• by Jess Nelson , May 19, 2016

IBM announced an expansion to its Marketing Cloud services on Tuesday that includes cognitive technologies to help marketers strengthen consumer engagement. 

IBM has premiered a new cloud and cognitive solution to its marketing cloud ecosystem that allows marketers to further personalize advertising and marketing communications. The technology giant announced the news at its annual Amplify 2016 ecommerce conference in Tampa, Florida.

Powered by Watson, IBM is integrating machine-learning technologies that learn more about customers over time. With this data-driven and predictive capability, IBM marketers can deliver more relevant messaging to individual consumers based on their preferences.

IBM also expanded its Real-Time Personalization product with a Cognitive Rule Advisor, a new feature that comprehends that customers’ preferences change over time. Understanding this, IBM can suggest alternative messaging to be shared with each individual visitor.

As part of the IBM Marketing Cloud, IBM marketers can segment consumers by how they are responding to messaging -- and by learning over time, the machine-learning algorithms can recommend more precise and relevant content as a customer’s digital relationship with a brand continues.  

Additional features include segmented, demographic attributes that discovers what types of customers respond best to what channel and what messaging. IBM’s Performance Insights further automatically monitors and measures the success of advertising and marketing campaigns in real-time, giving marketers a holistic view of campaigns and alerting them when a particular message or campaign is not performing well. 

"Every customer is unique and has little tolerance for businesses that fail to recognize their specific interests, wants and needs," states Harriet Green, general manager of Watson IoT, Commerce and Education at IBM. "Today we continue to invest in building our portfolio which includes new cognitive solutions that will help completely transform how companies serve each customer. Businesses will be able to quickly understand, reason and learn from every customer interaction -- and put that knowledge to use to uncover new opportunities from insights."

New cognitive computing solutions are also now available within IBM’s Commerce Insights, a real-time inventory stream for retailer to review how products are selling.

IBM also revealed a new integration with Sprinklr on Wednesday, an Enterprise social technology company.  Sprinklr’s Experience Cloud is now compatible with IBM’s Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) available in its Marketing Cloud. IBM marketers can now leverage Sprinklr to connect data sources, including ecommerce, CRM and payment processing data, to automatically trigger segmented messaging across social media sites including Twitter and Facebook.

“The proliferation of digital channels has made it extremely difficult for large brands to know their customers and deliver a personal, human experience,” states Erik Ober, AVP Paid Media and Audience Management at Sprinklr. “That human experience starts with a unified view of the customer. With Sprinklr and IBM, marketers can connect their customer data with social insights, alongside e-commerce, CRM, payment processing, e-mail, and more, to create a more unified view of their customer.”