Over the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has changed consumers’ lives, transformed technology and business, and helped marketers reach audiences in more powerful ways. By 2035, AI has the potential to increase economic growth rates by 1.7% across all industries and increase productivity by 40% or more, according to “How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovation,” a study by Accenture Research and Frontier Economics. AI even factors into content creation, with 20% of all content expected to be written by machines by 2018, according to Daryl Plummer, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner Fellow. Marketing has been heavily transformed by the AI explosion, and marketers have, in turn, benefited from increased productivity brought about by the technology. AI technology is being used to gather customer insights across multiple sectors, from financial services to retail to CPG. AI’s uses in marketing are seemingly endless. The technology has improved the precision and personalization with which brands interact with consumers across channels and campaigns.
How AI in marketing can deliver powerful results for you now
The many applications of AI in marketing
Personalization
AI allows marketers to be proactive by predicting user behavior and churn and providing the right incentives at the right time to “win back” customers before they lose them. Segments can be identified in real time based on the preferences, interests and affiliations consumers make on social media and branded platforms every second. Automation makes communication with consumers seamless from touch point to touch point, be it via a welcome e-mail, thank-you push notification or order-tracking chat bot.
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Achieve your business’ full potential with the power of AI
How bots empower marketers
Chat-bots will be there to answer customers’ questions, help them purchase a product or service and increase customer loyalty. Bots built into digital assistants and mobile phones give marketers the ability to predict customer behaviors and preferences, and soon they will be an integral part of the digital experience. By using them, marketers can forge stronger relationships with customers.
AI also is prevalent in messaging apps, which have seen usage soar in recent years. More than 4 billion users are executing tasks from within messaging apps. Microsoft Teams, a chat-based digital workspace in Office 365, integrates bots, including SurveyMonkey (an online survey tool), MailClark (a communication tool that sends and receives e-mails, Facebook messages, tweets and Twitter DMs), Statsbot (an analytics tool) and Dribbble (an online design community). Bots make it easier for marketing professionals to get updates on workflows, survey their team, query sales data and share praise with teammates.
Battling the data deluge
Artificial intelligence in every day work
n their everyday work, marketing teams can use AI-enabled features of Office 365 like PowerPoint Quick Starter, powered by the Bing Knowledge Graph, which provides carefully curated outlines for any topic, including recommendations on information to include, categories to consider and associated images tagged with Creative Commons licenses.
PowerPoint Designer is another helpful tool, which recommends professional design options for different types of slides in the presentation. Another one is Morph, which creates cinematic motions for images and 3-D objects making the presentation more visually impactful. Another AI feature, Word Researcher, allows marketers to find material related to any topic from the web through Bing Knowledge Graph and add it, plus its properly-formatted citation, to a Word document in one click, which is specifically useful while working on campaign strategies and concepts.
PowerPoint designer and morph
Because of AI, customers will see and interact with more customized, personalized messages and ads on social media and online. They’ll shop, order food or search for information via a voice assistant. They’ll also be recognized and marketed to when they enter stores through facial recognition. This technology will help consumers to get better, more tailored offers and spend less time searching for what they need and help marketers raise the profile of their brands in the minds of consumers.
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