Beyond the Hype: "pimp" Marketing personalization with AI

In the last 5 years I've had the privilege of witnessing and participating in the AI revolution that is transforming our industry. The introduction of  Generative AI made this accessible to a number of  users in such a short timeframe - according to OpenAI ChatGPT hit the 1 Million users mark in just 5 days - and it is probably one of the  most disruptive and pervasive technologies and  revolutionary model  in Martech.

After Yesterday's presentation of the new GPTo1 a few days ago and the recent previews of new language models like Grok2 and ChatGPT 5.0 I am sure there will be new changes out there in the next weeks.

Today, I'd love to dive deep into how AI is enabling unprecedented personalization at scale in marketing.

A paradigm shift  The marketing landscape has undergone a seismic shift with the advent of AI. As someone who has always embraced innovation and creativity, I've seen firsthand how AI can dramatically enhance our marketing efforts, allowing us to connect with customers in ways we never thought possible.

So: let’s start with how AI is transforming data analysis and customer insights

The first application  of this concept is in the space of predictive analytics and behavior modeling. AI's ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data has revolutionized how we understand and predict customer behavior.  For instance, Netflix's recommendation engine, powered by machine learning algorithms, analyzes viewing habits of millions of users to predict and suggest content, resulting in a reported $1 billion annual savings from customer retention. Read more here

In my own experience leading marketing initiatives, we leveraged off line predictive analytics embedded in major Marketing platforms to identify the most successful target lists that led us to focus our spend on smaller customer clusters based on  the number of engagements that are needed to generate a real lead, hence increase marketing-touched opportunities and  “leads” with a defined amount of budget  . The key is not just in collecting data, but in using AI to derive actionable insights that drive business growth, hence create the right targets was the key result.

What if we could have had real-time segmentation and targeting? This is now a reality. Take Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist as an example. This feature analyzes listening habits and creates personalized playlists for each of its 400+ million users every week. if you want to know more about this just click here.

In the B2B space, Marketing teams and their agencies plan programmatic Advertising using algorithms that check and display advertising to clusters of users showing behaviors that statistically correlate with the desired outcome (page views, Engagements, subscriptions or Solution test drives) A/B tests can be performed by AI powered platfoms like Optimizely, Crazy Egg or Zoho PageSense saving time and reducing the time to effective market.

Another area where marketing has been literally invaded by AI  is the automated content generation. AI tools like GPT-3 have revolutionized content creation. There are lots of articles in the Web that were clearly generated by non humans!!! The Associated Press, for instance, uses AI to generate thousands of earnings reports and sports news articles, freeing up journalists to focus on more complex stories. And this is happening already since over a decade – Can you believe it? If you can’t- here is an article  by Jordan Crook back in 2014 on the topic.

In our marketing efforts, we've used AI to generate initial drafts of marketing copy, solution and benefits descriptions, and even personalized email content. This has significantly accelerated our content production while maintaining our brand voice and quality. 

Of course we used AI wisely and – still of course everything happened in a well trained and closed private GPT environment to make sure IP was safeguarded and messages were much more accurate.

Ok, so where does personalization start?  AI doesn't just create content; it is capable to optimize it in real-time. Companies like Persado created solutions powered by AI to analyze and optimize marketing language across channels. Their AI has been reported to increase marketing language performance by up to 30%.

We've implemented similar Customiszed campaigns based on specific clusters, not yet using 1:1 personalization , but  proofed and optimized  the messaging for each cluster, testing and optimizing our email campaigns. Our ABM Teams adopted customized messages for customer landing pages by industry. Many of them have been optimized using AI at somepoint in the process.

What if those landing pages could have delivered a 1:1 personalized experience, resulting in higher engagement rates and more effective lead nurturing? I understand many marketers are horrified by this change, but I believe this is something that needs to be embraced. We can definitely do something about it.

For example AI language models are still clearly generating copies that resonate well, but are still a bit too robotic and  have little context. Marketers need to understand the Industry or customer language and learn how to prompt these chats properly ina way that the message totally resonates with the customer’s lingo.

Product Recommendations is another area where AI is making the difference. Amazon's product recommendation engine, responsible for 35% of its revenue, is a prime example of AI-driven personalization at scale. In the B2B world, similar AI technologies to provide personalized product recommendations to our enterprise clients are still very slowto deelop and have a lot of Technical implications as an example you can spee dup configuration and propose systems that are “ good enough” tofit specific usecase. This choice keeps the  Factory costs at an acceptable level, yet allow you to propose a personalized experience. In the Lifecycle it also opens cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

AI-driven website personalization has become a game-changer. Evergage (now owned by Salesforce) reported that its AI-powered real-time personalization platform helped companies achieve a 33% increase in conversion rates on average. In B2B personalization is likely to be reduced to a number of usecases or sales plays as each sale has a very high consultative component. Context is very important and every customer has unique needs, so hallucination of the AI models or time and cost to train properly the model for the individual account is still too high.   

AI has revolutionized email marketing as well. Tools like Phrasee use AI to generate and optimize email subject lines, resulting in higher open rates and engagement.

In our marketing campaigns, we've used technologies embedding AI  to optimize email send times, personalize content, and driving us very close to predict which leads are most likely to convert basedon a series of parameters.

This approach has not only improved email performance metrics but in the future will allow sales team to focus their efforts more effectively and "reduce the noise" of many ongoing marketing campaigns.

So is it all bright? There are some considerations around Ethics and Data Privacy that keep marketers awake at night. As we embrace AI in marketing, it's crucial to maintain a strong ethical framework. The Cambridge Analytica scandal serves as a stark reminder of the importance of responsible data use. At every step of our AI implementation, we need to prioritize data privacy and make ethical considerations ( there is a lot to develop here) ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR while still leveraging the power of AI.

The future of marketing is undoubtedly AI-driven. However, it's important to remember that AI is a tool to enhance human creativity and strategic thinking, not replace it.

As marketers, we need to:

1. Continuously educate ourselves on AI capabilities and best practices and be ready to jump on the most performing tools as the edge is moving really quick.
2. Foster a culture of innovation and experimentation and check the outcome with a critical mind.
3. Prioritize the human touch in our AI-driven strategies

By embracing AI while maintaining our human-centric approach, we can achieve sometihng very close to personalization at scale, andwe willbe able to deliver value to our customers where they expect .

As in a very appreciated recent article from Matt Watts "companies create “Monsters”, every time a new wave of innovation starts to form".

By my side I believe with the right approach and by keeping things simple we can clearly reduce the monster effect and get mostly benefits out of this revolution.

I'll keep the curiosity "on" about the possibilities that AI brings to our field, and I'm eager to continue exploring the boundaries of what's possible in marketing.

What are your thoughts on AI in marketing? How is your organization leveraging AI to enhance personalization? I'd love to hear your experiences and insights in the comments below.