In the past decade, digital channels have increased drastically in relevance and in number. The number of smartphone users is forecast to grow from 2.1 billion in 2016 to around 2.5 billion in 2019. Just over 36 percent of the world’s population is projected to use a smartphone by 2018. We now have more mediums to contact customers and prospects than ever before. This means more data. The world contains an unimaginably massive amount of digital data today – and it’s increasing tenfold every 10 years. For example, Wal-Mart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour and stores them in 2.5 petabyte databases, which is equal to 167 times the number of books in the Library of Congress.
We are drowning in information that we can’t necessarily make sense of. Time and Money prevent us from fully analyzing the data. This is where the power of automation and artificial intelligence comes in.
The Power of Automation Digital Channels
Overcrowded e-inboxes, stuffed mailboxes, and constant unsolicited cold calls have led to a customer that has adapted to noise. This adaptation has created a need for new, innovative marketing techniques. So what’s next in marketing? Artificial Intelligence Marketing. Over at Semeon Analytics, we believe that Ai is going to have an enormous role in the upcoming years, and we aren’t the only ones. According to the 2017 Salesforce Annual State of Marketing Report, 51% of marketers have Ai embedded into their strategy and in the next two years 27% more plan to adopt it. For those of you who do not want to do the math, that is 78% of marketers that are using Artificial Intelligence in their strategy!
Why is this? According to the IDC, investments in digital marketing are growing drastically and cutting into traditional advertising. The demand for Consistent, Personalized Attention across channels is on the rise. Customers now are used to advertising that is tailored to them specifically and delivered via preferred channels.
The question is now, how do we increase the personalization and accuracy of this digital marketing? The answer is, through tools that are able to understand massive amounts of data and show it in a way that humans can make actionable insights from. The average organization does not have the capabilities to read all of this data, not to mention, make sense of it.
The Tools
This is where the ‘Voice of the Customer’ and Artificial comes into play. Given massive amounts of data, Semeon can process this in an instant and use data visualization techniques to bring you an easily digestible report. Some of the techniques used that help communicate information are Concept Clouds, Consumer Sentiment, and Influencer Analytics. Concept clouds give users the ability to understand Customer’s wants and needs to target the opinions directly, improving your Reputation. Consumer sentiment analysis allows your brand to proactively follow the reactions to your communication strategy over time to improve your Brand Awareness and predict market trends. Furthermore, Influencer Analytics gives companies the ability to leverage who and where opinions influencing your reputation are coming from to increase trust among your audiences.
At the end of the day, what does this bring you? Mass Personalization. Now, more than ever before we are able to customize marketing campaigns to a larger audience and this goes much further than putting the recipients first name in the subject line. Now it is about predicting what the customer wants and providing it to them at the right time: 65% of B2B buyers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize its communications to them. It also allows brands to capture the Voice of the Customer through preferences, problems, and complaints to create effective customer experience Identify the top engaging channels for your audience throughout the buying journey to improve your customer experience
Conclusion
Don’t be fooled by the hype. Too many companies nowadays who do glorified statistical analysis are getting away with slapping “.Ai” on their company name. Make sure there is value in the technology you are implementing in your company, and at the same time, don’t miss out. Ai is revolutionizing the customer experience and making our jobs as marketers a lot easier. Don’t be the 22% of people in the next two years who don’t have some form of Ai implemented into their strategy.
Contact Semeon Analytics today to learn how you can implement AI into your marketing strategy today!
