Guest post by Dhruv Mehta
It seems that every business today is talking about how AI (Artificial Intelligence) can impact data-driven customer marketing and brand loyalty.
Businesses have been quick to respond to its adoption, with 37% of them claiming to have implemented AI in some form. With over 80% of emerging technologies predicted to have AI foundations by 2021, it has truly come to the fore.
AI has opened up a lot of possibilities on the CX front, with over 40% of marketing and sales teams testifying to this by crediting their success to AI and ML (Machine Learning).
The biggest benefit of AI is that it allows businesses to make sense of humongous amounts of data in real-time. Brands can leverage its power to make effective use of this data to enable loyalty marketing and positively impact customer behavior.
4 Ways to Use AI to Improve Customer Loyalty
If you want your business to be a cut above the rest, you need to jump on the AI bandwagon. It is a great tool to enable user retention; doing it right could mean loyal customers for life. Here, we’ll look at four ways you can use it to improve customer loyalty.
1. Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is quite the tour de force, as research firm Aberdeen found that companies using it saw a 21% YoY growth in their organic revenue compared to an average of 12% for companies that didn’t. It helps companies harness customer data to predict future trends and inform the purchase behavior of customers.
Starbucks uses predictive analytics for its mobile app and loyalty card to collect and analyze customer data. With it, they built quite the mobile experience, processing data acquired through predictive analytics to send customers personalized messages.
2. Chatbots for Increased Engagement
According to Accenture, as many as 83% of organizations could be better served if they provided better in-person customer service.
This is where businesses can implement AI-powered chatbots to enable personalization for customers by automating answers to 80% of routine questions. This not only empowers customers and provides a better CX, but it also speeds up the turnaround time by 500% and results in a 66% reduction of operating costs on the part of businesses.
Image courtesy of Acquire
3. Personalized Recommendations for a Custom Experience
Personalization is so necessary today that almost 56% of consumers claim they would return to shop with a business only if it offered a personalized experience.
AI can greatly help supplement a personalized experience by helping to discover what customers need quickly. You can then use this data to tailor your services or product recommendations to them.
UK-based fashion company, Thread, is one example where AI works wonders. Thread’s AI algorithm uses customer data derived from quizzes and finds patterns to offer customized recommendations and provide data about personal style. Its implementation was so successful that the company saw a 79% YoY growth for the last three years.
4. Better Product Innovation
A vastly underexploited benefit of AI is for product innovation. Since AI can help you understand purchase behavior and interaction patterns of customers, why not use this information to design products more suited to them?
An excellent example of AI for product innovation is the high-end fashion retail brand, Tommy Hilfiger. In its project, Reimagine Retail, Tommy used AI research tools to uncover buyer trends to learn how customers viewed their products.
The company used NLP (Natural Language Processing), computer vision, and deep learning to analyze a huge database of visuals and text and identify the main themes in colors, patterns, styles, and silhouettes of their products. They then shared the findings with designers so that they could implement them while thinking about their next collection.
AI’s Future in Loyalty Marketing
Businesses are on the precipice of a tantalizing frontier. Fascinatingly, this could just be the start of it as AI adoption is poised to double economic growth rates across industries by 2035.
As AI develops and uncovers more exciting opportunities, business is going to take a more intelligent turn as marketers will be able to identify trends and implement smarter measures to improve customer experience.
Dhruv Mehta is a Digital Marketing Professional who works at Acquire and provides solutions in the digital era. In free time, he loves to write on tech & marketing. He is a frequent contributor to Tweak Your Biz. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
