How to use AI-based marketing for content personalisation

Data is all around us, and whether it comes from platform insights, customer behaviours, or sales analytics, it is increasingly the responsibility of the marketer to understand and utilise it effectively.

Leveraging data is an important skill for marketers who are constantly improving customer experience and strategy. But we can’t talk about data without mentioning the hidden partner that plays a central role: AI.

AI, or artificial intelligence, is already helping marketers to analyse data, automate manual tasks, personalise customer engagements, and open up opportunities to focus on creative or strategic work. But among the industry there’s a shifting scale of experience ranging from skilled, to still somewhat in the doldrums, which has meant only a small percentage of AI’s potential gets maximised.

It’s important to note, that this isn’t a question of personalisation or volume. When content personalisation relays known information on customers’ behaviours, it can sometimes be perceived as intrusive or creepy. Point in case is social advertising: think about the last time you were targeted with a product ad on social media that was based on interest shown on a separate device a few days ago. How did that affect your behaviour, and what did you do next?

AI is a great assistant for marketers to convert potential leads into sales when they hit that sweet level of tailoring, but how can marketers get content personalisation right for every type of business?

Personalise messaging

Marketers can use real-time data to automatically create bespoke messages that will suit specific audiences and deliver personalised communications at optimal email opening times, to their preferred messaging platform. AI can take personalisation several steps further from email marketing and create an enhanced customer journey across multiple channels–starting with how users experience the website.

As Lori Goldberg, an author for Econsultancy, states in her latest article on the use of AI in advertising, “this all comes from AI-based clustering and interpreting of consumer data paired with profile information and demographics. These AI-based systems continually adapt to your likes and dislikes and react with new recommendations tailored in real-time.” Goldberg demonstrates AI’s core benefits, as it uses users’ browser cookies to provide tailormade recommendations that are based on machine learning (a subset of AI), which consistently calculates relevant data on users.

Allowing customers an option to opt in, AI uses the visitor’s browser history data to develop a customised page that aligns with their interests and preferences that are based on previous interactions which will then influence users to stay on websites for longer.

Website personalisation opens up more avenues for marketers, advertisers, and website developers to further tailor content to users, bringing about greater opportunities to convert leads into sales, and organise data to be leveraged at the right time in the right place.

Analysing data

Knowledge is power and data is knowledge. By filtering through a sea of data – from customers journeys, to online activities to trends, peaks, or behaviours – AI can reveal nuances in data that marketers would not have otherwise been able to see.

Working as a partner alongside marketers, AI can provide really useful data which skilled marketers can then leverage to make informed and strategic decisions on their content strategies, all while saving time on manual tasks.

Understanding and interpreting AI-driven data are key skills for marketers in the digital age we’re in. Just like us, AI is constantly learning and marketers are looking for more innovative ways to work better with it. Likewise, it is easy for marketers to become “creepy” by over-targeting, so the balance of bespoke content is key. We’re just at the beginning of AI-marketing’s possibilities, and there is so much more to learn.

Katie Jameson, director of EMEA Marketing, Act-On Software

Katie Jameson is the director of EMEA Marketing at Act-On Software, a leading provider of marketing automation and one of the fastest growing tech companies in North America. She has previously implemented, integrated and executed programmes on a variety of marketing automation platforms at industry leading companies such as Symantec, Paywizard, and ResponseTap.