Bring Your Marketing to the Next Level with AI Automation

These days, one of the most decisive factors determining the success of a particular business is access to new technologies that allow us to level up our marketing efforts. Those who are quick to adopt new tools and strategies can outperform their competitors and enjoy increased ROI thanks to being tech-savvy.

 

The latest tech trend that has swept the world on its feet is AI-powered automation. It is rapidly changing the landscape of our personal and professional lives by helping us automate a variety of repetitive tasks which does wonders for our productivity and efficiency. 

 

The digital marketing sphere is no exception: many marketers and business owners have already adapted to the new situation and started reaping the benefits of a wide variety of tools available on the market. 

The rates of AI adoption around the world show that the interest in AI tools keeps growing, with companies from countries like China, India, Singapore, and UAE being the main trailblazers (Source: IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022) 

 

These tools use advanced AI algorithms and machine learning techniques to automate a vast array of marketing tasks and processes, from purely technical ones to those that require creative and analytical skills. 

 

But, just as every other innovation, automation brings about not just positive changes. For example, more than 75% of people are concerned about losing their jobs as a result of AI advancement. This means that the early adoption of AI technologies is not only useful for many of us but also essential for keeping up with the labor market’s requirements. As many experts say, it’s not the AI that will take our jobs – it’s the people who know how to use it. 

 

In short, there are many good reasons for exploring the possibilities of marketing automation. Let’s go through some of them to understand why exactly it can be important to us. 

 

 

Why is marketing automation important? 

 

Whether you’re a business owner, a part of the marketing team in an agency, or a freelancer trying to start from scratch, you can reap multiple benefits from leveraging AI tools. 

Here are some of them: 

• Saving time & being more productive 

The success of marketing campaigns often depends on a myriad of different tasks that are highly repetitive but require a lot of time and effort to complete. 

 

This is one of the main reasons why marketing automation has become such a hot topic recently. AI automation tools allow you to automate all kinds of tasks and tackle them more efficiently. For example, you can spend just an hour or so on a task that used to take half of your working day simply by using a special tool. 

 

And it’s not only about saving time for more creative things and working smarter rather than harder. It’s also about avoiding the unpleasant consequences of high workload and constant repetition – human mistakes. They can cost you a lot if you’re operating at large scales, and automation tools can practically eliminate this risk. 

 

• Shifting focus to creative and intellectual work 

While routines are great for organizing the working process, sometimes they can become a serious obstacle on the road to professional growth. If all we ever do is perform the same task over and over day after day, it’s easy to get dissatisfied with our job and lose our enthusiasm and passion. 

 

Delegating mundane tasks to AI tools can help us expand our notions of what’s possible in our industry and shift our attention and efforts to something more strategic, creative, and innovative – things that we as humans are good at. 

 

Moreover, automation tools allow us to not only save our time for more interesting work but also do it faster and better. There are plenty of tools that can speed up the creative process by helping us generate new ideas and creatives in just a few seconds, which is extremely useful when you have a creative block or want to get some inspiration. 

 

• Tackling labor shortages and skill gaps

Economic downturns can take a serious toll on businesses of every size, and often it leads to the inability to hire more employees as a result (especially when it comes to marketing and sales departments). 

 

Another common problem these days is the lack of necessary skills to tackle specific tasks. Modern marketing specialists are expected to have a wide range of skills, but it is not possible to know and be able to do everything. 

 

That’s where AI automation tools come to the rescue: they help organizations deal with labor shortages and address skill gaps by automating specific tasks. This reduces the need to hire more people and the workload of employees who no longer have to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. It’s also way easier to learn a new skill when you don’t have to start from scratch but can rely on automation tools instead. 

 

• Scaling up quickly and effectively  

If we’re talking about digital marketing, scaling refers to the process of expanding or growing marketing efforts and strategies to reach a wider audience and generate more leads or sales while maintaining or improving efficiency and ROI. This can mean that you deploy new resources, tactics, and channels to drive growth and maximize the impact of your campaigns. 

 

Scaling processes with the help of AI automation tools is faster, oftentimes cheaper, and it allows you to maintain the high quality and results of your campaigns. It also makes it easier to collect and analyze performance data, test, and iterate – in short, do everything that is essential for effective scaling. 

 

Overall, marketing automation with the help of AI tools can help you achieve more returns with fewer investments, eliminating the possibility of mistakes or delays. 

 

That brings us to the next question: what tasks can and should we automate with AI tools? It will be helpful to go through the most widely automated tasks to get a better understanding of how we can start our automation journey. 

By looking at graphs like this, you can decide which tasks are first in order to be automated (Source: Forbes Advisor’s survey) 

 

 

Where can AI marketing automation tools be applied? 

