by Lori Berson | Apr 16, 2024 | AI, artificial intelligence, Data, Marketing Strategy
Marketing’s measure of success is often boiled down to a single metric: Return on Investment (ROI). However, recent research commissioned by Iterable and conducted by Wakefield Research, and published by Ad Age, suggests a shift in how marketers perceive ROI from investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Efficiency and Customer Relations: The New ROI Drivers
Unlike traditional views that align ROI directly with financial gain, today’s marketers are increasingly valuing efficiency and improved customer relations as primary indicators of ROI in AI initiatives. The study reveals that 51% of marketers define ROI through the lens of efficiency gains, underscoring AI’s role in streamlining operations and enhancing productivity. Furthermore, 50% of marketers connect ROI with the improvement of customer relationships, highlighting the potential of AI to personalize customer interactions and allow for deeper connections.
Data Analysis and Forecasting: Enhancing Decision Making
While financial gains are still significant, with 46% of marketers linking ROI to improved financial outcomes, there’s a noticeable shift towards valuing the strategic advantages of AI beyond direct monetary returns. Additionally, 42% of marketers see the value of AI in providing accurate forecasting, which can be pivotal in strategic decision-making.
Marketers’ Adoption and Attitudes Towards AI
With 91% of surveyed marketers already using AI technologies, the perception of AI as a transformative force rather than just a tool is gaining traction, yet only 37% see it as an essential skill they must master, despite widespread concern about keeping up with technological advancements.
The Future of AI in Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges
This shift in perspective is not just theoretical. Marketers report that AI contributes to better job performance and operational efficiency. Most believe AI opens doors to new positions rather than replacing jobs, with 69% viewing AI as a creator of opportunities.
The shift in ROI measurement underscores a broader transition in marketing—from a purely financial focus to a multi-dimensional strategy that includes efficiency, customer relationships, and data-driven decision-making. As AI technologies continue to advance, their role in reshaping marketing strategies and defining new success metrics will undoubtedly expand, offering both challenges and opportunities for marketers aiming to stay ahead in their fields.
About the Data: The results are based on a September 2023 survey of 1,200 marketers.
For help infusing AI into your workflows, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. AI use cases and client list.
by Lori Berson | Apr 3, 2024 | Email Marketing, Marketing
Email marketing remains a vital tool for businesses aiming to connect with their audience. However, the effectiveness of this tool is significantly influenced by how businesses choose to use artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization tactics. A recent Litmus report in partnership with Oracle provides an overview of the current landscape and the opportunities available with email marketing, revealing some insightful trends.
AI in Email Marketing: Underused Yet Potentially Transformative
AI-generated content and copy in email marketing, despite being a common use case, surprisingly ranks low in contributing to campaign performance improvements. This apparent underutilization is not a reflection of AI’s potential but rather indicates a nascent stage of adoption. With only one-third of marketers reporting a boost in email performance due to AI-generated content, it’s clear that those who have used generative AI are reaping significant benefits. This scenario presents a compelling opportunity for businesses to explore AI’s capabilities further and integrate them into their email marketing strategies.
The Unrivaled Impact of Personalization and Segmentation
The report highlights two critical tactics that overwhelmingly improve email marketing performance: subject line personalization and the use of emojis. An impressive 77% of email marketers have found that personalizing subject lines enhances campaign effectiveness, while 73% credit emojis with boosting performance. This data underscores the importance of crafting engaging and tailored content that resonates with the recipient, making the email more than just another message in their inbox but a personalized communication that captures their attention.
Beyond subject lines, personalization extends into the content of the emails themselves. Dynamic content, tailored to the recipient’s preferences and behaviors, has significantly increased click-through rates. This level of customization demonstrates a deep understanding of the target audience, making for a stronger connection between the brand and its customers.
Furthermore, an overwhelming 90% of surveyed email marketers acknowledged that segmentation plays a pivotal role in enhancing campaign performance. By dividing their audience into distinct groups based on specific criteria, marketers can deliver more relevant and impactful messages, thereby increasing engagement and conversion rates.
A Call to Action
The insights from the Litmus and Oracle report serve as a compelling call to action for email marketers. In an age where consumers are bombarded with digital communications, the ability to stand out through personalized, engaging, and AI-enhanced content is more crucial than ever. As email marketing continues to evolve, businesses must stay updated on these trends and leverage them to create meaningful connections with their audience. By prioritizing personalization, segmentation, and the strategic use of AI, marketers can transform their email campaigns into powerful tools for building lasting relationships and driving business success.
About the Data: The results are based on an October and November 2023 survey of more than 480 email marketers worldwide.
For help with your email marketing, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Feb 13, 2024 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
In the rapidly evolving world of marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool, offering unprecedented capabilities to businesses aiming to enhance their content creation and overall marketing strategies. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that AI, despite its advanced capabilities, is not a cure-all or magic bullet. It’s a tool that needs a well-thought-out marketing strategy to create transformative content.
