Getting Started with Artificial Intelligence Today

This week, an Econ­sul­tan­cy arti­cle exam­ined five ways that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) can help mar­keters enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, accord­ing to its lat­est “Mar­ket­ing in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence” report.

The arti­cle explains that by stream­lin­ing pur­chase process­es and sup­ply chains, improv­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, and enrich­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in relat­ed ways, AI can help fos­ter stronger rela­tion­ships between brands and customers.

You may be think­ing, “This all sounds well and good, but what does it have to do with me? How am I sup­posed to lever­age AI, right now, to improve my brand’s cus­tomer rela­tion­ships?” The arti­cle made me think about cer­tain capa­bil­i­ties in Adobe Tar­get Pre­mi­um that can already help you realise many of these benefits.

1. Stream­lin­ing the path to purchase

Sales fun­nels are no longer chan­nel-spe­cif­ic. Cus­tomers move freely from app to web to call cen­ter on their path toward a pur­chase. Target’s opti­mi­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ties enable you to test every vari­a­tion of each stage of your con­ver­sion fun­nel, even across chan­nels. Using the auto-allo­cate func­tion­al­i­ty means that you can rely on the sys­tem to deter­mine which vari­a­tions work best for each seg­ment, then auto­mat­i­cal­ly serve those win­ning vari­a­tions with­out hav­ing to inter­vene man­u­al­ly. And if you aren’t sure what your seg­ments look like, then auto­mat­ed per­son­al­i­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ties will help you gen­er­ate seg­ment def­i­n­i­tions and then dri­ve seg­ment-spe­cif­ic improve­ments in text, but­tons, lay­out, and oth­er ele­ments, to guide your cus­tomers ever more seam­less­ly from search to purchase.

2. Per­son­al­is­ing prod­uct recommendations

Pro­vid­ing con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant rec­om­men­da­tions for your cus­tomers is a great way to increase rel­e­vance for them, and to improve engage­ment and rev­enue. It can be dif­fi­cult, though, to know where to start with rec­om­men­da­tions on your site—which prod­ucts go with which, where those prod­ucts should appear in the fun­nel, and how they should be dis­played. Adobe Tar­get allows you to pick and choose which algo­rithms to base your rec­om­men­da­tions on—people who viewed this prod­uct, peo­ple who bought this prod­uct, and so on. Tar­get then gives guid­ance on which pages to include those prod­ucts on, based on your indus­try and our exper­tise. This means you can imme­di­ate­ly start adding val­ue to your cus­tomers and learn­ing more about their behaviour—all while gen­er­at­ing more sales.

3. Antic­i­pat­ing cus­tomer needs

The bet­ter you under­stand what your cus­tomers will want in the near future, the more effi­cient­ly you can man­age your sup­ply chain and mar­ket­ing spend. Target’s auto­mat­ed per­son­al­i­sa­tion algo­rithms pull data from seg­ment pro­files you’ve built in Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, then use that data to fig­ure out which pro­file vari­ables are most like­ly to pre­dict a pur­chase. By mod­el­ling the behav­iour of all of your cus­tomers at an aggre­gate lev­el, as well as at the indi­vid­ual lev­el, Tar­get helps you know more than just what your cus­tomer seg­ments want today—it also pre­dicts what they’re like­ly to ask for tomor­row. Tar­get then makes it easy to bring this pre­dic­tion data over to oth­er sys­tems, so you can pre­pare your mes­sag­ing and sup­ply chain accordingly.

4. Improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with customers

Tar­get is designed to work seam­less­ly with all the cus­tomer data you’ve gath­ered in Adobe Audi­ence Man­ag­er, Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er, and Cam­paign. Shared ana­lyt­ics data helps you design cre­atives, cam­paigns, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion around the needs and traits of each cus­tomer seg­ment. As you deliv­er per­son­alised respons­es and tar­get­ed offers, Target’s inte­gra­tion with Adobe Cam­paign enables you to test and learn which mes­sage vari­ants gen­er­ate the strongest respons­es, and which com­mu­ni­ca­tions would ben­e­fit from spe­cif­ic changes. It even helps you tai­lor your mes­sages around the needs of spe­cif­ic seg­ments with­in your cus­tomer base.

5. Deep­en­ing audi­ence profiles

Tar­get aggre­gates cus­tomer data from a vari­ety of online and offline sources, includ­ing web and app ana­lyt­ics, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) data­bas­es, and inter­nal-fac­ing enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) and data ware­house (DWH) sys­tems. As you sur­face this data, Target’s machine-learn­ing algo­rithms deter­mine which vari­ables are most pre­dic­tive of con­ver­sions, elim­i­nat­ing clut­ter from your cus­tomer pro­files. And Target’s inte­gra­tion with Audi­ence Man­ag­er means you can lever­age looka­like mod­el­ing to auto­mat­i­cal­ly find new cus­tomer seg­ments, expand­ing your audi­ence in unex­pect­ed directions.

Above all, Target’s built-in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence tools are designed to spare you the guess­work, and point you straight toward the mes­sages, cre­atives, and page vari­ants that’ll give you mea­sur­able boosts in conversion.

To see even more ways Tar­get will return your invest­ment, click here.