AI Vendors: It’s time to walk the walk in thought leadership

A sea of retailers and technology providers descended upon Palm Springs last week for the annual eTail West event. After swimming through the madness for the better part of three days I left with some great insights...special thanks to @Eoin Comerford from @Moosejaw for an amazing presentation on Brand. 

I also left with some clear ways these events can be much more useful.

If a marketer or technology provider says “Artificial Intelligence” or “Machine Learning'' they must ACTUALLY EXPLAIN exactly what they’re doing, how it’s done and the results they're getting! Saying things like “We are using AI for personalization” is not worth the price of admission. We need to hold our thought leaders to a higher standard (special thanks to @Yasir Anwar of WSI for specific examples around supply chain!). Here’s an example for my company, Persado.

The What

Enterprises deploy the Persado’s Platform to choose the best words to use when communicating with customers. Through experimentation with actual customers, the platform provides insights as to what words and phrases resonate with audiences, segments, and individuals and then leverages those insights to (1) create actual content or (2) provide creative teams with roadmaps for effective communications.

The How

True AI based solutions require a LARGE amount of UNIQUE and CONTEXTUALLY RELEVANT data. Persado’s AI leverages the world's largest database of tagged words and phrases. Various language elements are tagged with specific emotions, descriptors and narratives that enable users to uncover previously unknown attributes about customers. 

For example, by analyzing over 89,000 words across 55 million customer touchpoints for one retail client, the system tells us that members of the “Affluent Explorers” segment respond best to language that stresses Access and Exclusivity. That means phrases such as “Consider yourself invited” and “You’re invited to the sale” are going to perform better than other non-Exclusivity-based language. These are the types of AI-driven insights that drive better messaging decisions and better retail performance. 

The Results

By applying AI to choice of words, Persado’s retail customers see average engagement lifts from 31 to 69 percent across the customer journey. Keep in mind that as data-driven content is placed in the market, experimentation does not stop. Customer attitudes, preferences and interests change constantly. Unlike A/B or multivariate testing, the machine continues to explore and learn on an ongoing basis, delivering insights and language that improve lifts over time. Unlike declaring a “winner” with an A/B test (which is just another way of saying this is the best performing at this point in time), with AI, winners change constantly based on timely data.  

The bottom line

The point here is simple: retail professionals constantly seek out content with a goal to make themselves and their organizations better by learning about new technologies that can be applied to their businesses. If you raise your hand to contribute content, take your responsibility to deliver seriously and show the why, how and so what of your AI solution because it makes us all better in the process