Conversational AI Marketing: 3 Benefits + 4 Use Cases
conversational ai, marketing, use cases,
Ever wondered how your marketing efforts could become incredibly precise & efficient with round-the-clock availability?
Introducing conversational AI marketing, the transformative approach that uses the power of conversational AI to make that possible.
With it, you’ll benefit from:
- Greater marketing personalization
- Improved return on investment
- 24x7 availability
Uncover the fundamentals, benefits, and common challenges of conversational artificial intelligence in marketing.
This Article Contains:
- What Is Conversational AI Marketing?
- Conversational AI Chatbots vs Chatbots: What’s the Difference?
- 3 Game-Changing Benefits of Conversational AI Marketing
- 4 Conversational AI Marketing Use Cases and Examples
- 3 Common Challenges of Conversational AI Marketing
- Elevate Your Conversational AI Marketing Strategy with iovox
Let’s kick this off!
What Is Conversational AI Marketing?
Conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) marketing is a digital marketing strategy that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots.
It primarily aims to engage customers and prospects in real-time through personalized conversations. This creates interactive and meaningful interactions between businesses and their target audience.
In essence, conversational AI marketing is all about interactive and personalized marketing that communicates with consumers.
It makes use of a variety of channels, including:
- Live chat
- Chatbots
- Voice assistant
- Virtual assistant
These interactive experiences can be strategically positioned across different platforms, such as websites, social media, paid advertising, and even in physical stores or on smart speakers.
As we step further into the conversational AI marketing world, let’s look at how conversational AI chatbots differ from traditional chatbots.
Conversational AI Chatbots vs Chatbots: What’s the Difference?
People often use the terms chatbots and conversational AI interchangeably because of the overlap between the two.
While chatbots are a form of conversational AI, not all chatbots actually use conversational AI. So, understanding their fundamental differences is crucial.
- Chatbots: These are simple bots that follow predefined scripts or decision trees that limit their responses to specific commands or keywords. Chatbots may struggle to provide useful answers if a user's input falls outside these predetermined boundaries.
- Conversational AI Chatbots: Driven by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning, conversational AI chatbots easily handle complex conversations. They understand user intent, generate dynamic responses, and continuously learn from each interaction. This enhances their ability to engage in personalized, human-like conversations.
In a nutshell, traditional chatbots stick to pre-defined rules, while a conversational AI chatbot adapts and evolves, resulting in more engaging and natural interactions for users.
3 Game-Changing Benefits of Conversational AI Marketing
The global conversational AI market size is expected to reach more than $16 Billion USD by 2024 at a CAGR of 30% in the given forecast period. This underscores the growing importance of Conversational AI in the business world.
Here are four ways that conversational AI tools can improve your marketing efforts:
Greater Personalization in Customer Service
Conversational AI marketing is the key to crafting tailored interactions that resonate with customers on a personal level.
How?
Through advanced technologies like natural language processing, generative AI, and machine learning, conversational AI systems can comprehend and analyze:
- Individual customer preferences: Such as suggesting vegan options for someone who frequently orders them.
- Historical data: Conversational AI can reference past interactions to provide relevant information in future conversations.
- Contextual information: It can understand the current conversation and the customer's history to provide appropriate responses to enhance the user experience.
This profound understanding empowers the system to provide highly personalized experiences for each customer.
Conversational AI can deliver customized recommendations based on the customer's specific requirements, interests, and previous interactions.
For instance, Walmart implements conversational AI to provide a personalized customer experience. Their AI chatbot engages shoppers in real-time conversations, providing tailored product recommendations based on the individual's browsing and purchasing history.
This level of personalization isn't just a nice-to-have; it's essential in the marketing world. A staggering 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.
With conversational AI, your business can forge stronger connections with its clientele. This ensures that every interaction is not only relevant but also more likely to convert prospects into loyal customers.
Increases Campaign ROI
Conversational AI offers opportunities to maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns in the following ways:
- Precise customer targeting: Conversational AI ensures that your message reaches the intended audience optimally, as it can analyze user data and behavior to deliver tailored content. This can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your campaign.
- Facilitating self-service: Customers can use conversational AI for self-assistance, reducing the need for extensive support resources and costs.
- Enhanced lead generation and conversion: Conversational AI can engage prospects in real-time, capturing valuable leads and guiding them through the sales funnel.
But it doesn't stop there.
Once your conversational AI-driven campaign is live, real-time A/B testing using AI can identify the most effective content and strategies to enhance engagement, ultimately leading to improved ROI in your marketing efforts.
Boosts Customer Engagement
Conversational AI, fueled by chatbots, offers the power of real-time engagement with customers.
