At a time when the number of small online stores is constantly growing, and significant players are investing more and more in making powerful sales offers in various e-channels, people do not want to receive the same e-mails en masse with products they are not interested in.
Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), this kind of mass marketing can instead be turned into a tailor-made solution for the customer, offering them exactly the right colour bag, suitable washing machine or sports equipment. And they buy it!
Statistics on e-commerce show that people really like to buy and sell in virtual environments. In Europe, online sales reached 718 billion euros in 2021. In stiff competition, it is increasingly important that the offered product is really interesting to the customer. Manually it is impossible to keep up with every customer’s searches, clicks and social media behaviour, to offer them exactly the desired product or service. Also, these preferences may change on the go.
“AI that makes real-time decisions based on customer data and preferences, can respond to quick clicks and search terms and be an important helper for merchants, is integrated into the Salesforce platform and is called Marketing Cloud,” explains LeverUP’s Head of MarTech Implementations, Nika Župan. She has helped many companies transition to new technology and has seen numerous success stories – both in the form of satisfied customers who get more personalized sales offers than before and company managers who see real benefits in increased revenue.
Župan describes an excellent example of how AI works with humans and benefits us – both from the customer’s and the owner’s point of view. “Today, nearly 65 per cent of people abandon a purchase if it is not personalized or necessary for them,” says Župan and adds that she can immediately give a specific example. “I was recently looking for accommodation in a foreign country, and I put on a filter in the search so that there could be free parking with the housing. The next day I received an e-mail in which the same company offered me public transportation options from the airport to the accommodation, and I thought that both the sender of this letter and I had wasted our time – I did not need this offer. And it was a waste of the company’s resources.”
According to Župani, companies already have a lot of data, but what is essential is the ability to use it – the ability to offer the customer precisely the product or service intended for them. “Understandably there are many different channels, but a big plus with Marketing Cloud is an overview of everything: e-mails, SMS, social media channels and communication and mobile applications. Every little trend can be observed there, and at the same time, AI is working too – analyzing customer behaviour and making personalized offers to them,” she said.
Artificial intelligence has a lot of skills that humans just don’t have. “Nobody sits at the computer all the time and finds out when the customer likes to read their newsletter – either in the morning or evening. But AI does it and sends out the letter at the right moment,” explained Župan. “Knowledge of the customer and user experience is becoming increasingly important in e-commerce, and you just have to go along.”
