How to use AI in your e-commerce marketing

AI has opened up a world of opportunity for many businesses. Any e-commerce marketer that wants, can now reach the right customer with the right product at the perfect time. All with just a few clicks.

Creating content, generating new ideas, and personalizing marketing campaigns has never been easier.

But what specific AI and machine learning tools can you use to accelerate your e-commerce business? In this blog, we will go over everything you need to know about e-commerce marketing and how AI can boost your business.

‍

What is AI for e-commerce marketing?

Artificial intelligence has become a  game changer in the world of marketing. But what can AI exactly do when it comes to e-commerce marketing?

AI and machine learning are often interchangeable when talking about marketing, and normally refers to intelligent algorithms that over time learn more about your business and customers, allowing you to automate processes, analyze data and deliver personalized experiences.

Often are AI, when we are talking for e-commerce,  easy-to-use tools made to make marketers' and e-commerce owners' lives easier, not harder. This means no data scientists are involved and most tools are plug-and-play.

‍

‍

What kind of AI features can you use in your e-commerce marketing?

There are a few key features that can optimize your marketing output.
Most AI tools are focusing on one of two things:

Personalization: This is where an AI tries to learn as much about your customers so you can personalize and predict their behaviour.

Generative AI: This is where you create content using AI, such as creating text and creatives by prompting (telling the AI what to create).

Some of these personalization and generative AI features are:

‍

Predictive analytics

A big part of marketing is knowing when your customer is ready to buy and where they are most likely to click on your ads.

Predictive analytics or sometimes called predictive AI is a way to analyze your customers and makes predictions about their behavior.

ChatGPT and generative AI

ChatGPT and other generative AI tools such as Midjourney and Jasper.AI are AI tools that can help create content fast. This can also help your ad copy and ideation phase so you can make even more creative and better-converting ads, at an even faster pace.

The way they work is that you prompt the tools by writing what they should create.

Personalized segmentation and product recommendations

Personalization in marketing is crucial for any marketing campaign's success. You always want your content to be as relevant and personalized for your audience.

AI and machine learning can help by segmenting your customers into different audiences such as win-back, churning, ready-to-buy, and more.

Combine this with product recommendations where an AI shows your customers most likely to buy products and you can reach out with highly personalized emails.

‍

‍

How to know if your e-commerce is ready for AI

AI can help any e-commerce marketer that wants to automate more of their marketing while also converting more customers.

Using generative AI such as ChatGPT can help you with creating content and predictive AI can help you with personalizing your marketing campaigns and reaching your target audience and the perfect time.

Together, this means you can create content faster and target the right audience with the content you are creating.

So if you’re business is thinking about wanting to get more out of their channels such as email marketing and paid advertising, we strongly recommend looking into using more AI.

‍

‍

We quickly got great ML recommendations on our email segments and custom audiences for Facebook to increase our top-line sales. - Emmanuel Abeng, MessyWeekend

‍

‍

‍

How does a Customer Data Platform (CDP) work together with an AI?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) that utilizes AI and machine learning is an incredibly powerful combination.

The reason why, is that a Customer Data Platform can collect all your e-commerce data, which an AI then can sort and analyze.

Giving your AI as much data from as many different sources as possible increases its accuracy.

Combining all your data from all your different tools: CMS (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento), Email marketing (ActiveCampaign, Drip, Klaviyo, Mailchimp), Ad providers (Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads), and more.

Giving an AI a complete overview of all your customers’ data, allows it to give incredibly precise predictions. 

Some metrics and predictions Custimy offers through its platform are:

• Propensity to buy: This metric shows how likely each customer is to purchase in the next 30 days
• Probability of churn: This metric shows how likely each customer is to churn in the next 30 days
• Predicted yearly revenue: How much revenue is each customer generating this year.

‍

But how do these metrics from a Customer Data Platform differ from other AI metrics?

One big reason why a metric such as a propensity to buy differs from lets say Klaviyo’s next expected order date is the amount of data it is based on.

A Customer Data Platform such as Custimy’s has much more detailed insights of each customer because so many different channels and tools are integrated into the platform. These insights and metrics are all shown in a Single Customer View (SCV).

‍

‍

What marketing strategies can AI help you with

There are many facets of marketing that an AI data platform can help you with. By powering your entire customer journey with AI, you’re able to increase revenue and cut costs:

Customer acquisition:

Acquire better customers that have a higher chance of being lifelong customers. Your acquisition strategy could be using AI segmentation for your paid audiences.

‍

Retention marketing

Retain customers by reaching out to them with personalized marketing campaigns. Email marketing, SMS marketing, and better retargeting ads with AI.

‍

Email marketing:

Give your email channel a boost through personalized and automatic flows. Set up email flows that convert, retain, build trust, and overall increases your customer lifetime value (CLV).

‍

‍

Powering your email marketing with AI

One channel that you can improve with AI is your email marketing. There are two main objectives when sending out emails, we want them to be as personalized as possible and we want them to convert as much as possible.

‍

By incorporating AI and machine learning into your email marketing you are able to unlock new and powerful ways to engage with your email leads

‍

Personalized email content:

Tailoring your email content to each recipient is a powerful way to increase conversion and brand loyalty.

AI enables you to show product recommendations to every single customer, increasing the likelihood of them converting.

You will also be able to deliver more tailored and personalized messages, which will help increase trust and loyalty.

‍

Automated email flows

A big part of email marketing is automating as much as possible, so you can sit back and get a steady stream of revenue generated from your flows.

By using predictive segmentation you are able to set up email flows such as:

‍

• Win-back flows: Enroll former customers into flows with the goal of winning them back
• Likeliness of purchasing: Enroll customers that have a high likelihood of purchasing so you ensure that they convert
• Stop churn: Enroll customers with a high likelihood of churning and convert them with a discount code.
• Favorite product flow: Enroll customers into flows with the sole purpose of converting them by selling them their favourite products.

Personalize your content and use these flows to make your email marketing create up to 45% of all your revenue. Custimy enables you to create these email flows and much more.

‍

‍

‍

Implementing AI with a Customer Data Platform

Using AI to create better marketing campaigns might sometime seem like a tall task. But a great way to start being more data-driven is to first integrate your e-commerce stack with a Customer Data Platform such as Custimy.

Custimy then enables you to get predictive analytics and ai segments that you can then use in your marketing.

This will give you new growth opportunities and allow you to not only increase revenue but also cut costs with better targeting.

Thinking about using predictive analytics and AI in your marketing? Book a demo with Custimy today and hear more.

‍