What if I called you Ryotaro? Odds are, you’d either be super pleased that someone pronounced one of the rarest first names on Earth correctly, or very confused why someone used that name to address you.

And if you’re thinking that we’re just fishing for the strangest imaginable example of customer interaction gone wrong in a customer journey far, far away, then we must set your world view straight. 

Even one of Germany’s biggest magazine publishers famously made headlines by sending marketing messages to all clients opening with, “Dear Zero!” Not because Zero is the most common name in Germany, but because they didn’t set up their email marketing platform correctly.

This just goes to show that personalized marketing was already challenging before artificial intelligence (AI). Now, with many enterprises trying to create the sense of a one-on-one conversation while also scaling their efforts with generative AI, it’s even harder. Let’s see how you can achieve that.

Why Personalization Matters in Marketing

Ah, content personalization — the noble art of making consumers feel like a brand truly sees them, hoping they won’t notice that a marketing campaign doesn’t have eyes.

I’m not saying this to be snarky but to make a point. And that’s because your take on AI-driven personalization will very much reflect your brand values. Some brands will try to mine customer data like 19th-century gold diggers. That’s the reason you browse hiking boots once and are then haunted by them across every device you own, as if your phone is subtly judging your commitment to the outdoors.

Yes, brands try to benefit from the data they collect about consumer behavior. But while some will seem like the creepy neighbor, others actually use their customer data platform to build relationships beyond the next business transaction. And that’s what we mean when we talk about the user experience.

If one of your customers regularly buys running gear and shares the marathon training routes stored in their fitness app with your community, suggesting a pair of running shoes could be genuinely useful. The recommendation feels relevant, timely and aligned with their interests.

If someone buys a single screwdriver for a quick home repair, and suddenly every ad they see is for power drills and woodworking courses, your AI-driven personalization can feel completely off the mark. You may believe you’re marketing to a professional carpenter while you’re really annoying a student who just tried to fix a loose cabinet handle.

Plus, the level of personalization clients expect is changing. While it used to be enough to put a name tag (hopefully not “Zero”) into your email copy and be available, the pandemic has made us all… well, spoiled. Nowadays, we don’t just expect solutions, but personalized engagement and a customer experience tailored just to us. In fact, 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience.

Unless you want to sound like Grandpa bragging about going viral on Facebook with a Minions meme, it’s time to update your digital marketing strategy to create true rapport with your clients while boosting ROI.

The Challenges of Truly Personalized Content and How AI Can Shape the Customer Experience

In a perfect world, every brand’s marketing team would send each of us a hand-crafted letter on gilt paper the moment we so much as think of their product, and immediately stop sending those when we lose interest. 

Alas, that day will never come, because it’s just not practical.

That means, you as a company have to figure out what type of customer data you’ll want to collect to inform your AI personalization. For truly innovative offerings that deviate from those of your competitors, it could even mean walking your clients through the process, explaining how an AI agent might use certain data points.

No matter if you’re running a young startup or an established corporation, though, some of the challenges of a personalized marketing campaign will remain similar (with differences of scale):

• Data collection: Gathering accurate user data that’s meaningful for your niche and product can be challenging due to fragmented data sources, incomplete profiles and tracking limitations.
• Segmentation: Defining meaningful audience segments requires balancing granularity with practicality while avoiding overfitting or inaccurate product recommendations (Hello, drilling tool!)
• Data privacy policies: Adhering to evolving regulations such as GDPR and CCPA complicates data usage, storage and compliance enforcement across different regions.
• User consent management: Ensuring transparent op-in/opt-out processes while maintaining a seamless user experience can be technically and legally complex.
• Scalability: Delivering real-time, hyper-personalized content at scale demands significant computing power, well-planned automation workflows and a robust infrastructure regularly auditing those processes.

Tough challenges, but AI applications can actually help address them. Where previously, content marketers could only rely on templates and name tags, AI-driven automation can help businesses optimize personalization and customer engagement to a degree that feels more organic and spontaneous. Think of it like the difference between a generic reference to your last purchase in an email and a personal chatbot assistant who anticipates your needs and guides you through the buying journey.

That’s not to say that AI-powered personalization is 100% superior and bots will never make a mistake. The difference is that, what used to be “Dear Zero” can now be an elaborately formulated suggestion. So even beyond traditional marketing formats, AI can enhance interactions in areas like chatbots, shopping cart messaging and recommendation engines. But getting it right also demands thorough preparation. A power drill is a power drill, even if you sound like Tolstoi.