 

1. Email marketing

As we all know, it’s easier to retain existing customers rather than acquire new ones, especially in today’s oversaturated markets. One of the basic methods of customer retention is email marketing, which allows businesses to not only keep their customers loyal and engaged but also to increase the lifetime value of their purchases. 

 

But it can get pretty tough when you have to send emails to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of customers. A good marketing email should have the right timing, present relevant and accurate offers, and more importantly, be personalized as this is what modern consumers expect from businesses. Human mistakes, delays, lack of personalization, etc. can negatively affect customer experience and reduce retention rates. 

 

Luckily, all of these problems can be easily solved with the right AI automation tools. Here’s what they can help you with: 

• Delivering highly personalized email campaigns based on user behavior, demographics, preferences, and other criteria; 
• Creating email templates and flows targeted at different audience segments or tied to specific actions or events;
• Creating dynamic email content that adapts in real time based on user interactions and preferences; 
• Following up, i.e. reaching out to customers who haven’t replied or taken the desired action after a certain amount of time to increase conversion rates. 

 

For example, tools like Mailchimp and Brevo can help you easily create and send highly personalized emails to multiple recipients, as well as track and analyze engagement rates without too much effort. 

2. Customer relationships 

Maintaining good relationships with customers is essential for any business that wants to succeed, but it can be difficult to interact with everyone equally and maintain an individualized approach. 

 

Fortunately, AI automation tools can help us tackle these tasks. For example, here are some of them:

• Storing, updating, and analyzing data on prospects and customers;
• Maintaining a personalized approach for each segment of your customer base; 
• Contacting your customers in time by scheduling calls, emails, etc.; 
• Providing customers with support and assistance across multiple touchpoints, including self-service options that are accessible at any time (for example, through chatbots).  

 

By using these tools, you can significantly shorten the waiting time for your customers, ensure that they receive only relevant offers, and get all the support and guidance they might need. In turn, it will reduce the workload of your staff members and allow them to focus on interactions that require a one-on-one approach. 

 

This is especially true when you’re using chatbots as a part of your customer relationship strategy. AI-powered chatbots are quickly becoming integral to improving customer relationships and enhancing customer experience as they are capable of providing instant and personalized responses to customers 24/7. 

 

For example, with tools like Intercom or Hubspot chatbot builder, you can easily create chatbots that will answer your customers’ questions, help them book appointments or navigate your website, and a lot more. 

 

3. Customer experience 

Without a smooth and consistent customer experience, it’s hard to achieve good results no matter what kind of business you’re running. However, AI automation tools provide us with a unique opportunity to deliver excellent customer experience across multiple touchpoints. Besides, as AI is learning from a wide range of real-time data (like social media activity, search and purchase history, etc.), we can be sure that the experience our business provides will be tailored to our customers’ needs and preferences. 

 

Here are just some tasks AI automation tools can help us with when it comes to customer experience: 

• Gathering and analyzing different kinds of customer data and behaviors (demographics, shopping habits, preferred payment methods, etc.);
• Providing seamless and personalized customer experience to each audience segment and individual customer (via advertising, marketing, and email campaigns, product recommendations, personalized offers, etc.);
• Optimizing customer experience across multiple touchpoints and channels. 

 

As customer experience automation, or CXA for short, includes different aspects (namely, orchestration, segmentation, personalization, and automation), you’ll probably need several tools to automate it. 

 

For example, you can use tools that were mentioned in the previous sections of this article: AI chatbot tools to provide 24/7 customer support or email marketing tools for sending personalized emails. You can also use CRM platforms like Salesforce to keep track of all of your customers and integrate it with ActiveCampaign to create more personalized experiences with the help of automation. 

 

4. Ad Management

Whether you’re a seasoned advertiser or just a newbie, it can be hard to keep track of everything: check multiple metrics, analyze and solve performance issues, control ad budget, etc. And it gets only harder when you’re running multiple ad campaigns at the same time across different platforms. 

 

AI automation tools can be extremely helpful in this regard. The basic way to automate the ad management process is to use automated rules that work based on real-time data. They can significantly reduce the time required for monitoring and optimizing your campaigns.

 

Here’s what automated rules can help with: 

• Pausing underperforming ads, ad sets, or campaigns; 
• Running ads on a custom schedule, i.e. pausing them at certain times and restarting them when necessary;
• Adjusting budgets based on performance or time to avoid overspending and maximize profits;  
• Changing bids and spending limits by a certain amount based on time or ad performance; 
• Duplicating ads and ad sets quickly.

With ConvertBomb, you can quickly pause ad campaigns that don’t deliver the expected results and avoid overspending.  

