How to Leverage AI to Enhance Your Marketing Automation: 4 Key Applications

How AI is Revolutionizing Marketing Automation

In a recent appearance on the Software Spotlight podcast, we had a chance to meet with marketing automation expert Xiaofei Zhang of ActiveCampaign. This article will explore the best ways to leverage AI in marketing automation to drive success in your organization. Xiaofei is the head of platform and strategic partnerships at ActiveCampaign.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming marketing automation in exciting new ways. Companies like ActiveCampaign are leveraging AI to streamline content creation and uncover insights from customer data. These capabilities save significant time and cost, enabling more personalized and effective marketing campaigns.

Generative AI Creates Initial Drafts of Content

One of the most promising applications of AI in marketing is using generative models to create initial drafts of content. ActiveCampaign has built an AI assistant directly into its email builder to generate the first versions of emails and landing pages.

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Marketers provide a short prompt describing the goal and audience, and the AI generates a complete draft. This gives marketers a considerable head start in creating campaigns rather than starting from a blank page. It also provides a framework to iterate on, producing higher-quality content much faster.

“You don't have to start from scratch, just write your idea and then push the AI assistant to generate a first draft for you.” – Xiaofei Zhang, ActiveCampaign

This application of generative AI saves significant time and costs in producing the high volumes of content needed for modern marketing campaigns.

We believe that AI transforms marketing automation by enabling more personalized and relevant customer experiences through data-driven insights and predictive analytics. However, AI should augment human creativity and strategy, not replace it entirely. ScienceDirect has a similar thought.

Analyzing Open-Ended Customer Feedback

AI is also used to analyze qualitative customer data like open-ended survey responses efficiently. ActiveCampaign implemented a direct attribution survey asking customers how they heard about the company.

They then used AI to summarize the free-form text responses from thousands of customers. This provided a fast and scalable way to gain insights from this rich customer feedback.

“We didn't want to limit the customers. So we use generative AI to summarize the responses.” – Xiaofei Zhang, ActiveCampaign

Text analysis AI provides immense value in identifying themes and trends from large volumes of unstructured text data like customer feedback. This gives marketers an efficient way to turn qualitative data into quantitative insights.

More Personalized and Effective Campaigns

These AI capabilities allow marketers to be more productive and gain better insights from customer data. This translates into more personalized and effective marketing campaigns.

As Xiaofei Zhang from ActiveCampaign summarizes: “Identifying that what we're playing is in an existing field, but creating a very compelling solution for these customer segments.”

AI is revolutionizing marketing automation by enhancing human capabilities. Companies like ActiveCampaign that leverage AI can better serve their customers and grow their businesses.

Personalizing Experiences With AI

AI powers capabilities like predictive lead scoring and automated messaging in ActiveCampaign. This allows for more tailored, relevant experiences for each customer. Personalization powered by AI leads to better engagement and conversions.

For example, ActiveCampaign can track customer behavior and use that data to send personalized, timely messages. ActiveCampaign may automatically trigger an email with a special offer if a lead visits a pricing page multiple times.

AI takes the guesswork out of personalization. Instead of relying on assumptions, marketers can act on data-driven insights from AI to craft the ideal experience for each contact.

Optimizing Workflows With AI

An AI assistant can suggest workflows in ActiveCampaign's automation builder. This makes it easy to set up effective automations to streamline operations.

The AI reviews your business goals and existing campaigns. Then, it provides recommended workflows to achieve objectives like lead nurturing, customer re-engagement, and more.

Marketers can accept the AI's suggestions or customize them further. Either way, AI recommendations save significant time than building automations from scratch.

AI takes care of the busy work while marketers focus on strategy. Rather than getting bogged down in building complex workflows, marketers can devote energy to high-impact initiatives.

Conclusion

AI unlocks new levels of efficiency, insight, and customer experiences in ActiveCampaign. Critical applications include content generation, data analysis, personalization, and workflow optimization.

Adopting AI is critical for modern marketing automation platforms to stay competitive. With AI, companies like ActiveCampaign can better serve customers and enable marketers to focus on big-picture goals.

Key Takeaways

• AI powers personalization based on customer data and behavior in ActiveCampaign
• Automation suggestions from AI save time compared to building workflows manually.
• AI applications range from content creation to data analysis and attribution.
• AI adoption is a competitive advantage for marketing automation platforms.

Sign up for a free trial of ActiveCampaign today with no credit card required.

Watch our edition of Software Spotlight featuring ActiveCampaign. Host Michael Bernzweig interviews Xiaofei Zhang of ActiveCampaign to discuss the Chicago-based marketing automation company's founding in 2003 and impressive growth. Zhang details how ActiveCampaign transitioned to a SaaS model in 2016, kickstarting tremendous expansion to over 150 million in revenue and 800 employees globally today.