Five years ago, if we had said that in-person transactions would be outdated soon, you wouldn’t have believed us.
Today, any other reality seems impossible. AI is everywhere in our daily life—mobile phones, homes, transport, cars, music, and the list of real-time applications goes on. Even entertainment is heavily powered by artificial intelligence. Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have some of the most powerful recommendation engines out there, and they’re the best examples of AI done right.
Let’s dive into why it works and how AI can help brands understand successful engagement strategies.
How Does AI Help Brands?
A recent HBR study about why salespeople need ‘machine intelligence’ states that companies that use AI for sales have increased leads by 50% compared to those that don’t. AI helps these companies find potential leads and engage with them until they express interest in the brand’s services.
With an AI-first approach, brands can give customers exactly what they want at a time when they’re most receptive to communication. Artificial intelligence also helps with:
- Higher customer engagement and minimised churn;
- Predicting activation and usage of existing products;
- Greater upsell opportunities;
- Lowered risk with better data, early warnings, and proactive nudges;
- Reducing the cost of acquisition by promoting cross-sell and platform-led growth.
This increase in customer lifetime value, operating efficiency, and access to scalability are unmatchable.
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Implementing Insights-Led Engagement Strategies With AI
Here are some ways in which brands can engage with customers intelligently:
Focus on Micro-moments to Drive Conversion
While tactics such as geofencing and attributes like location, age, gender, and the like, are effective segmentation options, they are not enough to personalise your customer experiences in today’s age of connected, cross-channel buying. Several actions or events precede a purchase, and AI can leverage these intent-rich micro-moments and communicate content with the right audience with the right message.
A brand selling any product will notice customers having these moments move on to become macro conversions (purchase).
The increasing dependence on mobile phones and online shopping has broken the customer’s buying journey into hundreds of small, micro-moments. According to Dynamologic Digital Marketing, an essential role of the trade today is to recognise these micro-moments to shape consumer preferences and buying decisions, so you can leverage their immense potential.
How do you identify these micro-moments?
From the time your customers download your app or land on your website, every action is a micro-moment.
While mapping your journey, understanding what your customers are doing before they purchase a product will dictate your engagement strategy. This mapping will help determine what channels you should be present on and what messaging will resonate with your customer at each stage. Use these micro-moments to create a connected and cross-channel experience for your customer.
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Analyse Changes in Customer Behaviour With AI
Customer needs are constantly evolving, and brands need to keep an ear to the ground to stay on top of changing trends.
AI maps out the customer lifecycle intelligently, beginning with the first touchpoint and analysing the customer journey and behaviour all the way to the last interaction. Everything is essential, including where customers come from, what they view, where they stop browsing, what they almost purchase, and why they don’t.
AI allows brands to understand individual buying patterns, map out any changes in purchase behaviour, and take customers through the most optimal customer journey. It directs customers towards things they resonate with, increases chances of conversion, and brings in higher revenue.
Optimise Customer Experiences for Maximum Engagement
AI helps segment your users intelligently, based on impactful criteria such as preferences, actions, and behaviour. It gives brands deep insights into what customers are looking for, what they enjoy, and what they don’t want. AI helps brands understand buying patterns and deliver tailored artificial intelligence content to each individual.
With a good AI tool, brands can predict customer behaviour and create targeted campaigns that reach customers just when they need a product or service. Brands that deploy prediction-based campaigns see greater conversions, engagements, and activations than others. Even companies in traditional industries like the industry, have implemented predictive AI engines and integrated the data into their manager’s restaurant dashboards.
Customers expect personalisation from brands. Personalisation isn’t a “good to have” anymore. It is a “need to have.”
If you observe your customers dropping off at various stages of the customer journey, AI-driven segmentation will help you. Use AI to segment customers based on the purchase funnel and look at different stages such as ‘App Open,’ ‘Product View,’ ‘Checkout’ etc. Then launch engagement campaigns with personalised messages across Email, SMS, and Push Notification channels.
Revamp Growth Loops & The Customer Journey
Effective marketing should never end with the purchase. It has to go beyond, inspire loyalty and optimise your customer’s experience. Mapping your customer journey will help you understand specific moments that could prove to be the most lucrative. So you can put all your might there instead of pushing customers through a vague and theoretically functional funnel.
AI monitors usage patterns to map the likes and dislikes of each customer and then selects similarities between diverse ranges of content in the catalogue. The customer can now receive intelligent and tailored product recommendations that will grab their attention and encourage them to convert.
AI helps you eliminate guesswork and market efficiently. It helps you create curated customer journeys that make every customer feel special. Using intelligent recommendations, you can deliver each campaign at a moment when customers are most receptive.
Build & Implement The Right Tools
For brands to implement successful AI-driven analytics and campaigns, a robust engagement platform is a must, comments consumer-focused GoFantastic.com. Your tool of choice needs to enable growth by dissolving silos between analytics, engagement, and marketing. It has to be easy to integrate and implement. The platform must empower brands to gather real-time insights that flow into contextual engagement campaigns across channels, experts add.
The tool must also provide powerful predictive analytics and intelligent segmentation, empowering brands to deliver tailored messages to each customer.
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Conclusion: An Insights-Led Engagement Platform to Power Your Business
Artificial intelligence is a powerful technology that allows marketers to personalise at scale and deliver the ultimate customer experience. It equips brands with enhanced tools for increased sales performance and consumer engagement using real-time insights. The technology provides more scope for growth and retention, improves customer experience on digital platforms, and reaches previously untapped audience segments.