In today’s fast-paced world of eCommerce growth, the one thing marketing teams strive to do is to pitch the right products and services to the right people at the right time. Sounds challenging, right?
Well, it is, but it gets easier with advancements in technology, artificial intelligence, and the impeccable capabilities to analyze large datasets of customer data.
To achieve customer satisfaction, you need to know what your customers expect from you. It would be best if you put in the effort to understand their needs and preferences, and you need to make sure that your way of approach is through content personalization.
Personalized messaging and personalized content, in general, will show your customers that you care about their customer journey with your company.
Why should you care so much about customer engagement? Because we live in a world of 2 billion digital buyers, which means the competition is enormous. So you need to make sure the customers choose you, and the easiest way to accomplish this is with AI content personalization.
Let me walk you through the importance and the role artificial intelligence can play in your personalization strategy. It’s time to take action and make your business grow!
Speeding up personalization with Artificial Intelligence
Personalization is no longer a luxury; it’s what customers expect from you. Customers want their interactions with businesses to be relevant, timely, and aligned with their interests.
Now this might have been a challenge in the past, but nowadays, with AI personalization tools, it’s pretty easy to achieve. The way in which artificial intelligence plays a big role when it comes to speeding up the personalization process – is through a fast and effective data process.
Machine learning algorithms in AI personalization tools can analyze all the important data points like customer behavioral data, purchase history, online activities, and social media interactions. After its analytics, this data transforms into a personalization strategy where the sole purpose is to improve customer engagement.
Another important thing to note is the real-time insight which can really help you offer a better customer experience. Having up-to-date information will help you make unique marketing strategies and deliver personalized content which will catch your customer’s attention because you will be addressing their needs.
Profitable customer journeys with your brand are multifaceted. Using AI personalization, you can map these journeys with precision and understand the touchpoints and interactions. This will allow you to offer optimal customer experiences at each step and increase sales.
Machine learning in AI
Let’s get a better understanding of how machine-learning algorithms can help you to improve customer satisfaction.
As you’re probably familiar with, machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that creates algorithms capable of learning from data. The machine learning algorithms, in combination with Natural Language Processing (NLP), can recognize patterns in customer data which leads to adapting the strategy and ideally resulting in performance improvement over time.
And yes, all of this is possible without the need for explicit programming. So how is this actually happening?
Let me elaborate on the three main types or techniques of machine learning in order to explain this as simple as possible:
- Supervised learning – Supervised machine learning happens when models are trained on labeled data, i.e., the correct answers are provided. The way in which the models learn to make predictions is by mapping inputs to outputs. For context, imagine you’re training a model to recognize images of babies and adults. You’re providing the model with labeled images from both categories, and the model starts learning the characteristics and features of each category, and therefore it learns to differentiate them.
- Unsupervised learning – Unsupervised machine learning happens when models are trained on unlabeled data. How is this possible, you ask? Well, the goal here is to identify inherent patterns and relationships within the given data. For context, the model can learn by identifying certain criteria, like identifying groups of similar customers based on their buying behavior. Once the model has this information, it can help you do personalized ad targeting for said group, for example.
- Reinforcement learning – The third type of learning is about training models to make decisions based on a process or series of actions and rewards that follow. Basically, the point is to learn to achieve as many rewards as it can over time. This might sound confusing a bit, so let’s go about it this way. Imagine the AI is playing a game, the more time it rematches, the more experience it gets, and the great thing is that it’s constantly learning from victories and defeats, and it constantly improves its strategy.
What can slow personalization
When dealing with AI personalization strategies and they don’t work the way you expect them to – there are a few things you should be aware of that may be the problem. So let’s get into the things that may be the reason why your AI personalization efforts are not exactly paying off, and you’re not able to deliver optimal customer experiences.
Quality and accessibility of your data
Customer data points are the foundation of successful personalization. This is why it’s very important that your data collection needs to be accurate. With quality customer data, you’ll actually get personalized recommendations that will give your consumers an overall improved customer experience.
Collecting clean and centralized data points from various sources might be a challenge, but this omission means that you won’t be able to increase customer satisfaction. I can suggest a way that will ease the process of collecting and centralizing data, which is through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.
Having real-time access to the data is also a great advantage of a CRM platform. In addition, CRM will help you get up-to-date customer data and make comprehensive customer profiles which importance I’m going to discuss next.
Poor Customer profiles
For effective AI-powered personalization, you need to understand customer preferences and customer behavior deeply. Another important thing to track is customer touchpoints which will allow you to gain a better understanding of the customer interaction with your brand.
Not only will this help you understand their preferences it will allow you to provide an optimal customer experience. Additionally, having this customer information will help you provide a more personalized experience. Let’s move to content personalization.
Personalized content creation
Delivering personalized content includes personalized recommendations, messages, targeted ads, etc. I know it sounds like a daunting and time-consuming task, especially if you have large demographic data.
