Blog >
Scaling Segment-of-one Marketing

Blog

Scaling Segment-of-one Marketing

In this article, David Edelman explores a few AI tools that can be used fon an AI strategy to scale segment-of-one marketing.

Champion versus challenger has been the basis for finding lift and proving marketing value for decades. But we are way past the slower, high-cost operations needed to test direct mail pieces or even direct response TV.  To find the right offer, message, or call center interaction on an increasingly personalized basis for digital channels requires multi-variate testing on a massive scale.  Even the fastest “war rooms” for rapid test and learn, operations I’ve helped many companies build, suffer if you need analytic experts to create every test matrix, copywriters to draft every word for every variation, and operations managers to coordinate layers of simultaneous tests. And would you even be able to find all the talent you need at an affordable cost?

New optimization tools, powered by artificial intelligence, have already infiltrated the media buying process. And there is an overwhelming range of tools to turn first- and third-party data into targeting plans.  But now we can use AI to optimize the personalization of the CONTENT of an interaction. Offer design, words, pictures, conversational interactions, tonality, and hundreds of other descriptors become data that can be measured, matched, and modelled.

AI as Growth Engine

The power of content to drive growth may prove to be even more powerful than the excessive granularity of targeting, since it broadens the pool for personalization to enable reach at scale, optimizing interactions across the broadest possible population.  Reliance on targeting can rapidly get into an exercise in reduction, focusing on “high performing deciles.” But what if you could turn it all on its head, scramble the concept of deciles, and go after much more of an audience, by tuning the contact to each person.

Of course, along the way marketers have to be hyper-vigilant about what personal data is used (and every company has to find their line on privacy), and whether the AI drives interactions that are “fair” and “equitable,” but the reality is we can now look at how people actually behave, and what they respond to, at a level that is way more personalized than broad demographics, and design micro-personalized branded experiences that resonate.

Key points include

  • AI enhances Emotional Connection

  • AI drives a rethink of Operations

  • Driving growth

Read the full article, What’s Your AI Strategy for Scaling Segment-of-one Marketing, on Linkedin.