AI-Powered Data Unification Drives Cross-Channel Growth
Juggling customers across channels can be daunting—there is a tonne of data coming from different sources. AI removes the guesswork and streamlines processes.
Personalisation expectations are evolving—consumers are more aware and no more demanding personalisation just for the sake of it. Consumers globally are developing a nuanced
understanding of what personalised offers entail in terms of the data they must share in exchange. They are no more seeking “personalisation at all costs” but are looking for personalisation that is relevant and valuable.
The only way for brands to achieve this is by utilising a comprehensive view of what the customer wants. Data from customer interactions from across multiple, varied channels must be brought together to build the complete customer profile.
With customers interacting with a brand across multiple media, it is vital to put in a place an effective cross-channel strategy. The three-pronged approach to seamless cross-channel marketing is: unified data, personalisation at scale, meeting customers across all touch points. Attempting to achieve this manually leads to a messy output comprising inconsistent messaging that leads to disjointed customer journeys. How does AI help? By unifying data.
The primary challenge that AI resolves by adding automation to the process is removing silos between the fragmented data and unifying it into a single stream, ready to be used for seamless personalisation. Furthermore, while marketing teams can work with existing data, AI brings in the power of real-time customer insights, which translates to the most effective form of personalisation. Add to that, scale. Customers are present across diverse touchpoints and converse with a brand from different locations at different times. Without the ability to offer personalisation at scale, brand growth isn’t achievable.
This is where AI steps in as a helpful aide by unifying data and offering quick, intelligent, real-time insights.
Four Ways AI Aids Cross-Channel Personalisation
Unified Data and Insights
Data-driven personalisation is essential in the current day and age but fragmented data, outdated processes and an inability to efficiently leverage advanced technologies hinders the true utilisation of data. Where reading tons of data can be overwhelming for marketers, AI not only collects but stores and reads data to offer intelligent insights by identifying hidden patterns in the information. The aggregation of data from the multiple sources a customer chooses to interact with the brand, becomes fast and convenient with AI’s intelligent capabilities.
Customer Data Segmentation
Without a comprehensive view of customer preferences and behaviour, personalisation is a far-fetched aim. The mismatch in insights and customer profiles can lead to misdirected marketing efforts. How can AI help?
In addition to analysing customer data, AI creates different segments for diverse customers. For example, SAP Emarsys’ AI marketing offering lets brands target customers by generating AI segments powered by its machine learning algorithms. Brands can use it to engage customers based on their predicted behaviors or affinities. Further, they can target offers based on lifecycle stage, engagement propensity or even estimated spend – such as first-time buyers likely to make a repeat purchase with high value.
Enhanced ROI, Better Conversions
When the right offer reaches the right person at the right time, the chances of converting a prospect into a customer become naturally higher. AI helps here by utilising historical and real-time data to build a true view of every customer. For example, SAP Emarsys uses visual affinity, channels and purchase predictions, to recommend products tailored to each individual customer, while maintaining consistency across multiple channels from email to web to mobile. This consistency, irrespective of where the customer interacts with the brand, helps create a personalised and cohesive journey, ultimately leading to higher chances of conversion and hence, an enhanced return on investment.
Personalisation at Scale
Each customer demands a unique engagement and experience. Achieving this manually isn’t feasible—AI automates the process, reads high volumes of data, gathers insights in real-time, and makes it possible to engage with every single customer separately, offering each a distinctive experience. SAP Emarsys’ platform offers a host of ready-to-use tactics that align to business outcomes. Its sophisticated campaigns, such as Abandoned Browse, Post-purchase Cross/Up-sell, Winback and more, use AI segments to define audiences and drive channel selection based on a customer’s likelihood to engage in each channel.
Optimising Omnichannel Engagement with AI
One of the most effective tips for data-driven personalisation is making the most of artificial intelligence. By automating the identification of profitable customer segments, AI tools aid in optimising cross-channel journeys and enhancing overall campaign performance through automatic optimisations. AI platforms like the one offered by SAP Emarsys help achieve the following:
- Improve engagement by targeting based on predictive segmentation and analytics
- Increase conversions, and AOV with AI-powered product recommendations
- Accelerate time to launch with pre-built, intelligent marketing automations
- Improve marketing productivity and scale campaign creation with AI-assisted content generation.
Brands are fast moving towards AI-powered strategies to manage the complexity of cross-channel interactions. AI removes the guesswork and streamlines processes, ultimately providing faster and smarter insights that translate to enhanced conversions.
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