Over the last few decades, marketing has been transformed from disconnected and siloed analogue channels to a series of interconnected digital and data driven platforms and touch-points that help marketers understand where their customers are, connect with them, and nurture them through the sales and marketing funnel with personalized messaging at relevant touch-points. Today, digital marketing has become a key driving force behind many businesses marketing strategy and is increasingly being augmented by AI, which we previously touched on in the scope of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing.

As previously discussed, AI can be applied in marketing in many different ways, such as recommendation systems that provide curated recommendations based on a customers’ including previous search and purchase behaviour or similarity to other customers, or predictive analytics which can be used to anticipate actions such as purchase or churn likelihood, to help marketers improve the customer experience, retain customers and secure sales. These applications present exciting opportunities for marketers but prospective adopters must be mindful of not only the pros but also how to manage the cons.

Pros of AI in marketing

1. Increase customer relevance Enhance and segment your target market better

A well-defined target market is critical to informing a business’s marketing strategy and the tactics used to connect with, present, persuade and convert your audience into customers. Marketers have an abundance of data available from first, second and third-party sources (e.g., such as CRM, sales performance, social marketing platforms and website analytics) can be blended and combined with Artificial Intelligence to form a more comprehensive picture of your audience, identify changes in behaviours over-time and inform how your business will meet their continuing evolving and emerging needs through tailored marketing strategies. This improves the customer journey, demonstrates your business’s understanding of the customer at different touch points and paves the path to customer loyalty and retention.

2. Predict customer churn and enable preventative action

Customer churn is when customers lose interest and abandon your business and products. As the adage goes, it’s much harder to attract new customers than retain old ones. In fact, depending on your industry and which article you read, it can cost up to five to twenty-five times as much to attract a new customer. With eye watering figures like these, it makes sense to do everything you can to retain those existing high-value customers wherever possible. The challenge for marketers is that it isn’t always easy to identify the events that signal a customer is likely to churn nor know how to prevent it or react when it’s happening. Fortunately, AI excels at identifying patterns and trends in huge data sets to help marketers understand the causes and raise red flags to motivate preventative action to reengage and retain customers at-risk from churn.

3. Streamline and personalise the user experience

The days of one-size-fits-all being the right approach to marketing touch-points are over. When customers interact with a brand, website, product, or service, they expect the interaction to be personalized, and customized to their profile, needs, interest, and preferences. Platforms such as Amazon, Netflix and YouTu