AI in Digital Marketing – 30 useful examples
According to data from Statista, the current value of the AI market , almost 100 billion dollars, is estimated to grow twenty-fold by 2030, reaching almost two trillion US dollars .
As we already know, this sector affects several other areas.
We’re talking everything from supplies, healthcare, entertainment, to marketing, analytics and retail.
Therefore, there is nothing better than understanding how Artificial Intelligence works in Digital Marketing, right?
In addition to exploring this concept, we will see its main benefits, how to apply this strategy and what the use cases and examples of this application are.
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science dedicated to creating systems that imitate the human ability to reason and learn .
We can separate AI into 2 main groups:
- Rule-based systems – use a series of logical determinations to make decisions.
- Data-driven systems – use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns in large data sets.
This technology can be applied in several areas such as:
- Virtual assistants – Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant;
- Speech recognition systems;
- Image recognition systems;
- Product recommendations – as we have on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, etc.;
- Chatbots;
- Autonomous vehicles;
- Medical diagnostic.
To complement this answer, I asked ChatGPT for help, see what he responded:
It’s simple: it’s technology that uses AI to help companies better understand their customers and optimize their marketing strategies. AI can collect and analyze data in real time, so companies can personalize their product and service offerings for each customer.
AI can be used in various areas of marketing, such as content personalization, data analysis, and ad management. With AI, companies can improve the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and provide a more personalized and satisfying experience for their customers.
I think there is no better answer than this to make it very clear to you, dear reader, right at the beginning of the text, what we can expect from Artificial Intelligence in Marketing.
What are the main benefits of AI in digital marketing?
You may have already heard that AI in digital marketing will “steal” our jobs, but, in fact, this technology can help in your daily life at work.
Here we have separated 6 benefits that artificial intelligence provides to the marketing sector.
Check out!
Improved customer relationships
AI tools offer a great customer experience as they can provide 24/7 support .
In other words, you will always have someone to monitor the customer relationship, saving time for your employees to focus on more urgent demands.
Faster, data-driven decision making
You know that mountain of data that you need to analyze periodically to make marketing decisions?
Well, AI tools can handle this demand too!
This type of platform analyzes data from multiple sources and identifies patterns and trends to generate new insights.
Increased ROI of marketing campaigns
Every campaign created by your company affects your audience and converts customers, however, with the help of AI, results are boosted.
This happens because you will have more accurate analyses, better customer service, specialized content and even optimization of your team’s time, making their routine more productive.
As a consequence, there will be an increase in ROI , as the strategies will have less cost and more results.
Content personalization
AI itself, through chatbots and virtual assistants, can collect data from your audience, analyzing preferences, searches and needs .
From there, you can use this information to increasingly personalize the content distributed by your business.
Automation of repetitive tasks and gains in efficiency
AI can automate repetitive and monotonous everyday tasks such as sending emails, creating reports and managing advertising campaigns .
This way, marketers can focus on more strategic and urgent activities.
Error reduction
Finally, AI in digital marketing can also help you reduce the most basic errors that end up going unnoticed in your routine.
An example is when tools will enter customer data into your CRM – without manual data entry, there will be no typos, incorrect spellings or misinformation.
How to apply AI in digital marketing?
In just 7 steps you can have AI applied to your digital marketing strategy, just follow a few steps:
- Find a business problem or opportunity – think about the areas where AI can help. Example: repetitive and tedious tasks, data analysis or customer service;
- Define your objectives – establish what result you want from implementing AI in marketing. Example: reducing costs, increasing efficiency or improving service quality;
- Remember to invest – invest in training your entire team so there are no errors during the adaptation process with AI tools;
- Analyze the solutions available on the market – choose the appropriate technology and evaluate which solutions best meet your needs and objectives;
- Organize your databases – assess your data needs, as AI depends on a lot of data to learn and make decisions;
- Implement AI models and integrate them into company processes – the time has come to implement, test and evaluate the performance of your AI models to check if they are producing good results;
- Constantly monitor and optimize results – finally, it is essential that you regularly monitor AI performance, making adjustments as necessary.
30 Use Cases and Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
There is nothing better for you to understand the use of AI in digital marketing than by checking out in practice some examples of companies that have already gone through this and become successful stories.
Below you can find 30 situations that prove the benefits of combining AI and marketing!
Understanding and defining customer profiles
As we saw above, artificial intelligence can be used to analyze data and personalize the customer experience.
Through these benefits, you will notice that the tool is great for deeply understanding your type of customer.
Instead of using imaginary personas to base your actions, with AI you can use real data from real customers to define these profiles .
An example of this is the American flower shop Teleflora .
The company, which partners with more than 15,000 florists around the world, used AI to create new customer profiles to facilitate its personalization strategy .
