Does Personalization Through AI And Machine Learning Help Enhance Market Relevance and Growth?
Jun 09, 2022
Jun 09, 2022
10 min read
10 min read
Table of contents
- How can AI and Machine Learning improve direct-to-consumer marketing strategy?
- Benefits of using the power of AI and Machine Learning in marketing and personalization
- How can ML and A/B testing help you improve direct-to-consumer eCommerce business?
- Examples of Brands using AI and ML to improve their customer service
- Starbucks
- Nike
- Harley-Davidson
- Nestle
- Integrate The Mix of AI and ML Into Your Business
In this dynamic D2C eCommerce landscape, the way of shopping is continuously changing. 3 out of 4 customers are likely to shop from a DTC eCommerce brand that provides personalization. Why? Personalization makes customers feel that the brand cares for their special and unique needs and understands what they want to buy. It increases the trust and bond between customers and brand, which in turn helps businesses to drive more sales and revenue.
Many DTC eCommerce brands are adopting this technique. If you've bought anything from Amazon, you may have encountered that it shows products you have previously purchased or related to them. That is because Amazon personalization is fully managed by Machine Learning, which records the user preferences, history, and purchasing behavior to tailor recommendations. This creates a flywheel effect that helps drive repeat engagement and loyalty over time.
In this game of personalization, DTC eCommerce brands are extensively using AI and Machine Learning to meet consumer expectations and personalization standards.
This strategy can contribute to your Direct-to-consumer organic marketing if you use your customer data accurately and precisely. Even a Salesforce report shows that companies that personalize their listing and offers in the right way drive 40% more revenue.
A mix of AI and Machine Learning models can help you achieve such numbers. How? Let's discover.
How can AI and Machine Learning improve direct-to-consumer marketing strategy?
Many small businesses still rely on guesswork to create a marketing strategy. This behavior makes them end up with low customer retention and less revenue. On the other hand, companies using a mix of AI and Machine learning seem to drive more sales and revenue.
Both AI and ML are great ways to improve direct-to-consumer strategy and customer experience based on customer data-driven feedback. A report shows that around 80% of marketers rely heavily on AI and ML to create customer journeys around their needs and brand objectives.
On one side, AI (Artificial Intelligence) plays a great role in solving the puzzle of "one size fits all" results. This technology helps marketers to understand the customer better and improve their experience. AI-powered marketing enables businesses to create a predictive customer analysis and build customer journeys more targeted and individually tailored.
Let’s consider a D2C business model example of elf Cosmetics. They use AI to show lighter lipstick shades for those who like them.
This D2C marketing strategy of adding recommendations helped them increase revenue per customer by 4.32%. And also, their "You May Love" section has garnered more than a 23% click-through-rate.
Let's look at another example - Nars, a cosmetic brand. It gives the best product recommendations based on the customer's previous history.
Nars uses AI to understand the customers' likes, affinities, interests, and preferences to showcase "RECOMMENDED FOR YOU." It helped them enhance market relevance and revenue by multiple folds.
Source: Freepik
AI not only helps you in personalization but also allows you to:
- Get actionable and beneficial insights from the marketing data.
- Increase accuracy and ROI on campaigns
- Shorten the sales cycle
- Reduce time spent on repetitive data-driven tasks
- Improve productivity and efficiency
On the other hand, Machine Learning adds more value to personalization. It allows businesses to eliminate the guesswork by automating data collection of customer behavior and speeding up the process of serving relevant content to the customer. Machine Learning is helping many retailers to expand their business. According to a Mckinsey report, US retailers have seen a 19% increase in operating margin over the last five years using data and analytics!
A brand like The North Face uses Machine Learning to know the customer preferences, history, and interests. When a customer contacts their virtual assistant, it will automatically advise the customer on the best products.
Benefits of using the power of AI and Machine Learning in marketing and personalization
Source: Unsplash
Your D2C growth strategy needs precision and knowledge of marketing trends and customer behavior. Relying on gut feeling can lead to a campaign misfire. Instead, incorporate AI and Machine Learning in your workflow to speed up your work and create campaigns that can work for your business. It will reduce the chances of human error and allow you to optimize your campaigns in a lucrative manner.