AI offers the potential to generate content at scale, analyze data, automate tasks, and personalize marketing efforts in ways previously unimaginable, but AI-generated content requires human direction, input, expertise, and editing. In and of itself, AI content is not always correct, often over-written and not written in context. To be successful with AI, you need someone driving the process.
At BersonDeanStevens (BDS), we understand the delicate balance between leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies and maintaining the human touch that is fundamental to creating marketing content that resonates with your audience. With over 25 years of experience in developing results-driven content, campaigns, and programs, BDS brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to incorporate AI to boost results.
Whether you are looking for an ally to handle strategic content creation, help train your team on the proper use of AI, or need consulting from time to time, BDS is your go-to resource.
For help with AI and how to successfully integrate it into your business, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Jan 11, 2024 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
Staying ahead of the marketing curve is not just an advantage, but a necessity – especially with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Below are just a few examples (and tools) of how AI can elevate every aspect of a marketing campaign, from targeted planning to insightful post-campaign analysis.
The integration of AI in marketing goes beyond automation. It’s a fundamental shift in how we conceptualize and execute marketing strategies. AI offers unparalleled efficiency, personalization, and scalability in campaigns, setting a new benchmark in marketing excellence.
Tailoring Campaigns with Precision: The Pre-Campaign Stage
AI-Driven Audience Targeting
AI’s capability to analyze and interpret complex data sets enables marketers to identify and target the most receptive audiences. This allows for highly targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to the needs and interests of your audience.
Content Creation
Imagine a creative assistant that helps generate ideas, themes, and content. AI aids in creating diverse and appealing marketing materials, ensuring your message is both engaging and relevant.
Campaign Planning
AI tools can assist in campaign planning by predicting market trends and customer behavior, allowing marketers to stay ahead of the curve.
Engaging Customers: The Active Campaign Stage
Enhancing Customer Interaction
AI can personalize customer interactions by analyzing past behavior and preferences. This results in more engaging and relevant communications.
Real-time Campaign Optimization
AI’s ability to process data in real-time allows marketers to make on-the-fly adjustments to campaigns, ensuring maximum impact and efficiency.
Predictive Analysis for Better Results
AI’s predictive capabilities enable marketers to anticipate customer needs and respond proactively, creating a more dynamic and responsive marketing strategy.
Measuring Success and Learning: Post-Campaign
Insightful Analytics and Reporting
AI’s ability to process and analyze post-campaign data is invaluable. It provides detailed insights into what worked and what didn’t, paving the way for informed decision-making in future campaigns.
Content Lifecycle Management
AI isn’t just about creating content; it’s also about managing it effectively. From identifying the best-performing content to suggesting repurposing strategies, AI ensures your content continues to deliver value over time.
AI Tools
- Demandbase and 6Sense – Leverage AI and intent data to help identify high-value accounts and audiences to target to help with account-based marketing planning.
- Drift – An AI chatbot that can have conversational interactions with website visitors to engage prospects. Chatbot data helps inform campaign messaging and offers.
- Madkudu – Uses AI and machine learning to analyze customer data and make personalized recommendations for marketing campaigns – helping with segmentation and targeting.
- Adobe Sensei – AI inside Adobe marketing products like Adobe Campaign can assist with campaign planning and optimization by predicting performance and identifying high-value customers.
- Salesforce Einstein – AI that’s built into Salesforce to optimize the sending of email campaigns, provide predictive lead scoring, and automated personalization.
- ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and Microsoft Copilot are general AI platforms that help you brainstorm ideas, and create outlines, articles, blog posts, social media, e-books, emails, ad copy, and more!
- Persado – Uses AI to generate emotionally intelligent marketing copy and subject lines that drive engagement for email campaigns and other messages.
- Midjourney, DALL-E, Canva, Kittl, and Adobe Firefly can rapidly create unique images to tell your story.
- Sprout Social and HootSuite – Use AI for image and text analysis to help make content recommendations and schedule social media campaigns.
The key is finding AI marketing tools that align with your goals, data sources, technical capabilities, and budget.
AI – Your Strategic Partner for Growth
AI is more than just a technological upgrade for your marketing; it’s a transformative power. It enables a level of precision, personalization, and efficiency previously unattainable. Whether it’s through smarter targeting, creative content generation, real-time personalization, or insightful post-campaign analysis, AI is an indispensable asset for modern marketers.
To achieve your marketing objectives more effectively and efficiently, we recommend you use AI not only in your marketing strategy but throughout your campaigns – in addition to using it for sales, project management, presentations, etc.
Stay tuned for more insights and tips on leveraging AI for unparalleled marketing success.
For help with your marketing and how to incorporate AI, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Sep 26, 2023 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing
According to the 2023 McKinsey Global Survey and the Quantum Black study, generative AI is poised to become a mainstream technology used across organizations in 2023. Generative AI refers to AI systems that can generate new content, such as text, code, images, or video, based on an initial text or multimedia prompt.
The McKinsey survey of nearly 3,000 executives worldwide found that 52% of respondents already adopt some form of generative AI, with an additional 38% planning to adopt it within the next year. The Quantum Black study provided further insights into which roles are leading the adoption.
