Your Guide to AI Marketing Automation

AI marketing automation definition

AI marketing automation is leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms to automate and optimize marketing strategies and campaigns.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic among marketers from different industries. Among the senior marketers we surveyed, automating marketing processes is the second most cited use of AI. If you want to use AI for your marketing automation strategies, read on.

This blog post will discuss the following:

• What is AI marketing automation?
• AI vs. automation
• Benefits of using AI marketing automation
• Ways to use AI in marketing automation
• How to implement an AI marketing automation strategy

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What is AI marketing automation?

AI marketing automation leverages AI and machine learning algorithms to automate and optimize your marketing strategies and campaigns.

Using AI, you can process massive amounts of data and turn them into insights that will fuel your strategies. Meanwhile, marketing automation lets you streamline your marketing processes, making them more efficient.

With AI marketing automation, you create more efficient, effective, and personalized campaigns.

AI vs. marketing automation

AI and automation are not one and the same, though these terms are typically used interchangeably. Let’s define each term, so you can identify which technology and tools your business needs.

AI is a technology that simulates human intelligence to perform tasks humans can do, such as analyzing your campaign’s results. Using algorithms and deep learning, AI can analyze and interpret large amounts of data, and draw insights from them without the help of a human.

Meanwhile, marketing automation is a technology that handles repetitive marketing tasks, such as sending emails, assigning leads, and scoring leads. It handles tasks that need human intervention.

Benefits of using AI marketing automation

Fun fact: 90% of marketers in 35 countries used AI tools to automate customer interactions. AI-powered marketing automation provides several benefits:

• Streamlines your marketing processes
• Personalizes your customers’ experiences
• Optimizes your marketing campaigns
• Increases your return on investment (ROI)

Let’s go through each one:

Streamlines your marketing processes

Automating marketing processes is the second most popular benefit of AI among the senior marketers we surveyed. You can offload the repetitive tasks from your marketing team members so that they can focus on other objectives.

For example, let’s say you own multiple automobile dealerships. AI-powered marketing automation can:

• Process a lead’s demographic and psychographic information: Instead of your marketing staff manually going through a lead’s information, AI can analyze demographics and psychographics, identifying the best dealership nearby.
• Score them according to their online and offline interactions with your business: Did a lead visit a particular product page multiple times in a month? AI can identify the vehicle models your lead has been eyeing.
• Assign them to the most suited sales rep in your team: Finally, once AI has processed a lead’s info, it can assign them to the sales rep who can most likely build a rapport with them and close the sale.

Personalizes your customers’ experiences

AI-powered automation lets you run personalization campaigns, which 90% of marketers believe significantly contribute to profitability. Data and algorithms enable AI to send personalized content and emails to your prospects and customers.

For example, let’s say you’re in the business of pet products. You send out weekly newsletters to your subscribers. To increase your newsletter’s open rate and click-through rate, you send out personalized newsletters through the help of AI marketing automation.

AI marketing automation enables you to segment your subscribers. It can help you categorize your subscribers according to their pets, pets’ page, products, and offers they’re interested in. You will only send them relevant content, thus increasing customer satisfaction.

Optimizes your marketing campaigns

AI can process data from various sources, enabling you to draw out insights and inform your marketing campaigns.

Which marketing channels are effectively driving high-quality leads? AI algorithms can help you answer this question and allocate more resources to these channels.

If you have marketing campaigns that deliver results below your expectations, AI can help you drill down through your data, uncover trends, and adjust your strategy.

You can also use AI and marketing automation to better understand your target audience through lead enrichment. Using AI to process your lead info, you can effectively nurture your leads to conversion.

Increases return on investment (ROI)

Because AI-powered marketing automation provides data-backed insights and a streamlined process, it can drive revenue growth and improve ROI. With the help of AI and marketing automation, you can identify new growth opportunities.

What makes your customers happy and satisfied with your business? AI-powered marketing automation enables you to find out, so you can increase customer retention, consequently growing your revenue. Fun fact: A 5% increase in customer retention can double your business revenue!

