Artificial Intelligence (AI) just might be the missing piece to your marketing automation.
By counter intuitively adding a human touch to the automated communications with your potential customers, it significantly enhances their digital customer experiences (DXM). Additionally, if you include better big data exploration and predictive analysis of customer interests, you can see the potential it offers to improve marketing automation.
If/Then Rules Aren't Enough
Most marketing automation platforms today operate mainly in the basic mode that follows if/then rules. They are based on analysis of user behavior on a website, where specific actions trigger specific responses, such as sending out previously prepared email messages.
However, it is not the most efficient approach to deliver personalized experience to users, especially if your website has thousands or hundreds of thousands of visitors. Each person may visit your site for a different reason, likely in a different frame of mind.
Unfortunately, without enough data, your chances to convert them into real customers are limited.
To be more efficient, you need to employ a non-linear approach to B2C communication, with a primary role of machine intelligence and better data accumulation, exploration and predictive analysis.
Get to Know Your Customers Better
To start, you should accumulate data on the users interested in your offer from as many sources as possible, including your webpage (desktop and mobile visits), social media, ad networks, call centers and even points of sale.
The new generation of marketing automation platforms allow you to perform such tasks automatically.
Let’s have a look at how the data accumulation can be used on Facebook. Here you can take advantage of AI bots on Facebook Messenger. They can be used not only to automate customer service and sales but also to accumulate data. Once you initiate a talk through Facebook Messenger, the bot recognizes you and links up the conversation with your profile in the marketing automation platform.
All the data from your conversation with the bot (the questions you asked, whether you were angry or happy) is transferred to your profile. Then it is combined with the other sources data, such as your calls to call centers, your behavior during the mobile and desktop visits to the website, interactions with ads displayed on Facebook or in ad networks, most frequently viewed pages at the corporate website, an abandoned shopping cart, date of birth. It all can be used to automatically customize the offer for you in the future.
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Improve Customer Segmentation
The data you accumulate is worthless unless it is properly segmented in a way to enable taking actions in a quick and easy way. It refers to both traditional structured data (such as email, new contacts, newsletter subscribers, buyers) and unstructured data (e.g. from conversations with a bot or a call center consultant).
The appropriate allocation of unstructured data is a missing piece in many currently used marketing automation tools. The same applies to more advanced segmentation options, which are particularly dedicated to e-commerce, such as the time, frequency or value of purchases. Using these additional options you can generate more contacts. As a result, you will be able to easily pull out a group of contacts that e.g. bought your products a long time ago or paid very little.
Having identified target groups you can take actions across different channels to push your prospects onto the next levels of their buying process.
Personalize DXM with Machine Intelligence
Using the information on your potential customers behavior you can deliver them personalized experience during their consumer decision journey. Have a look at sample scenarios of how it could look like:
- Lead nurturing: Reach out to customers who were interested in your offer but have not bought anything with automatic educational emails about your company, its philosophy and its products. You can also advertise this content in ad networks or with Facebook ads.
- Dynamic 1-to-1 communication: Personalize the communications with your prospects by using dynamic emails with a customized coupon or recommended products. This personalized offer can also be promoted using dynamic product recommendation boxes on the company webpage, ad networks or Facebook ads. It can be even presented to your prospects by your AI Facebook bot or a call center consultant.
- You can recommend products depending on user engagement level (i.e. how many times they have visited the website before), the content they frequently viewed and what users with similar profiles have bought.
- You can remind your customer of abandoned items in their cart across channels, bundling it with additional recommendation of products that can also be of interest to them.
- As an excuse to initiate a 1-to-1 communication, you can use a customer’s birthday to send a happy birthday email with discount coupons for appropriate products. You can advertise this personalized birthday offer across channels.
All of the above mentioned activities help you determine what products or services a potential customer may be interested in.
Following that, the system provides them with personalized offers meeting their expectations. That way, the chance of turning them into real consumers significantly increases. What’s more, you will be able to keep them coming back in the future.
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