AI in Marketing: Beyond Simple Analytics

If you ask any marketer worth their weight in salt how they feel about analytics, you are likely to hear rave reviews about their analytics tools, and possibly a diatribe about the perils of not being “data-driven”.

So, just how valuable are analytics? Are you connecting your analytics to actions?

If your answer to the latter is no or maybe, then the answer to the former is likely “not that valuable”.

Let’s take this even deeper. If your answer was “yes, we are taking actions based on our analytics”, I pose a follow-up question: how quickly are you taking action? Automatically and immediately?

In some scenarios, manual actions based upon analytics might be the right solution. However, in many marketing scenarios, manual decisions result in lost opportunities.

We are firmly into the next paradigm of data and analytics. We can do better than staring at charts and graphs. We have the ability to connect analytics to actions automatically and when this is done correctly the rewards are swift and robust.

Whether you know it as prescriptive analytics, AI, or machine learning, the outcome is similar (for the most part): automating decisions based on patterns in data. Want to know some specific applications? Keep reading for use-case examples. 

One-To-One Website Personalization

If you have used Amazon, Netflix etc. you have experienced it. The idea is simple, deliver the content or products that are most likely to be of interest to each individual user. Without getting to technical, behind the scenes the data from each customer, product and previous outcomes is used to automatically deliver the content/product(s) that is most likely to deliver the desired outcome from each subsequent customer.

The impact of personalization is incredible. According to a report by McKinsey, “personalization can deliver five to eight times the ROI on marketing spend, and can lift sales by 10% or more.”

Customer Service Personalization

While acquisition takes the lion’s share of the headlines when it comes to personalization, personalized customer retention can create an even greater ROI. The same concept is used here. When a customer decides to cancel an ongoing product/service or close an account, we can automatically deliver an intermediate option or series of intermediate options that may alter the customer’s decision to exit.

During a brief case study at Bellwethr, one of our customers saw 74.4% of users who had clicked to cancel services select an intermediate option instead of exiting, which equated to a value of nearly $90,000/mo. for the business.

Testing Optimization

Standard A/B Testing is commonplace in marketing campaigns, but it’s also leaving money on the table. With machine learning techniques, testing optimization can be automatic, removing the need to interpret and manually take actions based on the results. At Bellwethr, we regularly see increases in campaign effectiveness greater than 40% while the overall spend is dropping.

These are just a few simple examples. There are many more applications of this type of technology available today and a growing number of new ones each month.

While it’s not right for all occasions, and it can be complex to deploy, adopting automated actions based on analytics can make your marketing efforts more efficient and deliver a significant return on investment.

About Guest Blogger Matt Moody

Matt shared his expertise at the 2019 AMP’D Conference.