AI and ML collect the customer data and help you refine individual and most important data. The insights and data help you provide your customers with what they want, hence improving your customer experience. You can also use AI and ML to gather data from different channels to develop innovative ways to enhance customer engagement and spend wisely.
How can ML and A/B testing help you improve direct-to-consumer eCommerce business?
A/B testing has a lot of importance in the online world. Most marketers make their decision based on A/B testing. Why?
Well, it allows marketers to understand customer preferences. Usually, marketers segregate each campaign to determine which got a more positive response. However, this takes a lot of time, thus slowing down the marketing process.
By incorporating ML into your A/B testing, you can improve your efficiency. It allows you to test different campaigns and optimize older versions of campaigns as per the need. It lets you test more campaigns and collect information faster. With Machine Learning, you can track the customer's journey and tailor your campaign accordingly to provide your customers with what they like.
Examples of Brands using AI and ML to improve their customer service
Starbucks
Starbucks, a famous multinational coffee shop chain, leverages AL and ML to personalize their marketing campaigns and deliver an improved customer experience.
Nike
Nike, one of the most popular shoe brands, is also utilizing the combo of AI and Machine Learning to improve its marketing and product offerings.
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson is an American motorcycle manufacturing company using patented algorithms that helps them get insights into predictive advertising effectiveness. Their proprietary techniques have helped them drive a 500% increase in ROI.
Nestle
Nestle, a Swiss multinational food and drinks processing company, uses AI, chatbots, and ML to personalize and deliver better service.
Integrate The Mix of AI and ML Into Your Business
Both AI and ML are great technology to cut out the time required for data collection and automate the workflow. These technologies automatically track your customers when they visit the site. AI and ML save this record and use it to learn the individual preferences and what they like or dislike on your site. When the same customer visits the site, your site will showcase what they liked earlier or related to that so that chances of conversion improve, and you can drive higher ROI.
Saffron Edge can help you incorporate AI and ML into your Direct to Consumer Marketing Strategy to keep a tab on your customer data, refine it for better recommendations, and create campaigns that convince customers to take action! Get in touch with us; we will walk you through our services and help improve your presence in the digital world. Contact us now!
How Can Marketing Automation Boost Your Sales In 2021?
Marketing technology or marketing automation has emerged as a well-required concept for almost every business operating in the industry- be it small or big. While your company has been working with manual efforts and minimal tools, it is the year 2021, and it calls for an upgrade. Blending technological components in the marketing function of a business is similar to a stroke of luck. What is marketing automation? It is an online software or a system that acts as a substitute for manually handling repetitive marketing tasks. Today, tons of vendors offer systems that automate tasks; many businesses have developed homegrown tools. According to a survey of 2019, 75% of the companies were already using some marketing automation tool. As per the SharpSpring Investor Presentation of 2019, we see that the market for Marketing Automation Software is growing at a rate of 20%. The report said the U.S. share for the Marketing Automation Software industry equals a $6.1B market! Enhancing the online experience is an excellent opportunity for your business, and this feat seems achievable if marketing automation tools are availed. With the growing business similarity in the industry, marketing automation enables your business to design and effectively manage your marketing campaigns, boost sales and earn much better profits than your rivals. For many companies, sales automation has helped them in lowering costs while enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. Automation has also enabled engineering and manufacturing to reduce production costs by an average of 8% to 12%. By 2024, we can expect the Marketing Automation Software market to expand at a CAGR of 9.82%. Source: Pexels Be it a small business selling greeting cards online, or a multinational firm with a diverse product line, marketing automation helps streamline the marketing and advertising tasks of the firm and funnel the sales from both current and prospective customers. And it is not just about how your marketing campaigns would do; marketing automation benefits the business interface that allows you to target your customers effectively and, after that, study their purchasing behavior. Ecommerce and telecommunication companies have adopted Customer Value Management through which almost 26% of their calls don't need any human intervention. It has helped them in lowering costs and increasing customer satisfaction. One of the primary reasons to take up marketing automation for your business marketing is how seamlessly you can optimize your routine, repetitive tasks and manage them and other core operations without getting a hit on business sales. Ways To Increase Sales Via Marketing Automation By now, you might have an idea about how marketing automation works- streamlining your marketing actions and simplifying a marketer's routine. Let's have a closer look at how it affects the sales of your business firm and ways you can close much better leads with automation tools- Source: Pexels Better Vision Of Potential Leads Lead generation and nurturing quality leads is a great way to boost sales for your business firm. Earlier, analyzing quality leads was a bit strenuous. It required seeking customer data and purchasing behavior details via web analytics, contacting customers via phone calls and messages to know their reviews, etc. But, marketing automation has helped businesses acquire this information without going through tons of customer-centric data. With automation tools, you can get a better sight of your business leads by monitoring their behavior when they're on your website and tracking information about their website visit and other activities. These components sum up to be an overall score of your potential leads, based on which priority is given to interested ones to boost your sales. Eliminate A Long Response Time It might sound counterfactual to say that a generic response time could boost sales- little do people know that it has a strong effect on the customer's purchase behavior. In most cases, customers require an understanding of the product or service acquired by them. Here is when your business has to score- by responding in time. Timely responses make a lot more difference on your leads and especially when they require your help. Using automation tools, you can guarantee a business greeting sent to your lead once it turns in. Such greetings could be personalized text messages or emails that inform the customer about the business, its services, and customer-related opportunities. In addition, marketing automation can help you create self-tasks and reminders about lead nurturing, which is a must-to-do task in the present day. Source: Pexels Tracking Lead Activity Status On Different Channels Your prospective leads hope around your business website, hover to the purchase carts, visit your handles on social media platforms and look you up on the internet. Therefore, you must track these activities as your business can gain important information by connecting with the lead customer to feel pleasant. Along with that, associating them with relevant content on your website is one of the requisites for customer engagement. Coupled with customer engagement with personalized content, you can use triggering emails and digital advertisements to interact with your potential customers with the help of marketing automation tools. The software tools also ensure that the customers get what they expect from your business, and your marketing campaigns could easily comprehend these expectations. Analyze Return on Investment Without using marketing automation software, marketers cannot cut back on repetitive and non-core marketing activities. And as a result of this, your business might spend more on investment rather than product profits. But, with the help of marketing automation, you can delegate these tasks onto automated tools to save up on the additional cost. Once you start saving up on these digital tasks, you can allocate that fund to other marketing campaigns monitored by marketing automation. Tracking ROI on different marketing campaigns can help you realize which sector is working efficiently and its suitable for-profit revenues. Based on that information, the business can take a call to increase sales via marketing campaigns and eliminate the non-performing ones to reduce costs. Obtain Relevant Sales Information Your sales department would do much better if it knows how and what customer leads to the target in advance. Therefore, it is an excellent opportunity to make marketing automation work for your sales leads and acquire necessary information from the lead interactions to assure maximum conversions from current leads. Lead scoring practices can help segment the priority leads and invest more time in optimizing the sales potential of your business. Having that said, the sales department of any business firm is usually burdened with menial and dull tasks that software tools can easily override. Thus, by applying marketing software and system tools, you can efficiently address your business's staffing requirements and let your salespeople focus on profitable sales. Saffron Edge helps you identify the areas of opportunities in your marketing department where you can incorporate technological aid and automate the marketing chores for better efficiency and pace. Our primary task is to support your business with marketing automation programs that can enhance the way you communicate with your sales-ready leads. We also help in social media marketing and predicting lead generation from varied channels to design a structured workflow chart for your marketing campaigns. Are you interested? You can book an appointment with us now! ...