This immediate engagement offers several advantages for your marketing efforts:
- Higher conversion rates: The shorter the delay between lead generation and contact, the higher the probability of converting leads into customers. Real-time engagement ensures potential customers remain actively engaged and are more likely to take immediate action.
- Improved customer loyalty: Real-time engagement and timely responses enhance customer experience. Customers appreciate the convenience of immediate assistance and offers, leading to heightened satisfaction and loyalty.
- Competitive advantage: Businesses that promptly engage with leads and customers gain a competitive edge. This agility in addressing customer needs and inquiries sets them apart and positions them as industry leaders.
- Enhanced customer retention: Swiftly engaging customers with tailored messages, special offers, and incentives motivates loyalty and sustains customer relationships.
Whether your customers are already loyal or thinking of leaving, real-time engagement is the key to maintaining strong customer relationships.
Ready to see how these benefits translate to real-world use cases and examples of conversational AI Marketing?
5 Conversational AI Marketing Use Cases and Examples
Businesses in various sectors leverage conversational AI marketing to create and execute more extensive digital marketing plans. The goal is to personalize customer interactions, enhance lead generation, and streamline customer support.
Let’s explore this further using real-life examples:
Notification Bots
In the past, customers were required to create accounts or share their email addresses to receive product alerts.
Unfortunately, this often deterred potential buyers, leading to a cart abandonment rate of 31%. Their primary concern was the reluctance to share email addresses on unfamiliar eCommerce platforms due to concerns about receiving spam emails.
Conversational commerce chatbots provide a solution to this challenge. These sophisticated bots can be programmed to transmit notifications through widely used messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Their utility extends beyond informing users about product availability. These bots aren't restricted to informing users about product availability; they can also send notifications for:
- Updates on prices
- Reminders for shopping
- Notices about shipping delays
- Updates on order statuses
For example, Sephora uses notification bots to alert customers about the availability of out-of-stock products. This way, customers are spared the need to register accounts or disclose email addresses. Instead, they receive alerts directly via the Sephora app or website.
This approach streamlines the shopping experience, reduces cart abandonment, and ensures users stay informed about their desired products without signing up.
Consumer Insight and Feedback Bots
Customer trends and preferences can differ significantly from one industry category to another. What works for regular online shopping might not apply to high-end luxury items.
That's where conversational AI can help.
AI chatbots have real conversations with customers, ask them about their shopping experiences, and collect feedback. With this information, companies can tailor their strategies to meet the unique needs of their specific market niche. This can ensure you stay ahead of the competition.
An example of this is the high-end fashion retailer Nordstrom. On its website and mobile app, users chat with a bot to receive personalized style advice and locate products. During these interactions, the chatbot also collects valuable feedback and consumer insights to tailor the shopping experience further.
Lead Qualification
Conversational AI is the ideal tool for automating lead qualification, thanks to its proficiency in data analysis.
It excels in audience segmentation or categorization of your target audience based on specific criteria, such as:
- User behavior
- Preferences
- Demographics
This automation ensures that your marketing teams can invest their efforts more strategically and focus on leads with the highest potential for conversions.
For example, Zenefits, an HR and payroll management company, harnessed conversational AI to enhance lead qualification. By using AI-driven chatbots, they engaged website visitors with targeted questions, promptly routing highly qualified leads to the sales team. This automation shortened the sales cycle and resulted in an increase in the prospect-to-win rate.
Email Marketing
NLP-based conversational AI offers digital marketers a powerful tool to enhance email marketing. It can create personalized email campaigns tailored to user behavior, ensuring that emails are triggered only when the customer takes specific actions.
In essence, chatbots driven by conversational AI empower digital marketing professionals to reach the right audiences at precisely the right moment. This ensures that the delivered content is not only relevant and engaging but also highly likely to result in successful conversions.
For example, UK furniture retailer DFS effectively utilizes conversational AI personalization in its email marketing strategy. When a customer shows interest in a particular furniture category, such as lounge chairs, DFS's chatbot triggers tailored email recommendations and exclusive offers. This drives higher conversion rates and revenue.
Automated Messages
Automated messaging via conversational AI bots offers a dynamic strategy that can transform any customer interaction and elevate customer service. This approach can help strengthen your marketing strategy, creating a seamless and engaging experience for your customers.
To see this in practice, let’s take a look at Deltic Group, the UK's top late-night bar and club operator, who encountered a surge in late-night customer inquiries through Facebook Messenger.
To address this, they introduced a virtual assistant powered by Watson Assistant, a conversational AI platform, for automated messaging.