 

For example, our tool, ConvertBomb, utilizes the latest technologies and marketing experts’ insights to help marketers monitor and optimize ad campaigns 24/7 without spending too much time or effort. This allows both small and big-scale advertisers to ensure optimal results of their campaigns and avoid overspending, bringing their advertising strategy to a new level of sophistication.  

 

5. Creation and design 

AI tools are advancing at a very high speed, particularly when it comes to creating. We’ve all seen AI-generated images and content pieces that can be confused with human creations, and it’s equally scary and impressive. 

 

With so many tools on the market that have already proven themselves to be useful for content creation or copywriting, our work can become a lot easier. Here are just some things that AI automation tools can help us with: 

• Writing copies and headlines that rank high on search engines, are grammatically correct, and align with our brand’s tone of voice and personality;   
• Writing article outlines by providing the AI tool with topics and keywords; 
• Making creatives in bulk and in various sizes, styles, and formats; 
• Localizing and customizing creatives to fit specific platforms; 
• Creating templates and libraries that help creative teams work faster and make unique and recognizable visuals for branding, advertising, and content marketing. 

With these tools, it’s also possible to test everything we create and compare different versions to find out what works better for a particular audience. Moreover, AI tools can help businesses maintain a steady presence across multiple channels by posting their content regularly, engaging with their followers, and ensuring a consistent tone of voice and brand image.  

 

For example, tools like Jasper can help you easily and quickly generate unique, high-resolution images for different purposes, and tools like SproutSocial will allow you to schedule and post your content across multiple social media platforms. 

 

 

The basic rules of effective marketing automation 

 

Now that we’ve covered some tasks that can be automated, it’s time to consider the following problem: how to automate effectively and most importantly, how to avoid the failures associated with ineffective automation. 

1. Decide which tasks you can and need to automate 

Quite obviously, the first in line to be automated will be the tasks that consume a lot of time and are highly repetitive – they usually yield the best results. 

 

However, it’s important to make sure that the tasks you’re going to automate are not too difficult. After all, AI tools still can’t compete with us in many areas, so it’s best to maintain a certain level of human oversight to ensure that you’re not compromising on performance quality. 

 

2. Find tools that align with your goals and fit your budget 

AI marketing automation tools can have different capabilities, either providing a variety of features or focusing on just one. They also come with different subscription prices, from tools that are practically free to quite expensive ones. 

 

In order to justify the investment and avoid overspending, it’s important to consider what business needs a particular tool can meet, which goals it can help you achieve, and how much your company is ready to spend on it. Besides, you can always evaluate the compatibility of a certain software tool with your objectives and requirements by using free trials that many automation services provide. 

 

3. Provide necessary training and assistance to your employees 

According to IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index 2022, one of the main barriers to the early adoption of AI tools is the lack of necessary skills, expertise, and knowledge. Often, it takes a significant amount of time to learn how to properly use an AI tool, and it can be hard to do without having a clear vision of what needs to be automated and what are the expected results. 

 

That’s why it’s crucial to make an effort to educate staff members about the benefits of marketing automation and provide sufficient training and assistance to help them make a switch. 

 

4. Ensure that your automation strategy works and can be maintained in the long run

One of the most important things that determine the success of automation efforts is having a well-defined strategy with clearly outlined goals (both short and long term) and success metrics for evaluating the results. 

 

When you have a good strategy, you’ll be able to maintain it in the long run and revise or correct the course of action in case something doesn’t go as planned. Moreover, this way every employee within your organization who uses AI tools will have a deep understanding of the automation process and how it aligns with your company’s goals. 

 

5. Maintaining human oversight

While the opportunities offered by AI marketing automation can seem incredibly promising, we have to keep in mind that AI tools are still far from the image of the all-powerful and omniscient general AI presented in popular culture. At its current stage of development, AI requires a lot of training and correction in order to deliver satisfying results. 

 

That’s why first of all, it’s important to curb our enthusiasm a bit to not set our expectations too high just to be let down by AI tools. We need to understand their limitations and remember that while they can be extremely helpful, they still require human oversight to work well. 

 

 

To use or not to use?

 

AI automation tools were developed not to replace human intelligence and creativity but to amplify and enhance them. They can help us solve problems and perform tasks faster and better, ultimately allowing us to become more productive in our personal and professional lives. 

 

Now that you’re hopefully convinced that AI marketing automation is something you should try, consider starting your journey with ConvertBomb today. Our tool will help you level up your advertising game and achieve the ROI that you’ve been dreaming of by automating all of the basic performance optimization tasks. 

Need some help or have questions? Book a demo with our Customer Success team or contact us to start your marketing automation journey.