AI and Machine Learning
The Ultimate Guide to AI Marketing
By
Team Braze
Aug 11, 2023
For the last five years, respected researchers and thought leaders including McKinsey & Company and Harvard Business Review have made the case that, across all business functions, marketing stands to benefit the most from the use of artificial intelligence (AI). But with the rapid rise and adoption of predictive and generative AI technologies, we’re past the theoretical stage of wondering about the potential of AI marketing.
Leading brands are already harnessing the power of AI marketing tools for advertising, content, customer service, customer experience, and customer engagement, adding more technologies to the mix every day. In fact, the majority of marketers (61.4%) say they’ve leveraged AI to support their efforts and 88% say their organizations should step up their use of AI and automation to better meet customer expectations and gain a competitive advantage.
We’ve put together this guide to help you explore what AI marketing can do for your business. In it, we’ll cover:
What Is AI Marketing?
AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) to automate or advance a range of marketing tasks, such as marketing analysis, content creation, and campaign optimization. Brands use AI marketing platforms to save time and money, improve campaign performance, and generate more revenue.
AI Marketing Use Cases
About one-third of marketers say they use AI for their company’s paid advertising and personalization efforts, according to the State of Marketing Automation report from Ascend2, the market research firm focused on reporting on marketing industry trends. According to the study, other top use cases include using AI:
To generate product recommendations
For predictive analytics
To improve segmentation
To determine the best time to send marketing campaigns
9 AI Marketing Examples
With the steady stream of buzz about AI in marketing, it can feel overwhelming to keep up with all of the potential applications for artificial intelligence in the field. Rest assured, more likely than not, your team is already using AI to your advantage to make your work more efficient and create more effective engagement. To see how you stack up, here’s a comprehensive list of the top ways brands are leveraging ML and AI marketing solutions to better understand, connect with, and engage customers.
1. Generating marketing campaign copy.
Companies across industries are tapping generative AI technologies, like our ChatGPT-powered AI Copywriting Assistant tool, to get new messaging ideas for their campaigns.
2. Automating the creation of marketing campaign visuals.
Brands like KFC South Africa are using AI Image Generator technology solutions to instantly develop new campaign assets.
3. Powering real-time campaign marketing optimization at scale.
From the time of day a campaign gets sent to the channels used, there are countless ways to enhance your marketing outreach. AI is automating each of these steps, freeing up marketers to take care of other tasks and speeding up time to optimization and ultimately enhancing results.
4. Selecting A/B and multivariate test winners at the personal level.
Typically, campaign experiment winners are decided and applied in the aggregate, but now it’s possible to pinpoint and send winning variants at the individual level automatically with AI.
5. Predicting customers at risk of churn.
Machine learning is able to gain insights from past customer behavior and identify warning signs of similar activity as it’s happening. That’s invaluable for helping brands re-engage potentially lapsing customers before they’re gone. For example, with this kind of tool, brands can:
Send promotional offers and discounts to users who are at high risk of churning to entice them to make a purchase.
Remind medium-risk users of the value of their product or service by sending personalized month-in-review emails.
Save money on paid ad spend by excluding users who are not at risk of churning from retargeting campaigns.
6. Identifying customers’ likelihood to purchase.
In addition to pinpointing customers at risk of churn, AI can also be used to predict your brand’s best spenders, enabling you to tailor marketing outreach to drive upsells, repeat purchases and lifetime value.
7. Generating marketing reports.
Beyond creating images and marketing copy, generative AI can also be tapped to produce insightful dashboards and reports that might otherwise take up valuable team member time to put together.
8. Creating personalized recommendations.
AI can help uncover the best products, services and experiences to suggest for each individual user, fueling marketing personalization efforts and driving future purchases.
9. Getting an instant review of marketing materials.
Save time and inspire confidence with quality checks of your brand’s campaigns that leverage AI to review your materials for typos, issues with tone and grammar, and use of insensitive or offensive language.
