Look, if you’re still on the fence about AI in marketing, here’s your wake-up call. The numbers don’t lie.
Amazon uses AI to figure out what customers want before they even know it themselves. Result? 35% of their total sales come from these predictions. Warby Parker built their entire customer experience around AI. Netflix? Their AI-powered recommendations drive 80% of everything people watch on the platform.
Pretty clear that AI works. The tricky part is knowing where to start for your specific business. That’s exactly what we’re covering here.
What AI Marketing Actually Means
AI Marketing is essentially the practical use of artificial intelligence in marketing strategies to drive better outcomes.
But AI for Marketing does more than just improve results. AI in Marketing handles boring repetitive tasks and helps you grow without hiring more people.
Every marketing team has three main jobs: getting new customers, keeping existing ones, and teaching them about your products. Most companies know what they should do. The problem is actually doing it.
AI’s going to change a lot of jobs (the BBC says maybe 300 million). But for marketers, it’s not about losing your job. It’s about getting better results.
The best marketing teams obsess over one key metric. For Netflix, that’s watch time. For online stores, it’s getting people to use their mobile app. Most companies boil this down to customer lifetime value (how much money each customer brings in over time).
Add AI to your marketing and you’ll spend less money, make more revenue, and stay ahead of competitors.
Building Your AI Marketing Plan
Your strategy needs two types of AI: generative AI and AI decision-making.
Generative AI exploded in 2022 with tools like ChatGPT. Marketers started using it to write ad copy, create images, and draft video scripts. But AI can do way more than generate content. It can make smart decisions that directly impact your results. That’s where AI decision-making comes in. You need both.
Every good AI strategy starts with data. More data means you can build and train AI models faster and more accurately.
Next, pick your north star metric (that one number that matters most). Netflix might pick watch time. Amazon might pick customer lifetime value. Your metric might change as your business grows, but you need to know what it is so AI can optimize for it.
Let’s get into specific ways to use AI in your marketing.
AI for Email Marketing
Every marketer knows email can be incredibly powerful and cheap. Small tweaks can massively boost open rates and clicks. The problem? Testing thousands of different emails, subject lines, images, and buttons takes forever and doesn’t scale.
AI lets you constantly experiment with subject lines, body text, buttons, and send times for each customer.
- Better open rates: AI analyzes past data to find subject lines that’ll grab attention. It might learn that emojis work great for younger people but formal language resonates with older folks.
- More clicks: AI customizes everything (tone, words, offers) to match what each person likes. If someone lives somewhere cold, they might see promotions for winter coats. Someone in a warm climate? Sunscreen and summer clothes instead.
- Top tools: AI for Marketing include Centripe AI Decisioning, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and Klaviyo.
AI for Content Marketing
Content marketing builds your authority, gets your brand noticed, and brings people to your website through search engines. Most content people know what works and what doesn’t. The issue? They’re stretched thin and waste time on tasks that don’t matter.
AI streamlines your content workflow (SEO keyword research, programmatic SEO, customer research) to keep everything relevant and accurate.
- Better engagement: Generate images and videos to make your content more interesting and keep people reading longer.
- Smart distribution: Automate when content goes out so it posts at the perfect time on each channel and gets reshared to boost engagement.
- Faster research: Find trending topics and gather data for content creation quickly. A fashion brand could discover seasonal trends like “eco-friendly winter wear” to guide their blog content.
- Top tools: Jasper, Grammarly, Copy.ai, and WriteSonic help automate content creation and optimization.
AI for Paid Advertising
Paid ads help you reach new audiences and target specific people with specific messages. If you can improve return on ad spend and cost per acquisition, you’ll increase revenue and profitability.
Most businesses only personalize superficially by grouping customers into broad segments. Results feel impersonal and don’t work well, killing conversions.
AI helps you test ad creative and target audiences to find winning campaigns without tons of manual work.
- Smarter ad placement: AI buys and places ads in real time to reach the right people at the right moment. An online store might target users who just browsed similar products on competitor sites.
- Better conversions: AI segments audiences more precisely and matches them with ads tailored to their preferences. A fitness brand might target athletes with high-performance gear while showing comfortable activewear to casual exercisers.
- Time savings: AI automates campaign creation, ad writing, and performance monitoring so you can focus on strategy.
- Top tools: Adcreative.ai and The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform automate ad creation and media buying.
AI for Personalization
Personalizing customer experiences matters for business success. McKinsey found that good personalization cuts customer acquisition costs in half and increases revenues 5 to 15%.
Most businesses only do surface-level personalization by grouping customers into broad segments. This feels generic and doesn’t work well, hurting conversions.
AI enables true one-to-one personalization. Instead of generic approaches where what’s “best for everyone” is actually best for no one, AI constantly learns and adjusts, delivering content optimized for each person through the right channel.
- Cross-selling and upselling: AI analyzes customer data to find opportunities to increase average order value by recommending related products. D2C companies often show special offers during checkout.
- Winning back customers: Re-engaging people who stopped buying involves analyzing behavior to craft targeted messages and offers. In travel, if someone frequently booked flights but stopped, a win-back strategy might include discounts on their most-searched destinations.
- Custom content: Dynamic content ensures users see the most relevant stuff. Netflix recommends shows and movies based on viewing history to create a more tailored experience.
- Product recommendations: Amazon excels at recommending products based on what you bought or browsed and what similar users liked.
- Top tools: Centripe AI Decisioning and Mutiny create personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints.
AI for Video Marketing
Video marketing depends on metrics like engagement (watch time) and click-through rate. But marketers often skip these because manual tasks like editing take forever. AI streamlines video editing so you can create more content and improve what’s working.
- Editing: AI speeds up video editing by removing filler words, assembling clips based on pacing, adjusting color grading, and reducing video noise.
- Transcripts and captions: AI analyzes audio and generates accurate transcripts or captions for accessibility and engagement.
- Stock footage: AI generates stock or B-roll footage to make videos more dynamic without buying expensive stock libraries.
- AI avatars: Give AI a script and it creates realistic “talking head” avatars that deliver the script in multiple languages.
- Top tools: Synthesia, Runway, and Veed.io offer AI-powered video creation and editing.
AI for Marketing Automation
Many marketing processes are repetitive and manual (moving data, sending messages, doing research, scheduling social posts). These tasks eat time that could go toward bigger initiatives.
AI handles tasks like sending outreach emails or setting up customer journeys and email flows. Beyond just automation, AI learns and improves these processes over time.
- Customer onboarding: AI creates highly personalized onboarding by tailoring flows to each person based on their interactions.
- Journey orchestration: AI designs tailored customer journeys across multiple channels with different content.
- Sales outreach: An AI agent might spot a company visiting your pricing page frequently, analyze their industry trends and pain points, then write a personalized email showing how your solution helps.
- Top tools: Centripe’s AI Decisioning and UnifyGTM automate personalized customer experiences and outbound sales.
No Spam. No calls. Unsubscribe anytime.
Final Thoughts
Technology’s changing fast as big tech companies race to dominate AI. Here’s the truth: AI won’t replace marketers. Marketers using AI will replace marketers who don’t.
Many marketers worry about AI because lots of platforms work like black boxes with no visibility into how decisions get made. This matters when you’re implementing AI for your specific needs.
Frameworks and original ideas will be the biggest differentiators in the AI age. Don’t fall in love with technology because today’s tech won’t be tomorrow’s tech. Fall in love with problems instead. Problems stay the same. Case in point: people used to stare at newspapers to avoid boredom, now they stare at smartphones.
Frequently Asked Questions
