Artificial Intelligence: Trust the Machine to Master Marketing Automation

Magnus Unemyr, Marketing Automation Expert, helps companies install and set up website-based marketing automation systems. He recommends using site lead magnets (calls to action, buttons, banner ads), caging some content behind landing pages with registration forms, offering incentives to register information e.g., a PDF that can only be downloaded in exchange for contact information, and adding nurturing sequences with follow-up emails. (He uses Tripwire.) Each piece of content should drive the customer or potential customer one step closer to making the purchase.

In this interview, Magnus clarifies the difference between today's narrow AI software and strong AI. Narrow AI learns from data and self optimizes over time by iteratively improving its original function. Narrow AI in email application might learn the optimal time to deliver an email to an individual customer to increase the likelihood of that email being opened. Strong AI has the capability to learn things outside of its originally targeted function . . . to reason on its own, to start to get feelings . . . which is still the stuff of science fiction.

Traditional marketing automation systems; e.g., HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or Act-On, are fairly basic in autonomous decision-making. Magnus sees a natural progression from using AI-powered algorithms/marketing automation systems to automatically harvest data, eventually moving toward more complex functions – developing "insights," and, eventually, making autonomous decisions about and triggering individualized marketing outreach initiatives without human intervention.

This future AI will be able to do highly personalized outreach – to send the right content to the right person at the right time, in the right channel, and at the right frequency – improving the customer experience and minimizing the "spamminess" of cookie-cutter automatic responses.

However, when deploying new marketing automation systems, companies need to budget for content production, and each piece of content should send the reader or viewer one step further toward the purchase. Also, major marketing automation tools are not standalone solutions – they need to be integrated with additional specialized smaller marketing automation systems – webinar platforms, proprietary databases, etc.

AI can fail. For instance, AI algorithms are trained by historical data. Without enough historical data, any AI system will not be able to make accurate decisions. If the data is skewed or flawed, the AI algorithm will produce flawed predictions or behavior. The software supplier needs to be able to prove that the software is behaving and producing accurate results.

Magnus describes his book, Data-Driven Marketing with Artificial Intelligence, as the definitive guide to understanding and using AI in marketing. He has also written: Mastering Online Marketing, Internet of Things, Turn your Knowledge and Skills into a Profitable Online Business, and eBooks and Beyond. Links are to Amazon.

Every marketing automation system vendor provides video courses to teach users about their product, but invariably fails to discuss the features that should have been included . . . but weren't. Magnus created a detailed marketing automation course (about 70 videos) that explains concepts, strategies, use, and what comprises a good marketing automation system – without covering proprietary instructional material. The credit-card accessed course is available on his website at: http://unemyr.com.

Magnus can be reach on LinkedIn or on his website at: http://unemyr.com, where you can find his blog, his video episodes, and his training courses.