Opinion: Elevating your marketing with AI personalisation

Dimpy Yadav of Xaxis India gives a rundown on how organisations can improve their AI solutions so they are an enabling tool in marketing - be it taking your creativity to the next level or creating a better CRM system.

Artificial Intelligence has become increasingly commonplace within India’s business and marketing scene with the majority of local organisations adopting it during the last two years alone. The most familiar methods seen in marketing are AI-defined algorithms which create personalised content and campaigns, alongside customer service chatbots.

But as the technology and our understanding of AI matures, it is time for marketers to take their automation strategies to the next level. AI-programmed tools can duplicate cognitive tasks, identify current and future trends, predict target customers’ buying behaviour and improve user experience. 

To realise the full potential of the technology available today, marketers need to create AI-driven strategies that are user-friendly, intuitively designed and fit with their organisation’s overall business model. These tactics will not only create brand awareness and reach target audiences, but also see marketers reap the rewards from their technology investment. 

Re-connecting Brands & Consumers

The COVID-19 pandemic has reaffirmed to consumers the value of their time. Indeed, after two years of lockdowns, time is now a luxury. Because of this, customers are looking for quick, fast-paced responses without having to wait in long hold queues just to change their internet provider.

It is therefore no surprise to see organisations accelerate their use of chatbots, offering customers an alternative when a physical human is unavailable. Now amid a global talent shortage and economic uncertainty, organisations soon may find they have no choice but to automate their traditional systems. If this is to be the future of customer service, then organisations must improve their AI solutions so they are a help, not a hindrance. Nothing infuriates an angry customer more than a poorly-built chatbot. 

Beyond simple query help, AI will also be pivotal in delivering highly personalised experiences, to the point that chatbots can understand contextual scenarios and can carry fully-fledged conversations with customers.

The ideal situation will see an AI tool guide customers towards the product that they need and provide targeted responses to their queries. For organisations lacking an army of customer service representatives, this could be instrumental in levelling up their customer experience game. 

Personalisation also applies to the content brands are delivering to customers. As long as brands are transparent about their data usage, then customers will have no issue in sharing their data provided they receive an exemplary experience or service in return. 

AI’s ability to transform vast amounts of data in real-time enables brands to personalise content to individuals based on their purchasing habits, customer service inquiries and browsing patterns, and also serve them with ads based on their browsing history, the inclination to purchase and demographics. AI will connect the dots between a media campaign to users’ experience on the website/ app, followed by a supply-delivery chain.

Location-based tools and ML algorithms are also able to predict what product a customer might want to see next, while AI-based recommendation engines can provide recommended products based on previous purchases.

As long as brands are committed to being transparent about their data usage, customers will come to regard the recommendation experience as helpful, rather than intrusive. 

Elevate Your Campaign

Once the connection between a brand and customers has been established or renewed, marketers can then cement their campaigns’ success with the right kind of messaging directed toward the desired audience.

Marketers who leverage AI and data-driven research can create a more effective and efficient marketing plan and eliminate the amount of guesswork in a campaign’s messaging. 

Successful Indian brands are now ditching traditional marketing plans by incorporating automation and machine learning algorithms to ensure these highly-personalised messages are reaching the right audience, at the right time. 

Once this has been achieved, brands will be able to identify how the campaign is faring in real-time, plus any adjustments that need to be made and the right optimisation strategy. Higher-performing content will be what boosts marketers’ ROI and increases their organisations’ overall profitability.

What’s Next?

If marketers fully commit to and invest in high-performing AI technology, then their strategies will improve and become more personalised for their brand and their customers. 

Predictive personalisation, dominated by algorithms, and machine-learning models, will allow marketers to create a profile of a consumer journey based on previous visits, geographical data, and preferences. These data points can provide anything from, real-time, dynamic offers and discounts while getting closer to consumers’ needs both offline and online. 

Organisations are consistently creating ways to optimise traditional methods to speed up their processes and performance. With AI and ML, marketers can optimise instantly. The accelerated adoption of chatbots will moreover enable marketers to not only respond to customer queries but drive sales as well.

Looking further ahead, India’s advertising scene will likely see a rise in augmented reality, which can be used to accelerate and improve customers’ paths to purchase. Even though AI has witnessed exponential growth and success over the past decade, it shows no signs of slowing down. Most, if not all organisations are slowly but surely moving towards adopting AI or automated processes. If marketers are prepared to elevate their AI game, then the transformational benefits will be insurmountable. 

This article is penned by Dimpy Yadav, General Manager of Xaxis India.

Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.