Discover how top CMOs are utilizing AI to improve consumer engagement, change marketing strategy, and make data-driven decisions that have quantifiable effects.
The Main Idea
AI revolution. By offering tools for hyper-personalization and predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) in CMO strategy is speeding up the transition from sales enablement to buyer enablement.
revolution in marketing. CMOs may redefine consumer engagement by using AI in marketing to create tailored experiences and alternative attribution models.
generative boost. By taking over data analysis duties, generative AI is increasing marketing teams’ efficiency and freeing up specialists to concentrate on strategy and innovation.
According to a group of CMOs, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing a number of crucial aspects of their job, including strategy, tactics, staffing, consumer engagement, and KPIs. To effectively use their data and platforms to reach customers, they think it is essential for executives to embrace, comprehend, and implement AI in marketing. The CMOs provided CMSWire with a variety of information regarding the impact AI is having on the marketing C-suite.
- AI In CMO Strategy
AI is “arriving just in time,” according to Michael Park, CMO at ServiceNow, a digital workflow firm based in Santa Clara, California, to speed up corporate marketing’s transition from sales enablement to buyer enablement.
Understanding consumer pain points, mapping the purchase journey, customisation, and continual improvement driven by customer feedback are the four main objectives of an effective customer experience (CX), according to Park.
According to Park, businesses use generative AI’s capabilities—most notably, cross-system data summarization, hyper-personalization, predictive analytics, real-time sentiment analysis, and ultra-fine segmentation—to allow those core CX goals more thoroughly and on a bigger scale.
According to Jennifer Chase, EVP and CMO at SAS, an analytics software business based in Cary, North Carolina, AI has the potential to develop prejudices, thus it’s critical that marketers take ownership of inclusivity in AI for the “sake of responsible marketing.”
“The marketing team is solely responsible for mitigating the biased results that arise from biased data and biased models,” Chase stated.
In order to provide both technical and non-technical marketing users with a thorough understanding of their AI models regarding accuracy, fairness, interpretability, and drift, SAS is introducing model cards, which Chase described as “like the ingredient list on your food but for AI.”
“Inclusion continues to be a mainstay” in marketing campaigns, and model cards may assist make sure AI algorithms are “staying on track ethically,” she said.
According to Michelle Huff, CMO of UserTesting, a San Francisco-based startup that offers UX insights, the company has started experimenting and investigating AI “across the entirety of our business.”
With the ultimate goal of identifying how AI might help differentiate it, do more with fewer resources, and create experiences for customers, Huff stated that UserTesting is “diving deep” into understanding data protection and privacy.
“As CMOs, we are often at the forefront of organizational innovation, thinking about how to set ourselves apart from the competition,” Huff stated. AI has the potential to be a huge ally in this effort.
Numerous studies over the years demonstrate how businesses have used technology to gain a competitive advantage and spur expansion. My plan is to make sure we remain early adopters and innovators.
According to Monica Ho, CMO at SOCi, a multilocation marketing platform based in San Diego, AI’s “foresight” enables CMOs to anticipate changes in the market, understand customer behavior, and evaluate campaign chances, “paving the way” for more accurate targeting and effective resource allocation.
According to Ho, CMOs tend to adopt a more customer-focused approach, tailoring every encounter to meet the unique wants and demands of each client.
- Using AI In CMO Tactics
Generative AI, according to Park of ServiceNow, assists advertisers in “avoiding the damage they feared in the new age of cookieless browsing.”
According to Park, marketers can create alternative attribution models, drive personalized relevance, create value triggers to draw customers to businesses’ websites, and provide such rich, supportive CX that customers “willingly disclose their identities because they’re hungry to learn more” thanks to AI-powered hyper-personalization, predictive analytics, and cross-system summarization of data.
According to Ho of SOCi, AI’s sophisticated analytics give businesses a “tactical edge” by facilitating more thorough consumer segmentation through the processing and analysis of enormous volumes of data to find patterns, behaviors, and preferences.
According to her, for example, marketers can use AI to group clients according to their browsing patterns, interactions with prior marketing campaigns, social media attitudes, and product review trends.
According to Mahesh Kumar, CMO at Acceldata, a data observability platform based in Campbell, California, AI can assist marketers in performing large-scale customer conversation analysis to identify objections, understand pain points, and guide product direction. It can also help businesses expand their content and optimize digital spending.
Customers are starting to utilize generative AI to search the web and obtain information, according to Johann Wrede, chief experience officer of the travel and cost management firm Emburse.
Wrede stated, “We must now consider how to get our message seen outside of search and social media.” “As marketers, we must make sure that the product information AI provides is correct and derived from data that comes from us, rather than being deduced or taken from unofficial sources.”
