The Profound Effect of Artificial Intelligence on the World of Digital Marketing
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the world and changing the way we live and work. Nowadays, it’s common to hear “AI” or “ChatGPT” mentioned in various news outlets and social media posts. People are doing amazing things with AI – from designing 3D animation, and composing songs, to creating entire slideshows in mere minutes. Someone even created a playable version of Pong in under 60 seconds with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4. There are so many areas of our lives that will change with the application of Artificial Intelligence. AI continues to make great strides in improving efficiency in our everyday lives to changing the way we interact with technology.
Not only does AI have a personal impact, but also has had a profound impact on the professional world as well. Specifically, Artificial Intelligence has been directly impacting the field of digital marketing in past years and its use is only continuing to grow. The digital marketing space has implemented new AI technology and integrations into campaigns that can process large amounts of information in rapid time and can improve and optimize many aspects of the digital marketing process, such as personalization, more accurate segmentation and audience targeting, and enhance the overall customer experience in various marketing channels.
As digital marketing continues to be impacted by AI it’s likely to continue to be impacted as the years go on. Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to analyze consumer data, predict consumer behavior, and automate the digital marketing process overall. For example, AI-powered algorithms can analyze consumer behavior and preferences to help target and personalize ads, which can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ad campaigns.
Highly Dynamic Personalized Emails with Artificial Intelligence
Imagine an email campaign so highly personalized, where almost any part of an email campaign is updated by an AI integration in real-time to adjust content to ensure more views and clicks depending on engagement rate of the email. The subject line isn’t garnering enough opens, data shows that adding an emoji to the subject line copy helps capture more attention in the inbox. Customers are opening the email, but not clicking through on content, replace a few images that data shows entice more clicks on top-selling items. AI can analyze metrics to determine which area of email campaigns are performing best and which could use a boost in engagement and make those changes to the campaign quickly and efficiently, with minimal involvement from a human marketer. AI will effectively create email content specifically tailored to the end user experience on an individual basis.
In 2021, Forbes noted that with the future of Artificial Intelligence in CRM, highly dynamic personalized emails will allow for more effective targeting leading to stronger engagement with customers:
“For example, headline generation algorithms that monitor how successful they are and tweak their output to achieve better metrics, such as the open rate of emails, or the share rate of social media posts…”
“…AI is developing the ability to take care of the entire content generation process itself, creating copy and images that it knows are likely to be well-received by its audience. A huge buzzword in this space will be personalization – where individual customers are served content that’s specifically tweaked to them, perhaps using information and reference points that the AI knows are relevant to them, intertwined with the overall marketing messages.”
And there are many digital marketing agencies already utilizing AI to create content and copy for their marketing projects. Artificial intelligence can generate subject lines unique to targeted demographics allowing for more approachable content provided to their consumers. AI uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze and generate copy that is likely to resonate with targeted consumers.
Artificial Intelligence is speaking our language
Audience targeting will continue to grow in precision and will allow for more customer engagement as AI analyzes behavior to create better performing content based on customers interaction. By analyzing huge amounts of customer data, Artificial Intelligence algorithms identify patterns and trends that prove difficult for humans to detect and use this information to make predictions and recommendations about customer behavior. For example, AI can be used to more accurately segment customers based on their interests, preferences, language, and purchasing habits, allowing for more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.
Attempting to market a younger crowd to sell the internet’s latest trending gadget? Highly personalized AI-driven marketing email content can look and sound unique to the targeted audience segment. For example, an email sent to young-adult shoppers can incorporate age-specific jargon to entice younger shoppers to buy, whereas slightly different vernacular applied to emails targeting older age groups can be created to encourage a purchase from older generational shoppers. Artificial Intelligence is allowing it easier for marketers to speak everyone’s language through gathering and analyzing metrics on consumer behavior and preferences, while providing recommendations for improving content quality, tone, and consistency.
Another way in which AI is transforming digital marketing is through natural language processing (NLP). IBM notes NLP as:
“NLP combines computational linguistics—rule-based modeling of human language—with statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models. Together, these technologies enable computers to process human language in the form of text or voice data and to ‘understand’ its full meaning, complete with the speaker or writer’s intent and sentiment.”
Artificial Intelligence is giving computers a way to understand text and spoken words like how humans communicate with each other. This AI technology can identify tones and sentiment of online interactions via customer feedback and social media, to improve overall engagement and customer service. Utilizing NLP features in marketing campaign only adds to the high personalization levels used to relate to targeted individuals and further encourage engagement across channels.
