In today’s increasingly competitive online environment, impactful marketing campaigns can make all the difference between achieving sufficient exposure and falling behind rivals. With automation technology continuing to emerge, driven by the ongoing generative AI boom, brands can utilize next-generation processes to grow their presence effectively in their niche. 

This may be just as well because consumer demands are growing alongside the advent of new and powerful technologies.

Today, as much as 70% of consumers expect a more personalized experience from brands online, while 64% possess similar expectations when it comes to increasing their spending. 

McKinsey & Company

As a result, digital transformation (DX) has become an essential requirement for marketers rather than a tool for resource-rich firms. One core part of this will be process automation, which can help marketers overcome manual workflows and weaker customer engagement to produce a considerably higher return on investment (ROI) for their strategies. 

Marketing automation is set to offer countless benefits for businesses this year off the back of the generative AI (GenAI) boom and maturing technologies. Let’s explore four reasons why the marketing revolution will be driven by automation technology this year: 

1. Next-Generation Customer Insights

Data forms the foundation of marketing automation, and thanks to innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML), marketers can gain unprecedented access to powerful predictive customer insights. 

The utility of AI and ML means that automation tools can identify trends in both structured and unstructured datasets, leveraging next-generation customer insights. 

In addition, the ability of generative AI to deliver synthetic data to help bridge the collection gaps caused by GDPR means that marketers will have unprecedented access to intelligent insights to better understand customer needs and expectations. 

Using these automation tools, businesses can engage their customers more effectively, use actionable insights to shape their operations to match changing customer sentiment, and convert more leads arriving on-site. 

2. Leveraging the Power of Personalization

Marketing automation can help drive customer engagement on an unprecedented scale by implementing a level of personalization that human marketers find impossible to maintain across customer segments. 

Whether it’s personalized email campaigns, advertising, or on-site content, generative AI can utilize large customer datasets to create high-volume segmentation strategies that appeal to specific customers based on their preferences and perceived buying behaviors. 

This level of automation can also deliver comprehensive omnichannel experiences for users by utilizing data from browsing behavior and purchase history. This helps to shape more focused product advertising campaigns, special offers, and marketing content that align with the customer profile. 

Adopting the generative approach for personalized marketing means that leads can access personalized marketing materials regardless of their location and how niche their likes and dislikes may be. In interpreting the vast data customers leave online, brands can deliver truly omnichannel experiences through their websites, social media profiles, and integrated apps. 

To illustrate this approach, we can look at the curated content already offered by platforms that utilize machine learning. 

Netflix uses its home screen to offer curated content that even changes the thumbnail of shows it recommends based on the user’s viewing habits. 

With the emergence of LLMs and machine learning, brands can now have their on-site content generated in real-time as different leads navigate their way through its pages–opening the door to a level of personalization that was simply impossible to deliver only a matter of months ago. 

3. The Age of Dynamic Pricing

Expanding on autonomous personalized content through generative AI, brands can also utilize autonomous product pricing to help cater more dynamically to leads. This would offer a product price that’s dependent on the perceived level of interest from the lead. 

This can be delivered within a pre-determined price range by the brand and empowers marketers to match the company’s expectations alongside the level of opportunity available for the customer profile. 

Dynamic pricing can take several forms and also includes web scraping tools that monitor the price of competitor products to ensure that stores always feature a pricing structure that’s appealing enough to leverage conversions. 

Using robotic process automation (RPA), the AI can interpret different competitor prices and cross-check them with the brand’s pricing against established permissible ranges set by marketers to automatically increase or decrease the cost of a specific product or service. 

This helps to alleviate the necessity of regular human price audits while preventing brands from losing out over long periods before manually adjusting prices to undercut their biggest rivals. 

4. Capitalizing on ROI

Automation can also help to drive marketing based on factors like customer lifetime value and the online and offline impact of investments in digital channels. 

Using analytics to measure the number of shop visitors drawn into stores and the impressions provided by various search campaigns, influencer campaigns, and online ads can help maximize ROI and deliver greater conversion rates for various segments. 

Automating ROI metrics can also help brands to manage payouts to influencers and manage vendors more effectively. 

Through unified analytics and AP automation, brands can automate affiliate payouts based on performance and the ability to meet predetermined goals among different affiliates. This helps maintain stronger relationships with influencers and other key third parties within marketing campaigns while ensuring that brands maximize their value for money in their respective marketing efforts. 

Embracing the Automation Revolution

Automation will play a major role in the future of marketing for brands throughout a range of industries. Driven by developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the quality of insights and real-time personalization available to strengthen campaigns’ impact cannot be overstated for SMEs and international enterprises alike. 

By taking advantage of these developing technologies today, businesses stand the best chance of stealing a march on their rivals and accessing leads in unprecedented ways. With this in mind, marketing automation is an emerging opportunity not to be missed.

©2024 DK New Media, LLC, All rights reserved.

Originally Published on Martech Zone: 4 Ways That AI and Automation Are Revolutionizing Marketing in 2024