Best Examples of AI in Marketing

The worldwide adoption of AI was once thought as a far-fetched notion dreamed up in science fiction. However, it is now a reality of our everyday life.?

It is predicted that the AI market would be worth $36.8 billion by 2025, and as this autonomous subset of digital technology is evolving, we can expect a host of exceptional developments in the near future – especially in this emerging age of the metaverse.?

Although AI has been proven to improve our daily consumer lives – with the adoption of autonomous vehicle technology, voice assistants, fitness devices, and smartphones – it has also ameliorated digital marketing efforts of companies across many industries.?

In addition to proving itself to increase business productivity by up to 40%, if leveraged strategically, AI can assist brands to:?

• Deliver more impactful marketing campaigns by streamlining their workflows
• Exceed customers’ expectations head-on at every point of their journey?
• Increase conversions and trigger sales across multitude of channels and touchpoints

No doubt, if utilized creatively and tactically, AI technology is capable of helping you to connect with your audience at a deeper level than ever before, and the result is non-stop business growth.?

To put this notion into perspective, here we explore a few quite different but equally impressive uses of AI in digital marketing.?

Sephora

The first impressive example of AI in digital marketing is from Sephora. One of the earlier adopters of AI, thriving cosmetics brand Sephora has been employing chatbot technology to give its audience the most personalized, informational customer experience possible.?

After conducting some considerable consumer research, the brand found that Sephora’s extensive choice of products overwhelms a lot of customers, because they had to browse through a host of pages to find something suitable in particular categories.?

In response, Sephora launched an interactive assessment to assist guide users through the shopping process, led by chatbots which give tailored tips and suggestions according to specific answers or responses. As the initiative was a success, Sephora now offers its own chatbot-enabled shopping service on Facebook Messenger as it continues going from strength to strength.?

The hyper-personalized AI-enabled Messenger service includes a virtual color match assistant, a reservations assistants, and KitBot – an autonomous chatty make-over and advice expert.?

Lowe's

Lowe’s is another forward-thinking brand that has successfully enriched its in-store experience by introducing its very own AI development – the LoweBot – to provide consumers personalized suggestions and tailored information as they browse its colossal US stores.?

Not only does its AI-enabled technology assist provide its customers a seamless shopping experience, it also provides its marketers with valuable insights on consumer shopping trends by automatically tracking stock and inventory in real-time.?

Speaking about the company’s technological success, Josh Shabtai, Director of Lab Productions at Loew’s Innovations Labs, explained that they utilized their store as living labs to quickly test their prototypes and collect real-world feedback on the new experiences they were offering to demystify home improvement.?

Netflix

Netflix, the leading SVoD content streaming service of the globe requires no introduction. However, not a lot of people know that it is possible to attribute a great deal of Netflix unstoppable success to their highly-advanced approach to AI.?

As we know, user experience (UX) is a paramount to the thriving success of any business, regardless of its industry – and when a customer has a good experience with a brand they are likely to talk about it with their peers online.?

To improve their overall UX and tailor their service to the individual user, Netflix employs machine learning (ML) technology to offer personalized content recommendations according to a user’s preferences besides what they have liked in the past. Furthermore, Netflix employs an AI development to automatically optimize streaming quality and prevent any buffering or quality issues.?

Over 80% of the content people watch on Netflix are now based on its personal recommendations platform – a testament to its power in a period where consumers expect more value than ever from the brands they are willing to invest in.?

Starbucks

Some 60 million adults now employ voice search at once a day. Moreover, 72% of Americans now own a smart speaker – such as Alexa or Siri – of some variety.??

Voice technology is becoming popular, and those who accept its possibilities stand to reap great benefits, and Starbucks is one of them.?

?To provide their audience an extra layer of consumer value, the coffee colossus integrated one of their subscribed apps with Amazon’s Alexa technology.? As a result, their customers can now employ their very own “My Starbucks Barista” Service to place and change orders, besides confirming a pickup location for maximum convenience – a seamless pair of chatbot and voice innovation in action.?

As a result of their “My Starbucks Barista” app, Starbucks has broadened their AI innovations by adding AI-enabled Mastrena II espresso makers – machines that basically complement the pre-ordering capabilities of the app – to thousands of their outlets to provide a more streamlined and consistent coffee-making experience to their customers.?

Increasing a whopping 31.2 million mobile customers to date, it is evident that initiatives like this drive astonishing levels of engagement and growth across the globe.?

The Economist?

The Economist, although a widely-respected digital publication, found its audience dwindling around 2016-2017.?

The publication used a process of AI-driven programmatic advertising to its advantage, purchasing and selling targeted adverts autonomously. By choosing this process to gather data and analyze consumer data in depth, they were able to spot a segment of their audience that were reluctant readers.?

With autonomous web and app usage analysis, they drilled down into particular reading habits or preferences, and as a result discovered better ways to approach their prospects online. Moreover, they focused on matching subscriber, cookie, and additional data sets to find new segments and set up lookalike audiences, and managed to yield a host of good results that have served to augment their readership levels once again.?

To summarize, this forward-thinking campaign convinced 3.6 million new readers to interact with the publication, accomplishing an overall return on investment of 10:1 from the earliest wave of revenue generated from these prospects. That’s no small feat in an ultra-competitive digital environment.?

This new AI-centered, data-driven business model has fortified continual subscriber growth since 2017, with an increase of 9% subscribers during 2020 to 2021 alone – an impressive feat in a difficult period.?

Nestle

As a modern company, it is essential to focus on content creation. However, if what you are creating fails to provide personal value, it will waste your budget while giving little return on investment (ROI).?

To improve their content marketing efforts and establish personalized communication for its audience, global food and beverage giant Nestle employed natural language processing (NLP) technology to set up targeted content for different segments of their audience.?

Besides this content-centric innovation, they also employed AI-driven data processing platforms to get well and truly under the skin of its customers – resulting in new innovations including chatbots and virtual assistants, consistently changing insight into action – a digital shift that has improved sales in recent years.?

Conclusions?

If you are a business owner looking to take their first with AI for personalized marketing, try Inqline’s Data Science Autopilot for your business.?