Month: November 2022

What is Cross-Channel Marketing?

Hubspot defines cross-channel marketing as “blending together your various marketing channels in a way that creates logical progression for your target audience to progress from one stage to the next.” In other words, cross-channel marketing involves using different channels to make sure consistent, holistic, and seamless messaging is reaching your target audience across devices, technologies, and platforms.

The Importance of Personalized Marketing

Cross-channel marketing is the best way to reach more people, build better audience connections, and drive ROI. According to last year’s Salesforce State of Marketing report, 84% of customers say being treated like a person instead of a number is very important to winning their business. It’s so important that 69% of buyers even expect Amazon-like buying experiences – like very personalized recommendations – that only a truly cross-channel approach can deliver. Marketers have realized this need by noting it as their #1 priority; however, it’s also their top challenge. Only 49% of marketing leaders report providing an experience that completely aligns with customer expectations. High performing marketers stand out by delivering personalized messages to the right people at the right time on the right channels.

Solving Cross-Channel Complexities

Delivering personalized messaging is daunting, so many marketers avoid coordinating across paid search, social and programmatic channels due to the complexity and speed required to execute. With so many moving parts to keep track of, it can be nearly impossible for even the most sophisticated marketing teams or agencies to break down silos, sync up, and maintain consistency across audiences, campaigns and promotions.

So, how can marketers execute effective cross-channel campaigns to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of consumers? Intelligent, cross-channel marketing AI software is proving to be the only way.

Machine Learning: The Cross-Channel Answer

There are inherent limitations when people manually optimize campaigns, try to align messaging across paid channels, and aim to inform other teams about insights gleaned from campaigns. Artificial intelligence tools can manage the complexities of personalized marketing involved in cross-channel campaigns at a pace and scale not humanly possible.

Autonomous AI software can conduct time-consuming, data-intensive tasks required to compete in today’s digital advertising channels. The technology can ingest and precisely measure mass amounts of structured and unstructured data from multiple touchpoints and interactions across channels. It is technology that can learn on the fly and execute on marketers’ behalf in ways that were previously impossible. Marketers suddenly discover that it is possible to master the challenging digital advertising landscape.

Successes With AI

Albert, the world’s first autonomous marketing AI, manages cross-channel, paid digital campaigns by using a complex, multivariate approach to relentlessly evolve and optimize towards the goals marketers provide.

Within the guardrails set by an agency or brand, Albert will optimize bids, shift budgets, and test creative combinations 24/7. The intelligent machine gathers valuable insights about the customer experience in a way that has never been possible before. For example, AI can uncover ad variations that are resonating with segments of consumers at a certain stage, identify which creatives are outperforming, and unveil prospects that brands can target to increase conversions in other channels.

Additionally, Albert’s technology aligns to each brand’s source of truth to inform marketers about the contribution that each channel delivers during different customer journeys, as well as impact on total conversions. Ultimately, an AI tool like Albert helps marketers understand the most efficient paths to conversion, achieve greater visibility, and drive greater ROI.

Marketing AI isn’t just the future of digital advertising; it’s already here and is proving to be the ideal way for marketing and advertising teams to achieve cross-channel success and stay ahead of the competition.

To learn how one marketing team tied real-time insights to cross-channel digital ad campaign orchestration using Albert, read this case study.

Creativity has always been the crux of advertising. So while artificial intelligence (AI) has been routinely used across digital media buying and ad campaign automation, why haven’t marketers fully embraced AI in the creative process? A recent report by Forrester Research reveals why AI is a critical piece of the creative puzzle and offers steps brands can take to inject AI into their creative processes.

AI Will Enhance Creativity 

Using AI for creative purposes doesn’t mean robots will be writing poetic prose or designing ads. AI’s role as a key player in creative teams is to provide the insights that stimulate thinking and inspire human creativity, enhancing a creative professional’s ability to develop and execute creative ideas.

According to Forrester’s survey, 74% of creative respondents reported spending more than half of their time on tedious tasks. Leaving mundane tasks to AI will allow them to shift their focus to making creative breakthroughs by experimenting with new methods and emerging formats.

Likewise, AI’s involvement can solve bandwidth challenges. Consumers are typically exposed to hundreds of digital ads in a given day. It’s crucial to optimize content and adapt creatives for different formats to effectively connect with target audiences at every journey stage. However, marketing and advertising teams simply don’t have the time or capacity to create large volumes of content. Enter AI as a new teammate, pitching in to customize and automate the creation and distribution of mass amounts of content that marketers can then use to effectively personalize their digital campaigns at scale.

Using AI in the Creative Process

Implementing AI early on adds more data-driven analysis and measurement throughout the rest of the process. When AI is incorporated in earlier stages, CMOs can improve the creative brief and reduce guesswork for their teams.

Brands need a deep understanding of the customer journey to deliver personalized experiences for customers. This requires two things: customer journey analytics and correct signals. Armed with these two tools, marketing teams can create always-on creative content across channels, formats, and devices. CMOs who rely on powerful data and technology to fuel their insights will have more opportunities to surprise and delight their customers – especially during critical moments.

AI Surfaces Real-Time Insights

Ads with an emotional pull tend to drive greater conversions, and creativity spurs the development of engaging, emotional ads in a saturated digital ecosystem. Because the rate of creative fatigue is so high, the ability to quickly see new creative insights – and learn what is or isn’t working – can make or break digital advertising campaigns. 

For Telenor, a global telecommunications company, this ability to glean creative performance insights in real-time was a key reason why they achieved a 423% increase in ROAS. Telenor worked with Albert to run multivariate creative and media testing across its digital campaigns. Telenor’s team could continually see fresh insights from Albert to become better informed about their audiences, understand what creatives were working, and learn strategies to incorporate in future campaigns.

Deliver on Your Brand Promise

By including AI in the creative functions of marketing and advertising, CMOs can leverage AI to foster better connections with consumers, surface previously hidden customer pain points, and deliver on their brand promise. Download Forrester’s report to get recommendations for applying AI into your creative process.