3 Examples of Companies Using AI Marketing
1. KFC Ecuador
KFC Ecuador noticed that many of the company’s customers were using their app to download coupons but weren’t going through the process of redeeming the offers. Looking to drive engagement with these promotions, the brand found an AI marketing technology that uses predictive insights and automation to deliver these marketing campaigns right when recipients are most likely to engage. By using AI to reach out to customers at the right time, KFC Ecuador was able to increase revenue by 15%.
2. Delivery Hero
Leading local delivery platform Delivery Hero wanted to understand which users were at risk of turnover, so the marketing team could reach out with targeted customer engagement in order to boost retention rates and reduce churn. Using a predictive artificial intelligence solution, the brand has been able to create an AI-powered marketing model that identifies the company’s at-risk customers and uses these insights to automate the process of sending personalized offers based on users’ likelihood of churn.
3. 8fit
Health and fitness app 8fit utilized predictive technology powered by machine learning to find customers that are most likely to purchase and convert. Using these insights, they boosted conversion rates by nearly 4X, compared to efforts without the use of AI marketing solutions.
The Benefits of AI Marketing
Marketers are under more pressure than ever to drive key business outcomes for acquisition, revenue, and retention—often with fewer resources at their disposal as companies tighten their purse strings. Up against these challenges, savvy brands are leveraging AI marketing solutions to gain efficiencies and deliver results—faster than the competition.
1. Scaling marketing personalization.
AI marketing tools can be used to automate the process of selecting the right marketing campaign variants, channels, segments, and recommendations at the 1:1 level by learning from past customer behavior–making it possible to truly tailor experiences for each individual.
2. Improving campaign performance.
Machine learning algorithms can predict the most effective marketing channels, the best time to deliver campaigns at the individual level, which segments should receive which campaigns, which audience members are at risk of churn, which are most likely to make a purchase, and more. With this kind of information, brands can see campaign performance and key metrics, such as conversions and revenue, grow over time.
3. Speeding up the time to launch new marketing campaigns.
Creating images, drafting content, and reviewing assets are key steps in the campaign development lifecycle, typically taking time and including many rounds of iterations. Thanks to AI, brands can automate and assist some or all of these steps, cutting back on production time and delays.
4. Reducing marketing costs.
Brands that are able to achieve efficiencies by using AI to create campaign materials and review assets as part of the QA process can save not only time, but money on additional resources. In addition, smarter segmentation powered by machine learning can help companies lower advertising and marketing costs by targeting the audiences with the highest value.
5. Deepening customer engagement.
A range of AI marketing tools helps brands reach customers via the channels where they’re more likely to open, click, and convert. This will help to deliver content that is more personalized to individuals’ preferences at times when they’re most likely to engage.
6. Reducing customer churn.
Irrelevant content and offers. Disruptive messages that get sent too often or at the wrong times. With AI, brands have the insights they need to avoid these kinds of poor experiences that turn customers away. Businesses can also use predictive insights to pinpoint customers at risk of churning in the moment and drive retention
7. Boosting revenue.
Figuring out which content is resonating, which channels are having the best impact, and which users are primed to purchase has been historically hard for companies to determine in real time. However, that’s changing with AI—and unlocking these learnings is making it possible for brands to engage customers in ways that bring in more revenue.
8. Boosting marketing productivity and agility.
With AI on hand to take on many of marketers’ most tedious tasks, that frees overworked team members up to act more nimbly and spend time driving strategy to get more done faster than ever.
Find the Right AI Marketing Platform
For many companies, external pressures from the competition and internal pressures to cut costs and automate processes are fueling AI adoption. If that’s the case for your organization, Braze is here to help you on your journey. Our comprehensive Sage AI by Braze has a proven track record of helping brands like yours save time and achieve stronger campaign performance. Learn more about Sage AI by Braze today and see how our AI marketing solutions can help you work smarter and unlock better results in just a few clicks.
Want to learn more about how AI can transform your customer engagement strategy? Register to join the AI in Action: Improve Every Step in the Campaign Lifecycle webinar.
Featured AI Marketing Resources
For more thought leadership, tips, and tricks for leveraging AI for your customer engagement strategy, check out our resources:
