Looking to make a fast splash in marketing performance? New campaigns, tag lines, and special offers are great techniques for enhancing performance, but these efforts need to be supported by a strong data foundation and the proper tools to ensure the work you put into bolstering your brand is successful. With so many new martech platforms flooding the market and promising incredible ROI, it can be difficult to know which platforms will be a true partner and help you crush both your long-term and short-term goals. But, the best platforms will have something in common: ground-up, robust AI.
Why AI is essential for martech
As customers begin to expect more from brands, especially within the realms of marketing and customer service, it can be difficult to keep up with demands. Outdated, manual tech can bog down marketers and make it nearly impossible to be agile and effective.
Increasingly, marketers are realizing the power of unified customer data profiles and how they can help inform marketing decisions, customer experiences, and service. But, unified data alone won’t allow your business to respond to rapidly changing status quos and scale. AI is the secret sauce that turns a great base of customer information into a goldmine for marketers. In fact, almost all (98% to be exact) marketers who have utilized AI within their roles have seen marked improvements in marketing performance.
While that number may be staggering, for the Blueshift it really comes as no surprise. We’ve seen time and time again how AI placed in the hands of marketers can truly transform teams. Our predictive models have taken the constant back and forth between marketing and engineering out of the equation and allowed marketers to spend less time consolidating and understanding data and more time executing upon it.
AI’s nearly instant impact
Forrester’s Total Economic Impact Study of Blueshift has found that our platform, and its patented AI, is responsible for 781% ROI and with a payback period of fewer than 3 months.
How is such instant payback and transformation with AI possible? Glad you asked. Blueshift’s one-of-a-kind approach to AI within marketing has been critical to its success. Not only is AI an integral part of Blueshift from the ground up, but our models are also completely transparent and customizable to each customer’s needs — which makes them even more effective.
In our Chief Growth Officer, Josh Francia’s, recent blog and webinar series, Josh explains how exactly marketers can use AI in times of economic uncertainty to increase ROI and improve outputs for their business.
In practice, this means that several different models will answer the Who, What, Where, and When of your campaigns. AI can quickly turn your dream campaigns into reality and reduce time spent on data science, with even better ROI than traditional campaigns.
Step 1: Who should I target?
Blueshift’s Predictive Segmentation sifts through your customer data and determines precisely which customers you should target, with your most important goals in mind. This model uses historic and real-time data to build segments that update constantly so you can be sure you’re always targeting customers who are valuable to your business.
Step 2: What should I target them with?
Now that you’ve ascertained which customers you should be messaging, it’s time to fill your comms with tons of value that push customers farther down the funnel. The best way to achieve this is by including personalized recommendations and content in your messages. Blueshift’s Customer Data Activation Platform (CDAP) uses historic and real-time behavioral data along with catalog data to auto-populate recommendation blocks within emails, mobile notifications, and other channels with 1:1 product recommendations.
These recommendations can be based on past purchases, browsing patterns, or even pre-set groupings of products set by marketers. Just like segments, recommendations are built around what your goals are and our flexible models reflect that — check out more on our Predictive Recommendations.
Step 3: Where and When should I send?
In the final step of 1:1 marketing, if determining which channel of communication marketers should use and what time is optimal for each customer. Our Predictive Engagement models again use historic data to give scores to each channel and will autonomously send on the channel that is the most effective.
Then, our engage time model determines which time block is best for customers to engage with the messages you’re sending. Simply sticking to “popular” times for engagement doesn’t work anymore — you’ll be apart of the mass flood and delete of emails or texts. Instead, catch consumers at their peak browsing and click-thru times so your messages aren’t lost in the shuffle.
Want to learn more about how AI can transform your business quickly? Download the full Marketer vs. Martech report for more information on how businesses are getting ahead with AI. Curious about Blueshift specifically? Contact one of our team members for a demo.