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Healthcare Marketing Strategy - A Comprehensive Guide
A healthcare marketing strategy involves inbound marketing techniques to facilitate the attainment of better healthcare business objectives over a while, say twelve months or more. With an organized blueprint of your stick-to plan, your business organization puts in efforts, required resources- monetary and human both, lays down the procedural steps to perform better and much more efficiently than the last annual estimate. If you are associated with a healthcare business, you may be indulged in exceeding your present-day productivity to expand your operational territory. Just like any other business, you may also have to deal with the potential opportunities and threats coming your way, have to design the plan of action for an effective operational framework, run marketing campaigns supported by field expertise and tactics, and emerge with an approach to increase patient base leading to rapid increment in ROI graphs. The healthcare industry has turned up to be dynamic and vigorous since the medical needs of people have gradually increased and they now expect the best of service, that too with prompt action to their inquiry. This has only been possible because of the technological progress we see today that makes our lives easy and helps people resolve their medical issues with just one click over the Internet. According to many online portals and reports, most of the general public look for medical concerns over these web portals and explore to get home remedies. The need for introducing marketing strategies in the healthcare sector emerged when chronic problems took over and the average patient handling ratio of a particular healthcare business organization went down. The effectiveness of marketing techniques can only be measured by reflecting a healthy society, where the majority of people are irrelative to sickness and disease. An impactful healthcare marketing strategy calls for an extensive probing of a patient’s requirements and what he needs, these needs can be tangible (medicinal support) and intangible (emotional and psychological support), basis which its success could be computed. Why Do You Need A Marketing Strategy? Enhance Customer Service In the recent past, the idea of patient delight at the time of any medical activity has evolved from just providing medical assistance to giving a pleasant experience, though the provision of necessary medical treatment is a priority. A marketing strategy helps a healthcare business to expand its customer service base along with giving the required remedial cure, which ensures brand loyalty by transforming them into frequent customers rather than occasional patients. The frequently visiting patients would expect the value to their concern, like you to deliver as per their assumptions, providing superior client services that make their lives easy and less challenging. Improve Brand Awareness An effective and promising healthcare marketing strategy should help your business to expand your loyal customer base, where you deliver as per their expectations, boost the customer inflow, and keep the cycle running. Since your business needs brand awareness, you may begin with glorifying your online reach on social media platforms, so they are viewed by a greater population. Word-of-mouth referrals and online participation bring your brand a sense of recognition and service inquiries, thus inviting the masses briskly. Add Value To Your Brand You can shape your brand’s ethical value by creating a powerful platform for customers to reach out for medical support. The more comforting and secure their experience is, the longer they’ll stick to your brand. From a patient’s perspective, a satisfactory experience, especially related to remedial activity, allows them to trust the brand’s credibility and associate with it for the long-term. Source: Unsplash Root Benefits Of Having A Healthcare Marketing Strategy Once your healthcare marketing strategy comes into effect, your business can observe numerous advantages coming its way. For keeping that inflow alive, a tried and tested plan should be extensively used to ensure ongoing marketing success. The following are some of the benefits of the healthcare marketing strategy your business might opt for Meeting Goals And Objectives- Once you plan out to expand the functional boundaries of your business, you tend to follow an organized series of actions that helps you achieve the anticipated goals and business objectives. Operational Efficiency- Streamlining your business functionalities refrains you to allocate abundant resources into any particular activity and ensure that everything is going as per the plan, thus boosting operational efficiency. If your healthcare business adopts an efficient marketing plan for its daily operations, you may be able to clutch in more opportunities than your competitors in no time. Risk Management- It refers to the practice of extenuating the possibilities of financial risk for an organization. In reference to a healthcare business, risk management adds itself as an advantage via the marketing strategy it adopts, since a strategized plan includes classified patient records and monitors the anticipated process malfunctions which may arise in the near future. Effective Service Line Decisions- In the healthcare field, a service-line refers to a particular group of similar patients, classified on the basis of inpatient and outpatient procedures. While you manage your healthcare business’s daily functions, deal with patients, and provide services with the help of comprehensive marketing plans, service-line decisions communicate the purpose of your marketing plans and showcase your image as a brand to the general public. Develop A Marketing Strategy For Your Healthcare Brand An effective healthcare marketing strategy is an asset for medical practitioners, hospital staff, and their network. For that entire process to work in harmony, there are several ways to plan that marketing strategy. Every healthcare business offers a similar remedy to any medical issue, what sets you apart is your expertise and service level you provide to the patient, because he/she may consider your white coat as the same as they may find someplace else. Therefore, there should be something unique in your assistance that creates your brand image and attracts patients in the long run. Presenting your healthcare business over the web invites many inquiries and appointments, given that the information you put there seems promising and impressive to prospective patients. Websites have turned to be gateways for every business and healthcare is no longer away from this fact. If you consider yourself as a patient, observe your business website and look over the pages for those details that quickly help you resolve your concern, maybe an optimized procedure to book an appointment, getting primary location guidance in a few moments, these minute attributes of the website makes your prospect’s online journey quick and trouble-free. Create chatbots and fill-in forms for the patient’s to send out responses against their concerns so they feel responsive when they visit your website. Your healthcare marketing strategy shall allow you to take over these concepts conveniently. A thriving healthcare marketing strategy allows you to retain your current patient base and increase potential engagement if you bring forward all the necessary resources at the right time. Even with the possible threats coming your way, you can take your healthcare business to great heights with this comprehensive marketing guide that helps you to engage with your loyal patients constructively. Connect with us to market your healthcare business the right way. We have an expertise of over 12 years dealing with healthcare clients and know exactly what it takes to scale your business. ...
