Demystifying AI Powered Personalization

Should You Fear AI?

Is the rise of artificial intelligence leaving you uneasy? I was feeling the same way just six months ago. As my LinkedIn feed was overtaken with articles and updates covering AI, I couldn't help but feel concerned for how this could impact my role. 

Would AI replace me? If I didn’t embrace this new wheelhouse of skills, would I be left behind in the dust of progress? With an aim to future-proof my career and really understand what the world of AI meant for me, I decided to plunge in headfirst. 

What I encountered completely shifted my perspective. Instead of replacing marketers, AI opens the door to supercharging our strategic abilities and redefining how we approach campaigns. 

I want to share what I've learned from the rise of AI, and how I’ve used this new technology to elevate my skills, productivity, and ultimately produce better results than ever.

Tech Has Always Shifted Work

AI is far from the first technological boom to shift the working environment. But historically, these shifts have heralded a change for the better. 

Think about the printing press. Through its invention nearly 600 years ago, literature, and commentary is disseminated to the masses. Whereas beforehand, the written word was reserved for intellectual, privileged circles due to its high production costs. On the other side of its invention, we can see the obvious benefits now that education has been spread far more widely to people from all walks of life. But at the time, all scribes could think of was the fact that their hand-written manuscripts would soon be obsolete. 

But in fact, the opposite occurred. Greater access to books created a far greater demand, and the space for literature simply grew to include both mass-produced and artisanal works. 

We’ve experienced groundbreaking change far more recently, as well. Think of GDPR, Apple Mail, even the COVID-19 pandemic. While all of these situations caused growing pains, marketers came out stronger and more efficient than ever. It drove us to deliver more engaging, truly helpful messaging to customers. 

History repeats itself, and the next best move is to embrace change and adapt, knowing that you will only grow into an even better marketer. 

AI is exploding in martech. It’s time to supercharge the work you’re already doing. 

How To Supercharge Your Work With AI

We must understand that AI cannot replace human marketers. It’s really a powerful tool at our disposal to create a partnership between the marketer and the machine. While AI excels at performing specific tasks with efficiency, it lacks the key ingredients that drive marketing success: creativity, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking, all of which are uniquely human qualities.

Speed Up

Everyone loves a good summary that cuts to the chase. Just think of students who reach for SparkNotes instead of the novel they were actually assigned. Marketers can do the same through text-based AIs. Don’t have time to read the business book everyone is talking about? Ask your AI for a quick summary so you can be in the know for your next meeting. Want to quickly explain a difficult concept to another colleague? Use AI to create a simple explanation to get you started.

Banish the Blank

Whether it's writing marketing copy or creating an engaging visual for your next campaign, immediately having an outline to kick-start your ideas is incredibly valuable. Daunting projects can become approachable when you use AI to give yourself a leg up in the creative process. Instead of tearing your hair out trying to get started, just enjoy the groove of creating and adapting with a head-start.

The Human Edge of AI Powered Personalization

Believe it or not, AI powered personalization can actually humanize your brand. It empowers marketers to give all campaigns an individualized, personal feel for every single customer. It’s a huge step forward compared to traditional personalization techniques, and here’s how:

The Campaign

The more nuanced a marketing campaign is, the longer it takes to get out the door. But at the heart of every campaign, no matter how complex, are two questions: what’s the product you’re selling, and who can you sell it to?

Previously, this has led to segmenting customers—think of basic demographics, frequency of purchases, or level of loyalty—and trying to strongarm them into neat boxes that brands can sell to. Those who dabbled in AI only used it as another layer of analytics, such as filtering customer lists to those with a higher propensity of clicking.

But despite these efforts, average response rates still sit low at only 1-2%. That means despite traditional segmentation efforts, marketers are still being ignored by the large majority of customers.

Why? Because marketers need to start with the customer, not the product. And we can do that through AI-driven campaigns.

The Customer

Being customer-centric is easier said than done. Through manual effort alone, it can be challenging to create that intimate customer-brand relationship marketers seek. 

That’s where AI powered personalization is key. By using an AI software that thinks ahead and aims to foster the best customer possible for the long-term, rather than solely focusing on today’s sale, we can truly get to know our customers.

AI accomplishes that by flipping the script. Rather than only analyzing past behaviors, AI powered personalization anticipates what customers want. Instead of relying on reinforcement tactics, AI powered personalization uses machine learning to correctly predict what customers will resonate with—even if they’ve never interacted with that content before. 

This gives marketers the humanized edge. Just as if we were interacting with every one of our customers face-to-face, we can now create more organic interactions with them at scale.

AI Isn't Something To Fear

At the end of the day, AI is not something to fear – the only thing you should fear as a marketer is not adopting it as quickly and efficiently as your competitors. The only risk at hand is playing it safe.

The road ahead is to ask questions and invent new ways to use AI—as a tool, it needs your human touch to create truly innovative campaigns. Before you know it, your work will be supercharged like never before.