- CMO Team Staffing With AI
According to Park of ServiceNow, AI “supercharges” the marketing talent “we worked so hard to attract,” increasing the effectiveness and productivity of our highly qualified employees and enabling them to accomplish more with their resources.
He claimed that generative AI accelerates and enhances “resident excellence” when used appropriately.
According to Park, proficient marketers are realizing that generative AI is already capable of handling a wide range of activities involving data analysis, artificial creativity, and problem-solving.
“Experts understand they must adapt to AI in order to stay ahead, and they are,” Park stated.
CMOs should have a “CEO mindset,” he said, given the variety of capabilities that corporate marketing teams today possess, from data scientists to right-brained creatives.
“With the introduction of generative AI, marketing has too many functions for the CMO to be an expert in all of them,” Park stated.
There is a “level of urgency to delve into and experiment with AI,” according to Huff of UserTesting.
“I don’t want to overlook the possibility that AI could help my organization achieve a 20% productivity boost on a similar budget and workforce,” Huff stated.
According to Mairead Maher, CMO of Poppulo, a platform for employee and customer experiences, the CMO must “create a culture where AI is accepted and valued.”
According to her, AI should increase team productivity and impact while freeing up important staff members who must spend time on repetitive and routine production chores.
“Instead, resources can be directed toward utilizing this capacity under supervision and producing results that will have a higher level of impact and brand differentiation,” Maher stated.
AI offers a “new wave of technologies to master,” whether it’s to enhance image, video, or copy creation, Maher added.
However, Maher stated, “Marketers are prepared to respond to this call—AI is just another pillar of our tech stack.”
AI can help give some structure to the many duties that marketers “juggle daily,” according to Ho of SOCi.
According to Ho, in order for AI implementation to be successful, CMOs must give marketing teams top priority when it comes to AI training so that they are aware of the benefits AI offers.
According to Elias Terman, CMO of Uptycs, a cloud and endpoint security company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, AI does not take the place of his staff. Rather, AI enhances their skills, enabling them to “do what they do best”—create, invent, and engage with clients “on a human level.”
According to Wrede of Emburse, marketing positions would “shift from creation and production to review and editing” as a result of AI.
- AI In Customer Engagement For CMOs
According to Park of ServiceNow, AI segmentation enables marketers to provide tailored, relevant, and captivating customer experiences as consumer needs evolve throughout the purchasing process.
For example, Park saw that when his company began utilizing AI-powered audience segmentation to target the appropriate attendees, event attendance and engagement rose.
According to him, enterprise marketers can provide “consumer-quality CX” to enterprise buyers by utilizing AI’s real-time sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, and large-scale customisation.
According to Park, the segmentation capabilities of AI are also being utilized to build and expedite enterprise and product changes led by voice of the customer (VoC) and to redefine VoC insights.
According to Maher of Poppulo, AI is influencing customization for both online and offline interactions by assisting marketers in delivering more pertinent information and increasing customer engagement and conversion rates.
According to Ho of SOCi, AI chatbots are improving customer service and engagement by providing instant feedback and real-time assistance. With its 24/7 operation, AI serves clients at all times and engages users with real-time behavioral insights, “refining the entire customer journey.”
As chatbots get smarter, Wrede of Emburse said, he expects customers to be less patient when searching a company’s website for information; instead, “they’ll just ask for what they want when they want it.”
Wrede stated, “I believe that consumers will always have a strong desire to speak with a human.”
Because there will always be a need for “human connection in business,” he also predicts a trend toward in-person gatherings for clients and prospects.
- CMO Metrics Using AI
According to Park of ServiceNow, AI’s predictive and advanced analytics can assist improve the accuracy of KPIs by evaluating how campaigns are performing now and are likely to perform in the future based on past data and current patterns.
Park believes that as AI tracks customer journeys across many touchpoints and quantifies the value of each channel, attribution and ROI analysis—which are always difficult—become more accurate.
According to Kumar of Acceldata, marketing analytics, including top-performing campaigns by persona, area, and other characteristics, are being analyzed using machine learning (ML) algorithms.
According to him, AI has significantly democratized the use of marketing metrics. Information is now extracted from products using a natural language interface. Similarly, AI in natural language can be used for some data and metrics integration activities.
According to Wrede with Emburse, “good business is good business, regardless of technology” when it comes to KPIs.
“AI will help us achieve our efficiency targets, but it won’t alter the fundamental KPIs we use to assess the state of our company,” Wrede stated.
According to him, key marketing KPIs including return on marketing investment, net revenue retention, marketing originated pipeline, and marketing influenced pipeline are “here to stay.”