But trust me; your business needs to be able to do this, no matter how challenging it may seem. Having inaccurate data and a lack of content creation can be an obstacle to this challenge. But once you overcome this, it will be easier to focus on using AI-powered personalization and be more successful.
Complex technology integration
Implementing AI-powered personalization will probably involve the integration of numerous technologies and systems like customer relationship management platforms, marketing automation software, and data analytics tools.
You get the idea of how all this combined can increase customer engagement, but it can be a complex and time-consuming process to integrate everything and have it run seamlessly. While you might need to form a qualified team to execute this integration, the selling of your products and services will most likely get a bit slow.
But once you achieve AI-based personalization, you can personalize content, marketing messages for user preferences, and overall personalized experience to increase sales.
Challenges with managing customer data
Personalized experiences are more important than ever. And even if using AI-based personalization will ease the process, there are still some challenges to look out for so you can use the right AI techniques, especially around managing customer data.
Key challenges in customer data management include:
- breaking down data silos,
- maintaining data privacy and security,
- managing customer consent (cookies),
- adapting to data regulations which often change,
- integrating diverse data sources,
- upholding data ethics,
- deriving actionable insights, and
- keeping up with the modern customer.
It’s really crucial to address these challenges so your business rules align with the right approach.
How AI-powered personalization helps eCommerce businesses
As eCommerce growth has significantly improved over the last decade, the businesses operating in the field are turning more and more to AI-powered personalization.
Global retail eCommerce sales are expected to reach $8 trillion by 2026. And even though this is a good thing, the wide range of choices, unfortunately, often leads to consumer fatigue. With thousands of options available, customers often come down to choosing nothing, abandoning the shopping carts.
And this is why AI-powered personalization is a must now. You must give your best marketing game to your site visitors. Using AI personalization, you will be able to provide customers with personalized shopping experiences.
Deeper personalization will often lead you to retain customers, and it’s general knowledge that a successful business goes hand in hand with retention and brand loyalty. It’s easier to sell to existing customers than to potential ones.
But once you provide customers with personalized experiences, your chances to close potential customers increase as well. Nothing sells better than a solid brand reputation, so let’s see the key features of AI-powered personalization!
Targeted marketing: Lower marketing spend, higher revenue
AI personalization gives you the opportunity to execute unique marketing campaigns to give your customers personalized experiences. Analyzing customer behavior, browsing history, and other valuable insights enables brands to have AI identify and promote the most relevant products and services.
The targeted marketing approach allows you to spend less by reaching only the potential customers who are most likely to convert, resulting in a higher Return on Investment (ROI).
Personalized product recommendations increase order value
Personalized recommendations play a very important role in a profitable customer journey. AI-powered personalization analyzes customer interaction with your business and suggests products that align with their search queries.
This will not only increase your conversions but will also increase your average order value because by recommending personalized products, your customers tend to discover new items that align with their needs and preferences.
Personal touch: Excellent customer service via chatbots
AI-powered chatbots have really transformed the approach of customer support representatives. The 24/7 availability and the instant responses based on deep learning really do great with customers. Personalized AI-powered chatbots can deliver relevant information because they can understand the customer’s intent. And with this context, they are able to resolve any issues and improve customer satisfaction.
Optimized search leads to better customer experience
AI-powered personalization plays a strong role in personalized search on eCommerce platforms. Because AI can understand customer sentiment analysis, social media engagement, and purchase history, it can send event-based triggered messages and have rule-based conversations with your customers.
This will significantly decrease the chances of frustrating your customers with the same content that no longer serves their needs, nor is it helping them make better choices to satisfy their needs.
Advantages of Using AI Personalization
An ML-based recommendation system in synergy with customer sentiment analysis will allow you to create better customer engagement and successful journeys. Being there for your customers and meeting their individual or demographic expectations will help you build and maintain long-term relationships that are based on a more emotional connection.
As your customer preferences change, AI has the capability to adapt in real time and shift to new trends, which will ensure that personalized experience always remains relevant.
Using AI personalization will give you a competitive advantage for sure because it will make you stand out from the crowded marketplace. It allows you to make informed decisions and have better overall management of your company. Moreover, AI is easily scalable because it can handle large volumes of data and deliver personalized content to thousands of customers, which will definitely increase revenue
FAQ
What is AI personalization?
AI personalization is the use of artificial intelligence technology to achieve a better customer experience for individual consumers based on their needs, behavior, and interests. It involves data analytics to understand client characteristics and act on them by delivering relevant content that will ease a customer’s decision to convert.
How does AI personalize the customer experience?
AI personalization uses algorithms to process client data in order to achieve content personalization. The data contains browsing history, patterns, and trends so businesses can have a more personalized approach toward their customers, meeting their needs and preferences.
What is the concept of personalization?
The concept of personalization is the ability to customize experiences, content, and interactions for individual customer interests and preferences. In doing so, companies show that they value each and every customer by giving them exceptional customer experience.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence is the stimulation of human intelligence by machines and computer systems. It gives the ability to computers to perform tasks without human interference and learn in the process from experience, patterns, problem-solving, and decision-making.