How AI Enhances Marketing Personalization

So, you’ve seen the light. You’re ready to recommend a double-shot espresso machine to a client because they just bought a high-performance alarm clock and the comfiest weighted blanket — and you just want to give them a fighting chance. How exactly does AI help you personalize at scale? Here are some pointers:

• AI-driven segmentation: AI can analyze customer behavior patterns and segment audiences more precisely and faster than you ever could. Yes, you should still check the results, but in the meantime, you’ll benefit from micro-segmentation, ensuring hyper-relevant messaging.
• Predictive pricing strategies: Think of how Netflix suggests shows before you even realize you wanted to watch them. Machine learning algorithms can anticipate customer needs based on past interactions, positioning yours as the company that “just gets clients.”
• Dynamic pricing strategies: With AI, it’s easy to adjust pricing in real time based on demand, browsing history and purchasing patterns. This not only helps you create personalized offers that convert faster; products that feel uniquely personalized also unlock premium pricing.
• Omnichannel personalization: Surprise, it’s not fun to enter your basic information in a quiz embedded in an email campaign, only to repeat the cycle on social media and in a voice assistant. With AI, you can provide a seamless experience across multiple touch points.
• AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants: While they require some prep work, these tools can engage customers in meaningful, personalized conversations, resolving simple queries in real time, so your service and sales reps can focus on more challenging cases. 

Tools and Strategies for AI-Powered Personalization

If all of this sounds great but slightly overwhelming, don’t worry. There are numerous AI tools designed to simplify personalization for businesses of all sizes. Here are a few to consider:

• Chatbots: Tools like ChatGPT, Botsonic or Zapier Chatbots can provide instant, personalized interactions, ensuring customers receive relevant recommendations and support.
• Dynamic content platforms: Tools like Adobe Sensei and Dynamic Yield enable marketers to create hyper-personalized web and email experiences based on real-time user behavior.
• AI-driven customer relationship management (CRM) systems: Platforms like Salesforce Einstein and HubSpot AI enhance CRM with predictive insights and automated personalization.
• contentmarketing.ai: Brafton’s AI-powered content marketing platform helps businesses craft personalized content strategies and flesh out the copy for everything from press releases to white papers.

To kickstart your AI marketing efforts effectively, follow these practical steps:

1. Prepare your data: Ensure you have a structured, compliant and clean dataset to feed into AI models for accurate predictions.
2. Train AI algorithms: Fine-tune AI models based on historical data and user interactions.
3. Test and iterate: Continuously monitor AI-driven campaigns and adjust them based on customer response and feedback.
4. Scale personalization efforts: Start with small test groups before rolling out AI-driven personalization across larger customer segments.

Risks of Using AI Tools in Personalized Marketing and How To Mitigate Them

Just like any other tool, AI isn’t good or bad in itself, and it’s not without its pitfalls. Just as you can use a hammer to drive a nail into a wall or smash a window, AI also comes with risks, including:

• Data privacy concerns: Collecting and using personal data without transparency can lead to distrust and legal repercussions. Develop a detailed AI strategy to protect your intellectual property, and make sure you discuss how business partners are approaching AI as well.
• Algorithmic bias: AI systems can inadvertently reinforce biases, leading to exclusionary or inaccurate personalization. Plan for human supervision and intervention at every step, so the ease at which AI can scale your efforts doesn’t turn into a horror scenario.
• Over-reliance on automation: Yes, it’s fun to have your personal butler, but relying too heavily on automation can cause lazy thinking and result in impersonal and even tone-deaf messaging. 

AI is not just a futuristic tool. In time, it’ll become an essential component of every modern business strategy. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, your brand can move beyond cookie cutter personalization and create truly individualized experiences that foster deeper customer relationships.

That said, you should never lose sight of your responsibilities as a business. Marketers who prioritize transparency, ethical data practices and human-AI collaboration will find themselves ahead of the competition in delivering engaging and truly personalized marketing experiences. Everyone choosing the easy path will only put their customers in a HAL 9000 situation — an AI that takes personalization a little too far, refusing to let customers opt out while eerily insisting, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Note: This article was originally published on contentmarketing.ai.