AI-Powered Targeting: Right audience, right content, right price
A specific example of AI directly impacting digital marketing is Oracle’s Advanced Intelligence Cloud Service that integrates with Eloqua and functions as an aid to marketers for strategic assistance to create better targeted content, avoid customer burnout, and identify Send Time Optimization (STO). Oracle’s AI integration “provides data related to subject line performance, contact email fatigue, account engagement, and a contact’s optimal send time. This in-depth data helps guide you in your decision making by automating the data collection you need to make strategic decisions.” A marketer can leverage the data analyzed by AI to minimize unsubscribes and disengagement, provide a measurement of engagement per each customer and develop an optimized subject line to attract email opens and clicks.
Artificial Intelligence is also used to optimize advertising campaigns and contribute to dynamic pricing. Dynamic Prices is powered by AI whereby analyzing customer data and engagement metrics, algorithms can identify the most effective keywords and targeting parameters and use this information to create more successful marketing campaigns. AI can contribute to the fluctuation of prices to generate more sales when demand is low, and increasing prices when demand is high. This can already be seen in industries such as ridesharing and ecommerce sites. According to VentureBeat in 2022,
“Customer intimacy is a major objective of AI-powered pricing systems. As we’ve seen with “personalization,” if a retailer knows you have a preference for hometown sports teams, it may suggest relevant products, tickets or other services to you. If an AI pricing model knows a consumer always buys certain brand-name products, it may offer a discount or a coupon on a house-labeled product to influence those preferences. In this scenario, the intent is to drive value for the consumer and encourage repeat purchases that lead to improved business results for the retailer.”
Digitals Marketing’s Ethical Responsibility for adopting Artificial Intelligence
The impact of AI on digital marketing is significant and far-reaching, providing marketers with new tools and capabilities to engage with customers on a more personalized and effective level. However, as with any new technology, there are also challenges and risks associated with AI-powered tools. Studies show that human biases have impacted Artificial Intelligence algorithms and therefore may reinforce existing biases or stereotypes in customer targeting, and that they may not accurately reflect the needs and preferences of diverse customer segments. In 2019, the Harvard Business Review noted that as AI algorithms continue to become more complex, bias in AI-powered platforms continue to be a significant challenge:
“Bias can creep into algorithms in several ways. AI systems learn to make decisions based on training data, which can include biased human decisions or reflect historical or social inequities, even if sensitive variables such as gender, race, or sexual orientation are removed.”
To continue to navigate these challenges as Artificial Intelligence keeps developing and integrating deeper into everyday life, it is imperative that businesses take a strategic approach to AI adoption and focus on ethical and responsible use of these technologies. Harvard Business Review also noted:
“Business and organizational leaders need to ensure that the AI systems they use improve on human decision-making, and they have a responsibility to encourage progress on research and standards that will reduce bias in AI.”
Developing clear and set guidelines for data privacy and security, ensuring transparency and accountability in the use of algorithms, and providing detailed training and education to ensure deeper understanding of the risks and benefits of these ever-evolving technologies is of the upmost importance as AI continues to develop and be utilized in the digital marketing space.
The world of digital marketing is an ever-evolving space and now with more and more AI incorporation, digital marketing seems to be evolving at light speed. Artificial Intelligence functionality and integrations are providing businesses with powerful tools to understand and engage with their customers in more personalized and efficient methods. Customers will receive more accurately targeted email marketing campaigns, allowing them to feel seen by companies and there for encouraging higher quality engagement and brand loyalty. AI will have a significant impact on the future of digital marketing by leveraging the features and tools, along with machine learning to automate routine tasks, optimize campaigns, and create more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns to reach customers.
While the future of digital marketing with Artificial Intelligence is exciting and full of possibilities, to reap the full benefits of these technologies, it is extremely important that companies take a responsible and ethical approach to AI implementation, while remembering to focus on transparency, accountability, and customer privacy in order better create and maintain a successful marketing strategy with all their customers. In the end, it is up to the marketer and marketing companies to remain responsible and continue with ethical marketing standards as AI continues to make a huge impact in the digital marketing world.
Artificial Intelligence impacting your role in digital marketing and leaving you feeling a bit lost in the ether? Reach out to Relationship One today.
