How AI fuels marketing & sales: customer intelligence and segmentation

How well do you know your customers and prospects? Good enough to maximize your chance of conversion by providing them with the right messaging at the right time, via the right channel? What about calling in the help of artificial intelligence to boost customer acquisition, loyalty and profitability – and deploy your shrinking marketing & sales budgets wisely? Here’s how data can tell you who your customers and prospects really are.

Around 90% of marketing and sales tasks – from collecting leads and developing opportunities to closing deals – are still done manually and based on gut feeling. Not the most (cost-)effective way of acquiring and retaining customers, is it?

Sure, marketing people and sales reps know their customers to some extent. That knowledge, however, mainly exists in their heads or in their Outlook files – also when they travel, are on vacation, fall ill or leave the company. Moreover, knowing your clients ‘to some extent’ is not enough in today’s digital times – when costumers expect truly personalized messaging and offerings via their preferred channel, versus mass advertising and email blasts. Some customers may not even be worth your marketing efforts, as they hardly bring in any profit.

The key to unveiling your most valuable customers, personalizing your marketing and improving the customer experience? Let artificial intelligence activate the loads of marketing, transactional and financial customer data that is available through numerous sources!

Artificial intelligence is not totally new to marketing. For many years, companies have been separating their customers into ‘gold’, ‘silver’ and ‘bronze’ segments based on, for example, the revenue they generate. But revenue-based segmentations only use historical accounting figures and are not helping you focus on the behavior of your customers to secure future successes and profits. This is where AI comes in: AI can help you uncover the patterns within (un)structured data hidden in sources as varied as loyalty cards, cash registry systems, invoices, e-mail messages, social media posts, shopping carts and CMS and ERP systems – as a start for detailed segmentation and, consequently, true personalization.

Depending on the data you have, segmentation can be as general as gender and age or as complete as behavioral patterns based on characteristics like your clients’ payment history, the frequency of returns or complaints, the composition of their shopping carts, their preferred shopping day or moment, their favorite ways to engage or their profitability profiles. Once AI has segmented your customers using these insights, you’re ready to activate them and approach clients – and prospects – in line with their preferences, in a truly customer-centric way.

Whether you own a small boutique or e-shop, work as a freelancer or run the marketing team in a multinational: every organization has costumer data at its fingertips from which to distil interesting customer insights. These insights are no longer a nice-to-have; they are indispensable for successful sales and marketing!

So, there’s no need to wait until you’re “big enough” to invest in AI-driven sales & marketing. The best time to start is today and systematically expand as you go along: even the smallest piece of profile information or costumer data is useful to kick off your customer intelligence project and activate a customer-centric marketing approach. Very soon, you’ll see that your customers and prospects feel more valued and appreciated – and your marketing & sales budget will show an undeniable return on investment!

Interested in how AI can help you acquire and grow your customer base and profits? Get in touch with our AI team today! Schedule your half-day AI discovery and ideation workshop.