To make its strategy work, Teleflora combined historical sales data, existing customer data and big data sources .
From there, the AI tool was used to create more comprehensive customer profiles that could predict future purchasing behavior .
Behavioral analysis and predictive analysis in advertising campaigns
Since technology collects and analyzes data in abundance, gaining new insights into audience behavior becomes easier .
Not stopping there, AI also helps in creating advertising campaigns , as these are based almost exclusively on audience data to create the right ad targeting.
Going beyond paid media segmentation, AI becomes essential when evaluating which ads to buy and what budget will be invested .
The company that has already put this use of AI in digital marketing to the test is the coffee chain Starbucks .
Since 2016, the brand has been accelerating its personalization strategy through predictive analysis together with artificial intelligence .
To do this, the company used its loyalty program and customers’ mobile devices to capture new information and apply it to its advertising campaigns.
That is, every time a customer makes a purchase at Starbucks, the date, location, time and other details of the order are recorded.
From there, predictive analysis done by AI evaluates the data and creates super personalized campaigns .
Audience segmentation
To know which ad to target your target audience you need to do research, analyze data and reach certain conclusions.
Well, this whole process takes time and demands a lot of attention from the professional.
With the help of an AI tool, you will have at your fingertips the analysis of your past audiences and the performance of your ads .
The tool considers the KPIs already used by you and takes advantage of performance data to reach the target audience with the greatest chance of purchasing.
The American e-commerce company, Wayfair, is a successful example of this functionality.
In order to improve its audience targeting, the brand used AI to create machine learning models that predicted what customers would buy next .
This tactic allowed the company to offer relevant products based on the user’s purchasing history and browsing behavior .
Social media monitoring
By monitoring social media, you will have another channel to collect and analyze data, consequently learning even more about your audience.
With AI in digital marketing you will be able to monitor the comments, likes and shares of your posts on social networks and, from there, list trends.
The person who has already put this strategy into practice is the multinational Unilever, which took advantage of network monitoring using AI tools to monitor mentions of its brand and analyze consumer feelings about the Ben & Jerry’s brand .
Content moderation
Content moderation, when carried out manually, is prone to errors, as it is a more laborious activity and demands a lot of attention.
With the help of artificial intelligence, you will be able to automate this entire process.
An example of this is Levity’s content moderation tool that quickly searches all relevant data across the content channels you select .
Market research and competitor insights
In addition to Unilever using the AI tool to monitor the Ben & Jerry’s brand’s social networks, this same information analysis is used to verify new insights about competitors and carry out market research .
Through good market research and competitor analysis, you will be able to plan better targeted strategic actions , in addition to avoiding repeating competitors’ mistakes and learning where you should innovate.
Lead generation
You know that task of collecting contact data, analyzing it, segmenting users and directing it to the marketing and sales team?
This entire process can be done with the help of artificial intelligence!
This way, you will be reducing the number of disqualified leads that reach you, in addition to optimizing the team’s work .
One example is LinkedIn Sales Navigator , an AI-powered tool that helps you find leads on LinkedIn.
Service, marketing and sales chatbots
If you want to automate and optimize your customer service, offering 24/7 availability, know that AI-enabled chatbots will be the solution.
In addition to being a great strategy for strengthening relationships with your customers , you can use it to generate leads as well .
This way, the welcome, data collection and targeting process will now be automated and done instantly and personalized .
One example is the ChatBot tool .
The company uses natural language processing (NLP) linked to artificial intelligence to understand what website visitors want and direct them to the right place.
This type of chatbot can be used to generate leads, offering a personalized welcome message and collecting information about the user’s needs and preferences, helping to personalize your product and service offering for each customer.
This way, you can increase your lead base, improve customer service efficiency and collect valuable data about your customers.
Conversion rate optimization
AI even to increase conversion rates?
That’s right!
The world’s largest investment fund manager, Vanguard, was looking for a way to improve the performance of its Vanguard Institutional social media posts.
To achieve this goal, the company partnered with Persado who offered the brand the AI native language platform.
AI was used to generate combinations of concepts and phrases and bring insights into the audience, bringing the data back to the business to understand why customers engage with specific language elements and to create more effective content in the future.
The result was optimizing each post for maximum impact, increasing conversion rates by 15% .
Ad creative optimization
Yes, AI can be creative too!
A case that we can use as examples is the digital bank, Emirates NBD.
The company wanted to personalize offerings to the right customers, at the right time, and on the right platform.
Therefore, they also counted on the help of Persado.
In order to achieve good results, Persado ran an experiment and found that their AI-generated ad increased engagement by 133% .
After the experiment, and with the strategy in place, it can be seen that the bank’s lead generation increased by 177% after the AI created the ads.
