The (Demanding) Consumer is King
In response to critical consumers, online retailers have heavily invested in CDPs and marketing automation. These tools provide insights into customer behavior and sensitivities. A CDP consolidates data from multiple channels into a single database and builds individual profiles, giving marketers a clear understanding of customer interests and purchasing behavior to tailor marketing efforts. Marketing automation software allows these personalized messages to be automatically delivered to customers. However, achieving true one-on-one personalization remains complex, especially for larger companies.
Marketing with a Human Touch
The success of personalization often still depends on human interpretation, even with a CDP. Marketers are tasked with drawing conclusions and designing customer journeys. Complexity and time constraints play a role; with a wide range of offerings, manual marketing becomes challenging. This is where the AI Decisioning Engine comes into play. It uses data from the CDP to predict individual customer needs. The systems complement each other, with personalized marketing messages being automatically created and delivered. The AI Decisioning Engine relieves marketers by making better decisions and targeting effectively.
Personalization, Double the Benefit
The more diverse your offerings and audience, the greater the impact of a decisioning engine. Achieving personalization on both fronts yields the greatest benefits. For example, a travel provider can use a CDP and AI Decisioning Engine to create personalized offers tailored to individual customer preferences, without manual effort.
Room for the Creative Marketer
With an AI Decisioning Engine, marketers have more room for creativity. They spend less time on analysis and can focus more on content. This provides an opportunity to emphasize customer retention. While many companies heavily invest in acquiring new customers, a decisioning engine helps them better understand and serve existing customers, increasing customer lifetime value.
Personalization as Part of Business Strategy
Integrating a decisioning engine ensures that marketing—and personalization in particular—becomes a part of the business strategy. Optimizations are always made with a goal in mind, not just from the customer journey perspective. Since a decisioning engine can accurately predict the outcome of certain actions, you can better estimate returns across the business.
The End of the Interpretation Era
For online retailers reaching the limits of their CDP and looking to take the next step in personalization, a decisioning engine provides a solution. Where a CDP offers insights, an engine drives action, enabling connections that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Continuous refinement and development not only keep creativity alive in the field but are also necessary to fully leverage a CDP's potential. The self-learning algorithm constantly improves, resulting in more accurate data within the CDP and better customer service. The era of gut feeling and interpretation seems to be coming to an end.
This blog originally comes from Building Blocks, acquired by CM.com in 2022.
