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AI Key To Making First-Party Data Work

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered marketing technologies communicate with consumers and know what they want long before marketers do. It's not magic. The mathematical calculations wrapped in a bunch of data will become more important to marketers as technology advances. 

There is not enough information on how AI supports advertising -- just that it does, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told investors and analysts during Alphabet’s Q4 2021 and year-end earnings call. He said extensive AI investments continue to help the company lead in Search quality, as well as powering innovations beyond Search.

Those innovations span hardware and software. In the software on Google’s Pixel mobile phone, AI helps Live Translate detect whether a chat message is in a different language and automatically translates it in up to 48 languages.

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AI tools use data to understand the best ways to communicate with consumers, and then provide automated and personalized messages without relying on marketing.  

Coresight Research, which expects AI to become a core focus in digital marketing, explored the use of the technology by leveraging findings from a November 2021 Coresight Research survey of 165 U.S.-based executives.

This report, sponsored by AI-enabled technology provider Persado, shows how companies can leverage first-party data for a variety of marketing options like content generation, voice recognition, and customer segmentation.

AI supports an effective use for first-party data. More than three-quarters of survey respondents reported that effectively managing and analyzing first-party data is a “very important” or “extremely important” in the use of advanced technologies in digital marketing including AI -- making the effective use of first-party data one of the most critical factors for retailers when leveraging digital marketing technologies.

Organizations use first-party data insights to offer personalized recommendations to the customers, increase conversion rates and reduce customer-acquisition costs.

The survey found that 86.1% of respondents already use first-party data for marketing purposes. This elevates customer satisfaction and drives greater brand recognition, which in turn leads to improvements in the top line.

The top benefits include driving online sales, providing relevant information at the perfect time through the perfect channel; build brand recognition; generate create content; and drive, measure and qualify leads. Only 2.8% did not find a benefit.

When asked in which ways do survey participants use AI to improve customer satisfaction, 77.5% said through email personalization, 64% through AI chatbots, 60.7% through product recommendation, 46.1% through personalized ad targeting, 43.8% through dynamic pricing, and 37.1% through better identification of customer segment analysis.

Digital marketers use natural language processing (NLP), an AI-driven technology that interprets human speech or text using software, to generate content.

More than four in 10 survey respondents said they leverage NLP to generate content. AI helps marketers effectively target consumers by selecting the best words and phrases for every message that is being conveyed.

AI can help organizations to improve and enhance personalization efforts. Some 53.9% of respondents said they leverage AI or machine learning to offer a personalized experience to customers.

The five most significant ways that companies have experimented with AI include facial and voice recognition, 44.2%; personalization, 43%; NPL to generate content, 41.2%; improve customer segmentation and generate real-time offers, 35.3%; and promotions, 27.9%.

Some 36.4% of respondents use AI for creative content generation, with 35.8% planning to use AI for creative content generation within the next 12 months. About 21.2% plan to use it within the next three years, and 6.7% do not use it and have no plans to do so.

About 53.9% use AI or ML to offer a personalized experience to customers, and only 6.7% do not leverage or plan to leverage these advanced technologies. The survey also found that 74.5% of respondents agree or strongly agree that using AI helps organizations manage challenges related to offering personalized customer experiences.

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