There is still a big gap between AI potential and use

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become indispensable in science. Ultimately, it is able to analyze large amounts of data much faster than the human brain. By now, the systems have even progressed so far that they deduce appropriate conclusions and can act accordingly. Thus, the discipline has made breakthroughs in discovering correlations in research in various fields, marketing being one of them.

AI combines complex tools of marketing and enables a personalized and automated customer approach.

Independently, it manages to decide on the time, channel, content and type of incentive, based on individual customer data. At the same time, the process can make possible changes. It adjusts the type and amount of incentives used to control campaign success. This eliminates the need for elaborate, manual segmentation of buyers into different groups with corresponding content. Moreover, it enables smaller companies to prevail against industry giants.

Many companies in the retail and e-commerce sectors are already using these AI technologies in marketing to some extent. However, a recent Forrester study, commissioned by Emarsys – Building Trust and Confidence: AI Marketing Readiness in Retail and e-Commerce, finds that there’s a gap between the potential of today’s AI marketing solutions and their actual implementation in the enterprises.

Great potential

Although the importance of AI solutions in retail marketing and e-commerce is well-known, it often fails to be implemented. The study reveals: 75% of respondents see the rapid progress in digitization as a problem, according to the study. Finding the right tool is another issue. Around half of the surveyed companies (54%) even claim to have no effective data management strategy in place. A sufficient database is usually given, but often collected in so-called data silos and not analyzed accordingly. Hence, instead of personalized “one-to-one” offers, customers receive the usual “one-to-many” offers, based on segmentation like age and...