Ways to use AI in marketing automation

Now that you know the benefits of AI marketing automation, let’s go through its use cases:

1. Lead scoring and nurturing
2. Marketing channel optimization
3. Personalization
4. Email automation
5. Predictive analytics

Let’s dive into each one:

1. Lead scoring and nurturing

Which among your leads are closer to purchase and must be prioritized? AI can quickly analyze lead data and aid you with lead scoring.

With marketing automation, you can create a flow that automates email nurturing campaigns. Automated lead nurturing can increase your conversion rates, because you guide your leads through the next stages of the sales pipeline until they ultimately convert.

Our user-friendly customer relationship management platform (CRM), Nutshell, can automate your personal outreach to prospects and leads. It also has a host of other automation features that guide your leads through your sales pipeline so that you can close more deals!

2. Marketing channel optimization

Which among your marketing channels is driving revenue? Which ones are delivering revenue below your expectations? AI and marketing automation can identify your effective channels, where you can allocate more resources.

In addition, if you want to find out how you can optimize your campaigns per channel, use AI to sift through your data to discover emerging trends. You can then make data-backed decisions to improve your strategies.

Do you need to nurture your leads across multiple channels? You can use AI and marketing automation tools to unify your data and perform omnichannel marketing.

Our IBM Watson-powered marketing platform, MarketingCloudFX, enables you to launch omnichannel marketing strategies. In addition, it automates marketing attribution and optimizes your ad spend.

MarketingCloudFX also discovers user journey trends, so you can pinpoint the customer touchpoints that drive leads to conversion and which touchpoints need optimization.

3. Personalization

If you have thousands of customers and thousands more prospects, it’s impossible to create personalized experiences for each one. With marketing automation and AI, personalizing customer experiences is a breeze.

You can segment your customers and leads by training AI algorithms to automatically analyze customer data and behaviors, and segment your audience accordingly. You can then write personalized messages for each customer segment.

For example, let’s say you’re in the business of virtual fitness. You can personalize your homepage’s featured fitness program based on your site visitor’s interest. If they’re a new member on a free trial, their homepage looks different from an existing paying customer.

4. Email automation

Just like personalization, sending out emails to your prospects and customers can take a significant amount of time and resources.

With AI and marketing automation, you can create flows that automate sending out welcome emails or cart abandonment emails. In addition, AI can also analyze your email campaign’s performance so you can optimize your next one.

Our AI-powered marketing growth platform, MarketingCloudFX, can automate lead nurturing workflows so you can close more deals. It can also create target segments and analyze your email marketing performance.

5. Predictive analytics

Your customer’s needs evolve, and these shifts show through their behaviors and interactions with your business. Predictive analytics uses data to predict trends and events. With historical data, it forecasts potential scenarios that can guide you with your strategies.

Using AI for predictive analytics enables you to spot emerging trends and customer needs, so you can create marketing campaigns that address these new pain points.

How to implement an AI marketing automation strategy

It’s important to identify your goals before implementing an AI marketing automation strategy. What do you want to achieve with your AI marketing automation?

Do you need to streamline your marketing processes by automating certain parts? Or do you need to generate more leads and understand your target audience by processing customer data?

Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to:

1. Identify the AI marketing automation tools that can help you achieve your goals.
2. Create a plan detailing how you’ll integrate your AI marketing automation tools with your existing martech tools.
3. Train your team members for AI marketing automation.

Our digital marketing campaigns impact the metrics that improve your bottom line.

See Our Approach

WebFX has driven the following results for clients:

$10 billion

in client revenue

24 million

leads for our clients

7.14 million

client phone calls

Carry out AI-powered marketing automation strategies with WebFX

AI marketing automation can streamline your marketing processes and accelerate your business growth. If you need help creating an AI-powered automation strategy, consider teaming up with WebFX.

A full-service digital marketing agency with over 28 years of experience, WebFX has helped businesses in 200+ industries to generate over 24 million leads and $10 billion in revenue through our data-backed, AI-powered strategies.

Our proprietary software, MarketingCloudFX, offers a suite of AI-powered marketing automation tools that lets you personalize customer experiences, automate lead nurturing, and analyze your campaigns. MarketingCloudFX can drive up to 20% increase in ROI.

Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our AI services!