The concept of personalized content certainly isn’t new to marketers. And in part, brands have succeeded in this goal; from trigger campaigns to displaying tailored loyalty statuses, we’ve come a long way from hard-coding generic emails.
Yet, the fact that batch programs and rigid email calendars still exist indicate that there’s still more work to be done, especially as customers’ expectations continue to grow. But with the rise of AI technology, marketers finally have the tools they need to create a truly 1:1 experience that is personalized from header to footer.
Make Full Use of Data in Real Time
AI outputs are only as good as their data inputs, which means that marketers’ first step to maximizing this technology lies in smart data usage. In the era of post-cookie deprecation and an emphasis on zero- and first-party data, the temptation has been to simply acquire as much data as possible. But for most marketers, a lack of data is not the problem. In fact, most marketers have more data than they have the time and resources to activate it.
Instead, marketers should prioritize four core pillars of data: customer, context, business, and behavioral data. As Ulta Beauty shows here, a mix of these data points have the power to drive a useful, personalized experience for every customer. At the top, the customer data is used to call out the customer by name along with her loyalty status. Below, a blend of business and behavioral data is used to showcase a recently browsed product, complete with social proof and relevant recommendations. To finish off the email, contextual data is used to highlight the customer’s nearest Ulta Beauty location.
By instantly visualizing all of these data-rich modules, Ulta saw an impressive 316.67% lift in click-through rate.
The only hurdle left now is accessing data across repositories. Many marketers struggle with accessing and activating all of their sources, which makes producing data-driven content in a timely manner challenging to sustain.
Using AI, marketers can now process large data sets across their tech stack and activate that information quickly into hyper-relevant content. Not only is the process automated, it allows marketers to create content that is more personalized than they could ever manage manually. It’s better, faster content.
Maximize Personalization in Every Email
Discover how you can combine data-driven tactics with AI for hyper-relevant messaging.
Content that speaks to customers’ most recent actions and interests is a critical part of a winning email. However, only leaning on these reinforcement tactics would not be personalizing emails to their fullest potential or garnering the utmost engagement from customers.
Instead, combine real-time, data-driven content generation with AI-driven content decisioning. When using AI’s content decisioning, marketers collect all of their creative assets into one library for the AI to access. Based on a customer’s individual preferences and habits—such as previous transactions, content engagement, browsing behavior, promotional affinity, and lifetime value—the AI will choose the asset that is best suited to that particular recipient. No longer are marketers beholden to arbitrary dates of a campaign calendar; the content roll out can now adapt to each individual customer.
Having a personalized cadence of content is critical to fostering customer loyalty. True loyalty relies on getting each customer experience right with content that’s not only relevant today, but encourages them towards further discovery. Using a series of AI models, not only are assets selected based on recent preferences, the solution guides customers towards new products and categories to expand the array of items they’ll shop for with the brand.
Speed Up and Scale Content Across Channels
AI isn’t only relevant to the email channel. After all, customers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices for browsing and shopping, making constant optimization just as important for this channel. This is where platforms like Attentive come in to amplify key channels like SMS.
SMS drives shockingly high engagement rates, which should indicate to every marketer the great potential for AI enhancement within SMS. One of the quickest ways to do just that is scaling a pre-existing SMS program, such as text-based customer service. By using AI to scale these conversations, marketers can react quickly in a situation where time is truly of the essence.
Cecil & Lou did just that by utilizing Attentive Concierge’s conversational AI to act as an in-store associate, instantly answering common questions 24/7. Additionally, Attentive Concierge focused on engaging subscribers who have clicked in, but had yet to make a purchase. Ultimately, the AI-powered responses led to a 14% CVR.
Once customers engage with their latest SMS messages, marketers can continue to lean on AI to drive conversions. When the customer is interacting with a product, AI can be used to craft the right message to encourage the next step—whether that’s making the copy more fun and engaging or urgency-driving.
The scalability and speed of AI is a major benefit across channels. Automating lengthy manual tasks like segmentation, campaign reporting, and more, are all game-changers for marketers. In fact, the average 6-week-long email campaign process can be reduced by 40% just by incorporating automation and AI.
By scaling these tasks, marketers have more bandwidth for the strategizing and analysis that often get pushed to the back burner. They gain time to analyze performance to inform future campaign planning and can catch blind spots that are adding friction to the customer journey.
Use AI for Efficient, Powerful Personalization
Every marketer understands the importance of personalization, so enhancing it with AI is the clear next step. To do that, marketers can lean on Movable Ink’s AI-powered content personalization engine and Attentive’s mobile capabilities to enhance SMS with AI-driven messaging.
