The excitement around AI over the past year is largely focused on AI that you can interact with and see in action. In the marketing world, that means Generative AI tools for text & image generation and smart personalization.

But a complete marketing strategy involves other flavors of artificial intelligence and machine learning that are less visible but no less powerful — and can make the difference of whether or not your Generative AI even works.

Gen AI is only as good as the data that powers it. And since customer data is notoriously complex, it takes a different AI process to unify it into accurate, comprehensive profiles that can feed your Generative AI tools to get the best results. 

Customer data tools can use AI to power critical processes behind the scenes, including data unification, insights, and predictions, so you have the answers to the questions “Who are my customers? What did they do? And what should I do next?”

In a world where the same Generative AI tools for activation are available to everyone, the data you feed into your Gen AI systems will be a key competitive differentiator, since it determines the quality of the output. In short, it’s not enough to have AI tools at the last mile — it needs to be part of your approach from the first step.

Let’s take a look at these other forms of artificial intelligence so you can get a sense of all the tools at your disposal for next-level marketing in the era of AI.

AI for unifying data: build the most intelligent customer profile to power downstream systems

Underpinning all your Generative AI efforts there needs to be a foundation of customer profiles that are accurate, up-to-date, and reflective of a customer’s whole relationship with your brand. This is critical — without a quality data input, all the other analysis and activation risks being off target and ineffective.

The tricky part is that unifying customer data is hard due to its scale and complexity. The old method of rules-based matching is rigid and breaks down when data doesn’t match perfectly. The right AI models, on the other hand, can find the connections between data points to tell if they belong to the same person, even if there’s a degree of uncertainty.

When your customer data tools can use AI to unify every touchpoint in the customer journey from first interaction to last purchase, the result is a comprehensive customer profile that tells you who your customers are and fuels accurate analysis and personalization.

What does this let you do?

• Build rich and complete omnichannel profiles by using advanced ML to connect data from any source
• Identify the best way to engage with customers via easily surfaced opt-status and channel preference
• Democratize data access by delivering role-based permissions to customer identities and PII
• Ensure data transparency by getting insights into how and why our AI merged your customer data
• Power downstream AI technology with clean and accurate customer data as the fuel for better results 

All the marketers at all the brands will have access to the same generative AI tools — the fuel you input will become your differentiator.

AI for generating insights: Precisely map every customer’s lifecycle

Marketing strategy needs to be based on insights and patterns, not on intuition. AI models in your unified customer view make this easier by connecting current customer behavior and purchase preferences to fuel strategic decision-making. The AI analysis quickly surfaces a greater number of customer attributes to make for a richer understanding of customer behavior.

What does this let you do?

• Save time campaign planning with insights that identify key moments in your customers’ experience
• Understand how customers become cross-brand shoppers using multi-brand insights
• Expand omnichannel purchasers by understanding buying patterns across channels
• Design product growth strategies by uncovering customers’ hidden product preferences
• Optimize marketing investment by using AI to surface each segment’s revenue potential
• Accelerate data exploration using natural LLMs and Gen AI                    

AI for predicting customer behavior: Capture unrealized demand

Leading brands need to proactively engage with customers in a way that’s unique to each customer. AI-powered predictive models and product affinity scores can precisely target customers with the next best buying experience.                

What does this let you do?

• Increase customer lifetime value by targeting high-value customers with precision using the predictive CLV model
• Accelerate cross-selling by acting on AI-powered product affinity scores
• Retain more revenue by intervening with churning customers at the right place in their journey
• Optimize conversion with intelligent event propensity scores that engage customers likeliest to act
• Acquire new customers with machine learning that identifies and builds high-value lookalike audiences                   

Putting it all together with Amperity

With the potential AI has to revolutionize marketing, it’s not surprising that there’s so much hype (and so many CMOs demanding to know how their teams are incorporating it into their strategies). The marketers and teams that pull ahead of the pack will be the ones who go beyond the surface applications and infuse AI into their entire process.

That’s what’s so exciting about the tools Amperity offers: we incorporate AI into the whole marketing workflow from analysis and insights through activation and measurement, all built on an AI-powered data foundation that finally solves the problem of garbage in, garbage out.

This is worth restating: Customer profiles that are accurate and complete will become a major competitive advantage, since this determines the quality of your output. All the marketers at all the brands will have access to the same Generative AI tools — the fuel you input will become your differentiator.

Amperity is continuing to develop our AI capabilities to support this, including building natural language conversational interfaces for easier data exploration and AI-powered measurement tools. But AI isn’t anything new to us — it’s been woven into our company from our founding in 2016, with our first patent for using AI to find a new way to solve the challenge of accurate customer identity in marketing.

Amperity’s commitment to an AI-first approach ensures that our platform isn’t just keeping pace with the evolving landscape of marketing – it’s leading the charge. By harnessing the power of AI at every stage, we offer a future-ready solution that empowers marketers to not only meet the current demands of the industry but to anticipate and prepare for its future evolution.

To learn more about how data quality is the critical foundation for using AI in marketing watch to our recent webinar with Adweek.

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