
Mary: Real-time CDPs paired with AI can help marketers identify customers and target accounts across digital properties to match anonymous and known users to build more accurate customer profiles. By aggregating all of this customer data together, marketers can then use AI to build different customer affinity groups, further enabling more personalized campaigns and experiences. Harnessing this customer data allows marketers to inform future decisions and drive greater ROI.
Kristina: What about the customer experience - how can AI be leveraged to improve the online experience?
Mary: AI can assist in stitching together the full customer experience across different interaction points with a brand or company's marketing, sales and customer service teams. By aligning on common goals for the customer experience, these teams can leverage AI to connect with customers on a more personal level throughout the customer journey. The use of personalized content on the web, dynamic pricing based on previous behavior or loyalty status, and customer service chatbots put customers in control of their experience. Through insights gained from AI-enabled data, marketers can make better informed, hyper-personalized decisions to drive greater loyalty and build trust with the brands and companies they engage with.
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