This AI powered chatbot efficiently manages queries, delivers personalized responses, and increases bookings and reservations. This strategic chatbot implementation significantly enhanced customer engagement, reduced response times, and increased conversions.
Clearly, conversational AI technology has a lot to offer to your marketing strategy. But it’s not without its fair share of challenges. Let’s examine some obstacles you may encounter when using conversational AI.
3 Common Challenges of Conversational AI Marketing
AI marketing solutions continually advance in terms of development and implementation.
Despite these advancements, it's crucial to consider potential drawbacks when integrating AI into your marketing strategy.
Privacy Concerns
As artificial intelligence rapidly advances, so do concerns about data privacy. The ever-changing landscape of AI regulations means that businesses need to stay vigilant.
One significant development in this area is the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018. This regulation imposes stringent data collection and usage rules, especially for companies dealing with EU customers.
Consequently, companies must exercise utmost caution when handling customer data.
Moreover, some businesses face restrictions on storing data offsite due to regulatory requirements, which can impact their ability to use cloud-based AI marketing services.
Integration Difficulties
One of the significant obstacles many businesses face when implementing AI in marketing is the difficulty of integration. This issue often stems from a shortage of AI professionals and a need for more expertise in deploying and configuring AI systems.
If your team lacks a deep understanding of AI configuration, you may struggle to integrate and configure AI into your existing workflows seamlessly.
Additionally, improper configuration can introduce vulnerabilities into your system, making it susceptible to cyberattacks from hackers and malware. Improper configuration can put your valuable client data at risk, emphasizing the importance of proper AI integration.
Poor Data Quality
AI can be customized to your organization's goals, consumer preferences, current trends, and intentions. However, this tuning process depends on the quality of data.
In addition, AI algorithms and machine learning need a steady stream of data and time to collect valuable insights about your customers. Without this, AI is likely to arrive at inconclusive results.
Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that the data you feed into your AI tools is accurate and reliable.
Furthermore, you must allow your AI systems the time they need to accumulate this critical information.
Interested in elevating your marketing strategies with conversational AI technology?
Elevate Your Marketing Strategy with iovox
iovox offers a robust call-tracking and conversational AI solution to boost your marketing efforts.
With advanced call tracking, you can link phone calls to specific marketing campaigns and their origins. This means that you can precisely attribute each call to the specific advertising or promotional effort that generated it.
iovox Insights, powered by Conversational AI, can help you easily spot patterns, improve your sales approach, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Here’s how iovox can help you to supercharge your marketing efforts:
Enhance Customer Experience
iovox call analytics offers valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. It tracks customer calls with specific keywords, making conversations searchable, and evaluates KPIs to enhance the customer experience.
By analyzing call patterns, you can:
- Identify common questions or concerns from customers.
- Ensure customers are connected with the most qualified experts for practical assistance.
- Evaluate overall customer satisfaction during calls.
- Recognize areas where agents excel and where they may need additional support.
For example, by analyzing the data, you can identify prevalent customer inquiries and align your marketing campaigns to resonate with customer interests and needs.
Identify Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities
iovox Insights allows you to go beyond standard customer support. By actively identifying keywords and understanding what challenges callers are discussing, it becomes a valuable tool for recognizing upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Imagine this: iovox Insights can pinpoint what related challenges callers are talking about and identify any additional requirements that your company can fulfill.
These trigger-based alerts are not only beneficial for staying informed but can also be used strategically to upsell and cross-sell to your customers, creating a more personalized and effective marketing approach.
Improve Lead Conversions
With iovox's Advanced Call Tracking, you can assign dedicated phone numbers to your marketing campaigns. This allows you to monitor which channels generate the most incoming calls closely.
For instance, if you're running a social media marketing campaign to promote discounts, you can use Dynamic Numbers to track your website visitors.
Each visitor receives a unique phone number. This way, you can precisely attribute phone calls and inquiries to specific marketing efforts, traffic sources, or individual visitors.
You gain valuable insights when you compare call volumes from different campaign numbers, which lets you evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing campaign. This data-driven approach empowers you to make informed decisions about allocating your marketing budget for optimal lead generation.
Final Thoughts
Conversational AI is transforming the marketing landscape by letting businesses engage customers in personal, real-time conversations. It offers greater personalization, 24/7 customer support, potential for increased ROI, and heightened customer engagement.
Looking for a powerful conversational AI tool to boost your marketing efforts?
iovox Insights empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions and improve their marketing performance.
To get in touch, click the WebConnect call button on this page, and we'll contact you soon. You can also email us at hello@iovox.com or call us for free in the US at +1 888 369 9519.
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