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How To Develop An Account-based Marketing Strategy?
Source: Pexels The changing digital world can greatly influence business budgets, and marketers are asked to do more with less. As a result, demonstrating return on investment and maximizing efficiency are critical. ABM is a marketing technique in which firms or accounts are targeted with highly tailored marketing campaigns. ABM marketers treat individual accounts as markets, creating tailored strategies and multichannel campaigns to meet the unique business needs of client buying groups. ABM focuses a company's marketing efforts on a small number of critical accounts within a certain region. With the help of customized campaigns, the marketing message is adapted to each account's unique qualities and requirements. It also offers a more comprehensive marketing approach than just lead generation, which is why it has grown in popularity. You may increase the worth of your most valuable accounts by driving upsells and cross-sells through current customer marketing. The Main Components Of ABM Account-based marketing has three components: Targeting, Interaction, and Measurement. Include these aspects in the core of your Saffron Edge marketing program to set your marketing team up for success Targeting And Managing The Correct Accounts ABM's technology can help you focus on and manage accounts that are worth your time and will provide the best Return On Investment (ROI). It allows you to streamline account targeting and maintenance rather than maintaining and synchronizing accounts and lists across many applications. Depending on your company's needs, refer to these aspects: product fit, quick wins, strategic relevance, competitors, and area. Interaction Across Channels Instead of handling each marketing channel independently, build and run coordinated and personalized campaigns across all of them using a single platform. It involves the usage of an account-based marketing solution, which integrates all of your marketing channels and establishes the foundation for sending targeted cross-channel campaigns to the relevant people. Measuring And Optimizing Programs? Because ABM focuses on a small number of high-value consumers, results are considerably easier to track than traditional marketing. Your ABM approach needs to be quantified to demonstrate growth and success over time. Make sure you pick a system that lets you create account dashboards for specific accounts, initiatives, objectives, and revenue-based account metrics in one location. Source: Pexels Top Benefits Of Account-based Marketing Approach The following methods can help you with your account-based marketing strategy: 1.Create A Personalized Offer For Each Customer ABM can assist you in targeting each stakeholder in a target account with a high level of personalization. It involves a lot of personal research, which provides it an advantage over traditional marketing tactics. Account-based marketing relies heavily on relevance and personalization. Because most account-based marketing programs have a limited number of target accounts, campaigns and offers must have high conversion rates. One strategy to adapt content marketing efforts is to provide offers tailored to a single target account. Because the report is so comprehensive, most potential purchasers feel obligated to read it. 2.Develop Offers Designed To Get Secured Meetings There are several stakeholders involved in traditional B2B marketing. It can delay the regular sales and marketing process. 99.9% of marketers create products, especially to generate leads through webinars and white papers. Salespeople can secure meetings with potential customers by employing these strategies. For example, a social analytics company may provide you with an hour-long live study report on how your company's social media activities compare to those of your competitors. Technology evaluations and security audits are two instances of free services. 3. Keep Your Brand In Front Of Customers Using Retargeting It's an excellent method for retargeting a single account while its employees are online and consuming information. Such advances may be used and applied immediately to account-based marketing initiatives. Demandbase account-based intelligence and targeting leverage IP addresses to identify a vendor's potential consumers while browsing the web. When these accounts visit a site in the Demandbase ad network, they are presented with the vendor's ad. Two additional B2B retargeting companies are Bizo and Retargeter. 4. Customize The Individual User Experience On Your Website Because of its narrow emphasis, account-based marketing relies on high conversion rates. Using personalized landing pages is one way to accomplish this. Marketers can show different content depending on which account or individual is visiting the landing page with account-specific landing pages. You can utilize personalization tactics to display the visitor's name, but keep in mind that certain customers might find this intrusive. 