In 2022, we anticipate deeper use of AI powered technologies: Vartika Verma

For Vartika Verma, Global VP, Marketing, Yellow.ai, the pandemic has transformed the way customers behave and subsequently resulted in a sea change in the emerging trends. According to McKinsey, during this time, consumers embraced five years’ worth of digital adoption in a matter of merely eight weeks. No doubt this has opened up a host of new opportunities for marketers the world over. Looking into 2022 and beyond, here are a few pivotal trends that we believe have the potential to redefine the industry in lasting ways. 

Automated Customer Engagements 

Artificial Intelligence has changed the way several industries function today, and will increasingly power the efforts of advertising and marketing for brands across industries. Automated AI-powered conversational digital media solutions will empower marketers and digital agencies with new and amplified strategies to help attract and engage consumers, gather new data driven insights, shorten sales cycles and drive substantial outcomes across channels including web, and voice chat. 

One such solution in the market is Intelligent Virtual Assistants, which holds the solution to many existing challenges in traditional marketing. Among the myriad of problems it is capable of solving, some are increased responsiveness to queries, cross-selling and up-selling and providing customised and nuanced interactions based on the available contextual and environmental data. 

This is already being found to be successful in use cases like WhatsApp Commerce and Instagram Messaging Automation. It has enabled brands to deliver a complete customer experience from brand discovery to after sales support, leading to faster conversions and ultimately a drop in cart abandonment (25% in our experience for WhatsApp). Instagram being a visual platform offers brands a big opportunity to not only drive greater brand engagement, but also generate leads, drive transactions and commerce, through automated messaging integrated into the platform. 

Increase of multi-touch points, online to offline and offline to online

Be it on mobile, web, email, or social media, consumers today are omnipresent. As a consequence, the expectation on brands to be everywhere and provide them with a seamless omnichannel experience and engagement is high. In today’s hyper-connected and always-on market environment, for marketers to leave out a platform that shows maximum traction, especially in the D2C segment, is to risk missing out on potential interactions/ conversations with customers. 

Moving forward, the key priorities for brands will be to keep-up with customers as they hop across multiple channels and platforms. For instance, integration of marketing initiatives through various media including print, TV, and digital ads by allowing customers to scan a QR Code and engage with them on a communication channel of their choice, on-demand, and at scale will be the way forward for ensuring CX agility and customer retention. 

The Metaverse is here

Among the newer emerging technologies, each more imaginative than the previous, metaverse is one – a unique, immersive virtual environment, populated by virtual avatars, representing real people. This video-game-like reality is taking over the internet. Marketers and brands that leverage the metaverse early are likely to see greater returns in the future. While the adoption of the metaverse is fast approaching, brands augmenting their CX strategies with conversational AI will be able to create the metaverse more immersive, personalised, and nuanced, as Conversational AI enables them to create advanced, human-like virtual avatars that deliver more interactive experiences for customers. 

With the passage of time, the fact that human interactions and transactions will go digital first is obvious! Those that are quick to adapt and adopt these changes not only stay ahead of the curve, but also discover and learn new things that ultimately broaden the spectrum of possibilities within any industry or vertical. In 2022, we anticipate that deeper use of AI powered technologies and automation will open up an entire universe of possibilities for the marketing and advertising industry.