Artificial Intelligence :
A Primer on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning in Marketing
By: Mike Gilbert @ GC Direct
Artificial Intelligence is the umbrella term for a variety of products and processes. It is used to describe a process that creates an action with little human interaction. Think driverless cars, Pandora’s selection of the next song you listen to, chatbots or Amazon recommending a product you may be interested in.
Marketing implementations of "AI" primarily fall into the Machine Learning category, a subset of AI. Machine learning uses the computing power of today’s technology to sift through large amounts of data to find answers and make predictions based on trends that may not be apparent to the brightest and most experienced data scientists.
And if you’re looking for a new career, the average base pay for a senior data scientist is $162,000 according to Glassdoor. There are 32 pages of data scientist openings in the greater Seattle area on the Glassdoor site.
This demand stems from the many applications of machine learning and other techniques. Machine learning needs data, and lots of it, to produce results. It works best with complex sets of variables such as e-commerce sties with a large number of SKUs. Machine learning can reveal answers that aren’t visible using traditional methods. And do it quickly.
So how do companies utilize Machine Learning?
Primarily, companies use machine learning to identify and leverage information that is very difficult to create using traditional methods.
Typical applications for enterprise companies include:
Should we jump into machine learning?
Chances are, you may already be using some kind of machine learning. If you are sending a/b test emails to a segment of your list and rolling out the winner to the best performer, that is a simple type of machine learning. If you are utilizing marketing automation software to score, segment and personalize the marketing process, that is a type of machine learning.
Your competitors are asking the same question—or else they are already diving in headfirst. In general, B2C businesses with revenue over $50 million with a data lake of complex transactional and marketing data and have a library of traditional predictive models will benefit from a robust machine learning initiative.
Even if you don’t fit that profile, there are products and services out there that are based on machine learning that you can leverage to gain important insights and market more effectively. You can improve your targeting across all channels, hone lead generation programs, predict churn, personalize messaging and a host of other improvements. And once set up, you can be extremely nimble in reacting to changes in the marketplace.
Our data is in many silos, can we still leverage Machine Learning?
It is ideal to have all data, from marketing, sales, finance, inventory in one data lake for any kind of modeling including machine learning. But that isn’t the real world, all companies have multiple data sources. Part of the evaluation process of implementing machine learning is finding ways to bring disparate data sources together. Cloud computing services including Azure, AWS and GWS offer the computing power and third-party solutions to help you scale your initiatives. Consultancies and solution providers can help you bring it together.
Watch this space
The Pacific Northwest is a hotbed of companies and services in the machine learning space. There are services out there that you can use relatively rapidly to dip your toe in the water. In future issues, we will talk to some Pacific Northwest companies about what they experienced when they started and what worked (and what didn’t) for them.
If Big Data was the buzzword of the last five years, AI/Machine Learning is the buzzword today. Machine learning can take your big data and make it actionable, as well as automatically make course corrections when trends change. In today’s chaotic world, we can use all the help we can get to stay a step ahead of the competition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Gilbert
Mike Gilbert is the Founder and President of GCDirect, a marketing services consultancy and advertising agency. Mike comes from a background in the direct response advertising agencies and the data-driven world of loyalty marketing with companies like United Airlines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and Westin Hotels and Resorts. His experience in consulting and data-driven marketing led to the formation of GCDirect.