5. Design Sales Regions Geared At Converting Customers It used to be usual practice to designate sales territory based on fairness or equality, but what if you could instead assign salespeople to certain regions depending on their likelihood of closing a deal? An organization assigns its representatives to certain accounts based on each employee's quality and social connections. You may be able to organize your region according to your sales history or existing agreements. 6. Using Executives To Test Direct Mail As digital marketing became more prevalent, direct mail became obsolete. It is still possible to target certain groups of executives through direct mail. Why? Because many executives do not sign up for webinars or white papers, do not respond to unsolicited emails, and do not follow companies or salespeople on social media. For example, before a major conference, a company shipped empty iPad boxes to executives with a letter encouraging them to come to the event booth to pick up the iPad. As a result, several recipients came into the store to chat with the employees. 7. Use Social Intelligence To Learn About Your Prospects' Interests Account-based marketing focuses on tailoring communications to each client's specific goals and difficulties. Smart salespeople watch for changes in their target accounts and take advantage of them. You can leverage a public information source like Google Alerts to keep up with corporate news. Social data is more beneficial than traditional press releases and articles in the account-based marketing strategy. When establishing a program, organizations should be flexible so that communications can be redirected or updated when new information becomes available. Enterprise-level social intelligence sales solutions include InsideView and LinkedIn. 8. Build A List Of Legitimate Role-based Contacts Vendors can create lists based on a person's job title or responsibilities, ensuring that the contact is still active today. Account-based models can populate the database with the correct contacts using this list generation method. A corporation might request "the person in charge of IT infrastructure" from a role-based list, which is more specific than a title. Reachforce and Televerde, for example, may help you create these types of lists. 9. Purchase Target Accounts' White Paper And Webinar Leads Buyers could previously only filter leads from a media company by corporate size, title, or geographic area. Businesses can now filter their lead purchases by company name with an increasing number of online lead generation companies. It will cost more per lead, but it will tremendously benefit account-based marketing operations. 10. Create A One-to-one C-level Marketing Campaign Companies may give employees responsibilities to establish relationships with specific buyer personas at their target accounts. In this case, reaching out to other C-level executives is a viable tactic. This person can get involved in the campaign in various ways, like writing an email or letter and making a phone call. Personal and genuine outreach is required, and a business case for these executives to participate. This campaign's message needs to be written with the organization's help. An inside salesperson may make a follow-up phone call to the executive's administrative assistant to set up a meeting. After the C-level executives have been assigned, companies can assign vice presidents, inside salespeople, and marketing to prospects at target accounts. The goal is to connect qualified personnel with qualified potential employees. 11. Use Non-sales Personnel To Discover Links To Your Target Accounts We don't always consider the connections that other employees in the organization may have with potential clients. In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, TeamLink lets you see who else in your company is related to contacts at the target account. Leverage is a possibility that arises frequently. Conclusion We recommend establishing a short- and long-term plan for your account-based marketing strategy. Consider the technology strategy your team will need for a trial ABM program (end-to-end or supplemental) and what it will need to run your program at full scale. There is no one-size-fits-all option between a comprehensive end-to-end ABM service and supplemental solutions to support existing marketing technology. Saffron Edge and key stakeholders should work together openly to choose the best plan for your company. You can reap the benefits of a customer-centric, lucrative marketing strategy. ...
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