Marketers are no exception to the relentless pace of organizational digital transformation and automation—especially by leveraging artificial intelligence. AI-powered automation doesn’t just make a firm’s marketing department faster, it also becomes smarter by leveraging data far more efficiently than through manual methods. It’s no surprise that many companies have already begun to adopt marketing intelligence in their digital marketing strategies, which can generally be broken down into three main areas: smarter customer interactions, personalization and risk assessment.

Smarter customer interactions
An increasing number of businesses have modernized their methods for customer communication by implementing predictive messaging tools such as chatbots and more. These automated communication instruments enhance the customer experience by opening rapid communication channels between interested buyers and sellers, bolstering the customer experience while simultaneously fostering brand loyalty. Younger customers especially have higher expectations for customer service innovation.

In particular, the era of direct messaging has led to a boon for “smart” chatbots. They can be a powerful customer tool, cutting response times, saving costs and expediting customer interactions. These automated interfaces operate through several channels to streamline conversations with customers at any time and place, even outside regular working hours. Chatbots’ cousins, AI-powered phone agents, are also becoming customers’ everyday companions. Virtual assistants in general have grown in popularity, as they provide faster, more economical ways of encouraging online sales.

Smarter personalization
Another marketing area that AI transforms is personalization. According to data from dotdigital’s Global E-Commerce Benchmark Report 2020, only 5% of brands currently provide contextually relevant content.

As businesses market across multiple channels, it is essential to utilize every piece of data collected to conduct smart outreach. Artificial intelligence enables businesses to predict consumer preferences by collecting and interpreting data to tailor messaging, products and recommendations accordingly across channels, from social media to email. For instance, web metrics, such as response and value indicators, will indicate what resonates with the targeted consumer. Sellers can then predict consumer wants and needs more accurately through AI-powered data mining. This allows businesses to personalize their content in terms of segmentation and targeting.

Smarter risk assessment
Digital transformation, which has only been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, opens the door even further to security risks. Hence, solutions that help businesses detect and prevent security risks are more needed than ever.

AI’s cognitive computing capabilities are a great asset to risk management and assessment. Cognitive analytics allow businesses to tap unstructured information, personalize services and reduce subjectivity in decision making. With respect to information security, data gathered through sales and marketing programs’ AI solutions can help businesses analyze massive amounts of data, and recognize unusual behavioral patterns at lightning speed. And because AI tools are free of emotions and biases, they can improve the context for prioritization and responses to those risks, making detection and threat mitigation more efficient.

Not only does artificial intelligence detect security risks, but it also helps risk management in terms of managing businesses’ return on investment (ROI). The data gathered through sales and marketing initiatives can power better decision-making and reduce ROI risk. With AI, businesses and marketers can more accurately target their audiences, such as what they are responsive to, which marketing touchpoints drive brand engagement, and how to optimize reach and frequency.

Lastly, it is critical that businesses connect their data across all platforms for a unified marketing perspective. Data silos pose a major barrier to most businesses—a Forrester report found that 72% of firms stated their most significant sales and marketing challenge was managing data and sharing insights across organizational silos. Utilizing data and breaking down these data silos can minimize human error when calculating risk and ROI.

From customer interactions to risk management, enterprises are using AI to streamline marketing workflows, improve predictive capabilities as well as better accommodating customer demands. The data is becoming smarter, so marketers must be, too.