Marketing and Communications
Marketing and communications teams were early pioneers in testing applications of generative AI. Over two-thirds of survey respondents from marketing functions reported using generative AI, with applications ranging from written content creation to visual asset design. Key benefits include increased efficiency and productivity, as well as the ability to rapidly customize content.
Technical and Engineering Roles
Developers, engineers, and IT professionals also reported significant usage of generative AI, at 64% of survey respondents. Key applications include using natural language prompts to generate code, automating software documentation, and assisting with debugging. Generative AI delivers major time savings and frees up developers to focus on higher-value strategic tasks.
Customer Service and Sales
Generative AI is assisting 57% of customer service professionals as an AI-powered chatbot handling routine inquiries. It’s also supporting sales teams in 50% of organizations surveyed, by generating content and insights to assist with proposals and presentations. Key advantages include scalability, consistency, and rapid response times.
Finance and Accounting
In finance, generative AI helps analysts and accountants produce reports, projections, and financial models using simple prompts in natural language. In the survey, 47% of finance professionals reported using generative AI to improve efficiency and accuracy.
Legal
The legal profession is starting to adopt generative AI as well, with 45% of respondents reporting usage. Key applications are document and contract review and generation, legal research, and summarizing case files. Top benefits include speed, cost, and risk mitigation.
Human Resources
HR teams are using generative AI for 39% of survey respondents, especially for talent acquisition. Applications range from generating job descriptions to conducting initial resume screens. Generative AI delivers significant time and cost savings in high-volume HR tasks.
The McKinsey survey makes it clear that generative AI adoption is accelerating across the enterprise. As organizations incorporate this potentially transformative technology, they’ll need to manage risks around data privacy, security, bias, and misinformation (aka hallucinations). But when used responsibly, generative AI can automate repetitive tasks, drive efficiencies, and allow all of us to focus on more strategic and creative work.
About the Data: The results are based on an April survey of 1,684 respondents “representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 913 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one function.” Check out the full survey.
Need assistance using AI to enhance and expedite your marketing initiatives? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Sep 24, 2023 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing
Getting positive references from satisfied clients can go a long way in establishing credibility for your business. When you need a client to provide a testimonial, reference, or case study, follow these tips for making the process smooth and successful:
Choose the Right Client
- Select clients you have worked with extensively and who you know are very pleased with your product or service. Avoid picking those who had any negatives in their experience with you.
- If possible, choose recognizable companies or those in industries you’re trying to attract as they will lend the most credibility.
Make a Personalized Request
- Contact your client and remind them of the work you did together. Make your request personal and specific to them. Do not send a generic templated email.
- Explain why you are asking for a reference, testimonial, or case study and how will it help your business.
Provide Details Upfront
- Let your client know exactly what you need from them, whether it’s a quote, video interview, etc.
- Give them guidelines, sample quotes, suggested talking points, or case study formats. The clearer you are, the better.
- Explain precisely how the reference will be used in your marketing materials, website, proposals, etc.
- If they decline, graciously accept their refusal and part on good terms in case they reconsider in the future.
Thank All Clients Who Do Provide a Reference
- Consider providing discounts on future work or other perks in exchange for their taking the time to provide a reference.
- Make your clients feel appreciated by sending a gift card or featuring them prominently in your materials.
Using these tips will go a long way toward getting the client references and testimonials you need to boost your business. Just remember to make the process easy.
Testimonial Apps
Here are several apps that can help you easily collect and manage client testimonials:
- BirdEye: manage customer feedback, including testimonials. It enables you to gather reviews from multiple platforms and display them on your website.
- Boast: capture and showcase video testimonials from your clients. It provides tools to record, upload, and organize testimonials, making it easy to integrate them into your website or marketing materials.
- Feefo: collect genuine, verified customer reviews and insights. It provides analytics to understand customer sentiment and integrates with e-commerce platforms.
- GatherUp: gather feedback and testimonials through surveys and review requests. It also assists in managing and amplifying customer stories to boost your online reputation.
- ReputationStacker: automate the process of collecting testimonials and reviews from customers. It sends out requests via SMS and email, streamlining the feedback collection process.
- Senja: generate high-converting testimonial collection forms you can share anywhere. Invite your clients. Offer rewards. Send thank you notes.
- Testimonial: create branded testimonial forms, gather client feedback, and showcase testimonials on your website. It offers customization options and integration with various platforms.
- Trustpilot: collect and showcase customer reviews and testimonials. It offers widgets and integration options to embed reviews on your website and leverage social proof.
- Vouch: collect video testimonials with a single link. Add your questions, send the request, and capture the authentic voice of your customers, all in a few clicks.
- Yotpo: collect and display customer reviews, photos, and Q&A content, which can enhance your brand’s credibility.
Remember to consider your specific needs, such as the type of testimonials you want to collect (text, video, etc.), integration capabilities with your existing software, and the overall user experience when choosing the best testimonial software app for your business.
Need assistance with your client referrals? Schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