Improved email marketing performance
Through artificial intelligence, it is possible to further personalize your email marketing campaigns , considering the preferences and behaviors of your target audience.
An AI tool can optimize the time spent creating campaigns by suggesting subject ideas, sending times and even email content.
That’s what e-commerce eBay did, in partnership with the Phrasee tool.
It utilized AI natural language processing to optimize its emails .
Technology was incorporated into the process to automatically optimize the subject and headline of emails, seeking to find the most effective variation for the eBay audience.
Since incorporating this strategy, eBay open rates have improved by 15.8% and clicks have increased by 31.2%.
Average order value growth
Yes, let’s mention Starbucks again… but this time the focus is on using AI to increase the average order ticket.
Using the tactic of collecting customer data as soon as they place an order and when they approach an establishment , the brand began to recommend similar products that could add to the purchase , thus increasing the average amount each customer spends in the store.
Sales automation
Even when it comes to reaching more people in your sales outreach, AI can help.
The tool can be trained to automate the entire sales promotion process , based on a database analysis on the company’s CRM platform.
An example of this is the AI startup Kalendar .
The brand developed a tool that relies on AI sales bots to send personalized proposals to potential customers .
According to the company representative, the software reduces the waiting time to start conversations to schedule appointments and meetings from seven days to 30 seconds.
Dynamic Pricing
Companies apply the dynamic pricing strategy to efficiently manage the values of their products and services .
AI-enabled tools with built-in pricing algorithms monitor competition and evaluate company offerings when they identify an opportunity .
Other platforms enable better customer segmentation in terms of pricing decisions, helping retailers set different prices for different groups of customers .
Amazon already uses this strategy integrated with AI.
The company changes product prices 2.5 million times a day .
From this action, Amazon managed to increase revenue by 25% using dynamic pricing .
Sales forecast
According to research by Salesforce , companies that rely on the help of AI are ten times more likely to obtain better forecasts and have an accurate sales pipeline .
Remember that this science specializes in data analysis, so for this strategy it will be based on machine learning and big data that contains information about previous sales, to then detect patterns in new data and predict future results.
Apparel company Levi Strauss & Co brought together AI and a massive data repository built on Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud to boost revenue growth .
The brand used machine learning to predict demand, personalize marketing, make informed pricing decisions, and forecast sales.
Increased engagement through content recommendations
For this strategy, we will use the example of Netflix.
After all, who here has never been impacted by your film and series recommendations?
Well, this process is entirely automated by AI, which collects data such as: evaluations of the content watched, whether the user watched an entire program and whether the user paused, rewinded or fast-forwarded during a program.
By analyzing this information, the company was able to generate more assertive recommendations and, consequently, increase engagement.
Content generation and optimization
As AI provides valuable insights into the target audience, helps create personalized content, and automates content distribution, you will already have the generation and optimization of the entire content process in your hands.
The example we have here is from Chase Bank who were looking for a way to make their marketing language more conversational.
From there, the bank employed AI machine learning to make editorial and content lines more relatable .
Now, one of the tools you can take advantage of to optimize your content creation process is ChatGPT.
Design
AI can be used in the design field for various purposes, such as creating personalized designs, identifying patterns and trends in design , and improving the effectiveness of design in marketing campaigns.
Based on these analyses, insights can be applied to e-books, landing pages, advertisements and social media posts.
A real-world example is the Adobe Sensei tool, which uses AI to identify elements in an image and automatically apply effects and filters based on the image’s content .
This strategy helps marketers create quality designs in less time and with less effort, improving efficiency and design quality.
Customization at scale
What we talked about most here was the possibility of personalization that AI brings to companies, right?
So nothing more coherent than bringing a topic on the subject and with a real example!
Let’s talk about the case of Michaels, the largest arts and crafts retailer in the US, which was looking for a better way to personalize messages.
The company had been collecting data about its users, but it didn’t have a strategy on how to use that information to form emotional connections with its audience.
It was then that AI language generation technology defined the ideal subjects to generate engagement, increasing clicks on SMS campaigns by 41% .
Customer Support Solutions
Another topic we’ve talked about a lot so far has been the issue of customer service and how AI is impacting this area.
In fact, this is one of the highlights of the application of this technology.
Currently, through AI you can have personalized, instant support that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week .
Sephora has already benefited from this type of use.
In 2017, the brand launched an AI chatbot that aimed to provide a more immersive purchase, in addition to offering a new form of interaction .
Churn prediction
We can also use AI to predict the rate of customer churn.
Once again, we will rely on the tool’s ability to analyze data.
This time, the tool will track data on website visits , interactions with customer service , purchase history and engagement on social media .
The example for this case is Sprint (telephone company), which in 2014 was suffering from a churn rate of 2.3%, well above its competitors .
To overcome this challenge, the company implemented AI data solutions to identify customers at risk of leaving.
