AI in Marketing and Sales for 2021

AI Implementations in Marketing and Sales Underwent a Hype in the Last Year, Now It Is a Norm to Seek Digital Changes for Efficiency and Acceleration.

AI has been in our lives for a while, but its applications had been quite less before 2020 as compared to now. There were people who feared that bringing AI into the picture would trigger human replacement. Contrarily, there were also some who thought that AI would just take all the workload off their backs. In the following year, the doubts cleared off till a pretty good extent. AI in Maketing and Sales opened up various new job roles, and eased the wearing labor work.

In an interview with AiT, Ashley Kramer, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Sisense, mentioned some statistics related to the companies using aiding softwares for marketing and sales. “67% of respondents view BI and analytics programs as more or much more important to business operations now than before the pandemic. The results also demonstrate that marketing, operations, finance and HR are making the biggest inroads in their use of analytics and employing business intelligence to inform decision-making,” she stated regarding the BI analytics scenario in ANZ (Australia and New Zealand).

As we move forward into the 2021, Marketing and Sales AI will change the face of CRM and company branding forever. Many SMEs are still undergoing this change. Big e-commerce companies such as Amazon, and others like Starbucks and Nike too changed their service structure.

Benefits of AI, and Digital Marketing

In many cases, AI powered tools actually supported the original CRM model of many companies. AI tools help automate the work and reduce the efforts which consumed an lot of time. In sales, AI tools such as Salesforce and Zendesk helps in keeping track of the customer data. The data you receive from customers in turn personalizes their experience, with adequate AI tools. Such established softwares also predict based on the past leads and customer interaction with sales reps.

Digital Marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services, according to Wikipedia. Email marketing became facilitated because the agents now have the customer profiles ready with them. Personalizing through advertisements and became the new trend. Moreover, companies started dynamic pricing for their individual customers to give exactly what they want. It made the advertisement more contextual. Even the third party data was used properly in this way. Certain tasks such as opinion mining and sentiment analysis became automated. Introducing chat bots in customer care services saved a lot of time. It widened the scope of unleashing the human potential in other forms.

Top Softwares and Tools for Marketing and Sales

Choosing the right software for you depends on the task you want the AI to take up. For an all-rounder marketing software, go with HubSpot Sales platform or Salesforce, which offers CPQ functionality, sales analytics, customer insights, etc all in one place. Here are the top softwares used by companies, for various purposes.

• Customer Acquisition – Acquisio is the most renowned software for reaching out to new customers with many other features as well. Top brands such as Facebook, Bing, theTradeDesk use Acquisio or Acquisio Turing. SAP Hybris, Emarsis, Daisy are some other leading softwares.
• Customer Retention – The software named Einstein by SalesForce is well-known for retaining and engaging your customer with your product. It simplifies the usage of data and transactions of a specific customer. SmarterHQ, Clarifai are some of the other commonly used softwares.
• Marketing Analytics – Invoca, Lead Space, are the softwares which help in collecting the data and providing insights and analysis regarding the sales scenario of a company.
• Social Media – NetBase, AdRoll, BirdEye look into the social media marketing and management aspect of your company.
• Product Optimization and Pricing – To get the personalized product for your client and dynamic pricing, you may use Visenze, Salsify, inRiver softwares.

How do Companies Use These Softwares?

Google is a company which used AI in all the sectors of their company. They enhanced their video recommendations using AI, which brought in 50% more screen time. Its voice recognition technology claims 98% accuracy, appealing to people for using the virtual assistant more often.
Levi’s denim brand developed a virtual stylist to help the user find the perfect clothing for themselves.
Rare Carat uses IBM Watson to compare the prices of diamonds across the shops. It also has a chatbot to help with customer queries.

Apart from all this, people are discussing the associated potential risks. Many still believe that it is unethical to use PII for sales and marketing, and are against letting AI handle it. It all comes down to how humans deal with such problems, and always have a backup plan if any such incidences are to occur.