How Artificial Intelligence can be a game changer for mobile marketing – Part 2

With today’s consumers increasingly becoming mobile first, incorporating AI technology with a brand’s mobile marketing strategy will be the key to creating value, delighting customers and gaining significant competitive edge. 

Adgully’s two-part in-depth report seeks to explore how AI has been disrupting the mobile marketing space. Part 1 of the report focused on the disruptive aspects of AI, the cost implications of adopting AI, and the pitfalls to avoid. Part 2 of the report explores how brands can leverage AI, especially in the mobile space, the ways in which brands are adopting AI, the skill sets required and more. 

The AI advantage for brands 

Prasad Shejale, Co-Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital:
“By the end of 2017, there were more than 291.6 million smartphone users in India. Currently we are on track to see 330 million smartphones users by the end of 2018 and 490.9 million users by 2020, as per a report by eMarketer. Going by these numbers, there is no denying that smartphones are firmly entrenched in our lives. Each smartphone device is like a consumer’s personal diary that contains all the information on their interests, their spending habits, their content consumption patterns, etc. Leveraging this data for personalisation will be the difference between the brands that lead from the front and those that just about survive.  

There are several examples of popular brands tapping the potential of AI to build preference among their consumers. The best case study would probably be that of Google. It has been estimated that Google spent anywhere between $20 billion and $30 billion on AI in 2016 for several implementations, including personalised video content on YouTube. YouTube increased the average watch time by 50 per cent by tuning video recommendations using AI. Another example would be from beauty brand Sephora, which has a chatbot giving out beauty advice based on data collected from a quiz about consumer preferences. The chatbot provides a mix of content and product suggestions to create a subtle marketing approach.”  

Rajat Mehta, Senior President, Marketing & Corporate Communications, Yes Bank:
“Benefits are numerous – right from targeting, insights, including learning from your post campaign evaluation. Initially, for brands artificial intelligence was just a novelty, but in just a span of couple of years it has come a long way to become an integral part of the marketing functionality. 

At Yes Bank, we have used AI to be able to identify fraudulent behaviour on our marketing campaign landing pages real-time and also to identify patterns and sources of such activities with the help of AI. This has definitely helped us make informed decisions on spends and in making prudent media platform choices.  

AI can scan massive amounts of customers’ data, texts, phrases, and questions, to reveal hidden patterns, solutions, and opportunities in the data with impressive speed and accuracy. It can learn from customer interactions constantly to create more tailored experiences for them and make their mobile experience efficient. 

To get better ROI on spends, at Yes Bank we used Adobe Media Optimizer (AMO) in addition to the manual optimisation on our campaigns. The tool uses machine learning, builds predictive modelling and optimises the entire media mix and pushes the money on best performing channels. We are seeing savings of more than 20 per cent on our campaigns. 

Another case for us is our Acquisition Chabot on Facebook. It has helped us increase our conversion by 30 per cent and ability to contact leads by 50 per cent compared to lead gen ads and website conversion ads on Facebook.” 

Priyanka Shah, Senior Director - Mobile, Isobar:
“Consumers today want to spend as little time as possible on choosing from the seemingly endless number of offerings in the market. Hence, precise messages that convey value and elicit a positive response from the consumer are needed. A combination of AI, Machine Learning, and data analytics can enable marketers to do impressive things. 

With the capabilities of AI, brands and marketers can offer specially curated content to each individual customer that focuses on solving a specific problem for them. Such a customer-first approach to marketing can thus result in enhanced KPIs, better decision making, more leads, and more conversions for the brand. Netflix has been doing this effectively by curating content and watch list based on the viewing patterns of the user, thus making the complex journey of content selection much simpler. We at Isobar are executing some campaigns for leading lifestyle and beauty brands, where we are delighting our audience by offering virtual makeup trials powered by AI and facial recognition. Similarly, for some of our lifestyle brands we are replacing the mundane landing page with chabots to ease customer journeys and deliver effectiveness. The first step towards AI would be simply replacing the traditional website/ mobile landing pages by a more personalised chatbot driven experience, which help the audience get the right information to make purchase driven decisions rather than them getting lost in a pool of information within websites.” 

Some brands are adopting AI via: 

Push notifications: A highly personalised message conveyed through notifications can elicit the desired response from the targeted consumer in a much shorter amount of time. 

AI-based image recognition: Images are powerful engagement tools, and with AI, they can be used as a vital source of information to assist marketers with smarter decision-making. Image recognition software can help brands identify consumer behaviour and trends and gather useful insights from them. 

Multi-sensory conversations: AI and Machine Learning are enabling brands to create and facilitate a highly personalised customer experience through advanced tools such as chatbots and voice recognition-based virtual assistants. Such conversational user-interfaces make customer interaction with brands more seamless. Microsoft, for instance, is experimenting with ways to go beyond voice, using sight, sound, touch, and a consumer’s gestures to learn more about their needs and expectations. 

Voice recognition is the most commonly existing personalisation. Our personal voices are recognised by the apps over a period of time. When our voice is registered by the app, the apps respond to our various voice commands according to our personal preference. Amazon Prime has already started implementing AI by allowing platforms like Amazon Echo to work in close coordination with this particular logistics and retail service. 

Building the skill sets of marketers 

Prasad Shejale: “According to Salesforce, 51 per cent of marketing leaders state that they currently use AI in some scope, with 27 per cent planning to start using it in the next two years. However, even as incredibly advanced, AI has not yet mastered the art of combining human IQ with emotional quotient. AI can aid many human functions and act as a faster feedback process for brands, hence transforming the modern marketing landscape into a futuristic and exciting playing field.  

Having said that, to effectively leverage AI, marketers need to equip themselves with knowledge on data analytics. They need to be able to understand how it works, interpret insights and establish robust measurement mechanisms. Strong technical skills will be indispensible in an age of technology disruption. In addition to this, it goes without saying that creativity and the continuous learning will go a long way in creating the best professionals in the industry.” 

Rajat Mehta: “Job description of marketing manager has come a long way and expectation is not just to be a marcom professional, but also be a ‘martech’ professional. With technology getting increasingly entrenched with marketing, the role of a marketer becomes very crucial to harness both the power of technology, say in this case AI, and understand how to enhance consumer experience to make interactions more human. Simply adding AI to the organisation’s Martech efforts won’t solve anything. It will, in fact, become more complex and costly for companies to build self-driven marketing campaigns without training marcom professionals thoroughly on relevant technology, evolving platforms as well as application of marcom tenets in fast changing circumstances.”  

Priyanka Shah: “AI mindset is a shift in the way we approach problem solving. AI must learn through mistake making and in various iterations of a task over time while gathering information from a larger data set. This process requires visionary talent with a relatively high tolerance for both risk and failure. AI professionals need the creativity to imagine how the technology can be applied, paired with the analytical acumen to measure results and determine success over time. Analytical skills, data proficiency and digital savvy are critical in AI professionals. However, organisations also need talent to innovate, to visualise AI solutions, to test multiple iterations and evangelise across departments.”

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