The tool also provided recommendations for personalized offers to retain customers .
The result was a reduction in the turnover rate to the lowest levels recorded and an increase in sales of complementary products by 40%.
Increased lead generation
Yes, you can use AI to improve your company’s lead generation. 🤩
Well, now Leadster has launched its newest feature: integration with ChatGPT to create even more personalized conversion calls!
Nothing better than having an AI that absorbs data and content and adapts its own language to offer even more accurate and targeted answers.
About results? Well, we tested it here and the result was: your company can generate up to 327% more leads with the Leadster + ChatGPT integration!
If you want to try it out right now, know that we have a Free Demo for 14 days.
But pay attention to the deadline for installing the Leadster script on your website, as the new functionality needs seven days to collect data from the most accessed pages and then generate calls with ChatGPT.
Business intelligence
The business intelligence (BI) area is responsible for automating the collection, processing and analysis of an abundance of data . In other words, it helps to improve the brand’s flows and processes, in addition to ensuring better decision-making — based on data.
The problem, so to speak, is that like other types of systems, BI is subject to errors and failures, after all, there is a lot of information to process and organize .
That’s where AI comes into play, because when BI can’t handle it anymore or you don’t know where to start, technology will help collect and group the data.
Let’s think about a consumer goods company that has no idea how its commercial promotions are performing and wants to find out this information.
At this point, the BI area can be used together with AI algorithms to integrate a variety of data sources into a business .
Not stopping there, AI helps in other areas, as through data collection and analysis, it can provide suggestions for content, changes and planning .
Creation of briefings
If you want to create a simple brief for less complex materials, AI is a great option.
Let’s take the example of the famous ChatGPT. The tool gives you insights and ideas, as well as suggesting keywords, topics and even examples of successful campaigns.
Image creation
Yes, you can even get images with AIs. It’s no wonder we all fell for fake news that Pope Francis was wearing a puffer jacket – when, in fact, it was just an image made by artificial intelligence.
There are already several tools for you to optimize the creation process, such as Midjourney, Looka and Dall-e .
And that’s exactly what the American food company, Heinz did. The brand launched a campaign with images entirely generated by AI.
With the help of marketing agency Rethink Ideas, what started as a joke on the DALL-E 2 imager turned into a solid campaign as Rethink Ideas noticed that ketchup-related prompts produced results very similar to Heinz bottles. .
From there, the agency asked consumers to share their own creations , the best of which were posted on social networks and in print advertisements .
Ideas for internal marketing
Internal marketing is the strategy aimed at a company’s internal audience, that is, its employees.
If before many had difficulty planning actions to plan it, now it is only easier with ChatGPT.
Because the tool itself gives suggestions on what and how to do good internal marketing .
Soundtrack creation
Do you still spend hours looking for soundtracks that match your campaigns?
Well, this can be solved and optimized with the Soundraw AI tool .
The platform already offers you ready-made and personalized trails through the prompts you use .
And the best part: the tool ensures that you won’t have any problems with copyright.
Creating personas
For this topic here I have separated two alternatives:
- Create personas using the Mnemonic AI tool; or
- Create personas through ChatGPT .
The first is a specific platform for this type of creation and has already been used by major brands such as Santander, Discovery Chanel, Yamaha, among others.
ChatGPT is the versatile tool you already know. You just need to ask for a persona for a campaign X and the chat will analyze the target audience data and suggest characteristics that make up this persona.
Scalable A/B Testing
Let’s go straight to the example case here. I’m talking about the Online Dialogue agency from the Netherlands, which used the tool, Evolv AI Software , to carry out its A/B tests .
The platform focused on testing, personalization and optimization resulted in 4.3% growth in conversion.
The agency applied the test to Euroflorist’s product pages for 11 weeks.
The difference between a normal A/B test and that of Envolv AI is that the latter searches for multiple tests to then find the two best variables and begin comparisons.
To know when to send emails
To close, let’s look at the Seventh Sense + HubSpot case.
Seventh Sense is a technology company that uses artificial intelligence to optimize the timing of sending emails based on the recipient’s behavior .
The brand was looking for a solution that would allow them to send emails at the ideal time to increase open and engagement rates. That’s when integration with the HubSpot platform came about.
From that moment on, Seventh Sense gained valuable data about the behavior of its contacts , such as email opening times, previous interactions and individual preferences. And all of this information was used to determine the ideal shipping time .
Through the integration, Seventh Sense was able to personalize email campaigns based on the data collected , delivering content at the right time. This resulted in a significant increase in the open and engagement rate of emails sent .
In other words, we are talking about the AI + CRM integration combo from HubSpot for a perfect email marketing sending scenario.
So, do you already know in which areas of your company you will use artificial intelligence?