AI has transformed the way marketers work, freeing them from mundane and repetitive tasks so they can focus more on brand initiatives that resonate with customers. This personalised approach is a clear priority for brands, but there is a fine balance between highly-tailored and an invasion of privacy. Marketers must land somewhere in the middle to truly nail personalisation.

We’ve heard stories of brands missing the mark – perhaps a Mother’s or Father’s Day email from a brand ignites a painful memory of lost loved ones, or a subtly branded Valentine’s Day card looks too close to something from a mystery suitor.

For the most part though, personalised communications from brands delight and surprise customers. In many ways personalisation has become the gold standard of marketing, engaging consumers in a direct way that leans on human connection. So, what does good personalisation really look like?

Balancing AI and personalisation 

Ironically when it comes to personalisation at scale, brands and marketers have been turning to machines, specifically AI, to deliver it.

However, as AI-driven experiences continue to evolve and increase in adoption, many marketers wonder: Can machines truly replicate the creativity and emotional intelligence of human creators?

The key lies in marketers understanding how to balance AI-driven efficiency and human oversight to maintain brand integrity while ensuring high-quality, personalised experiences for their audiences.

Only then can they achieve their aims of nurturing stronger brand loyalty and boosting engagement and conversion rates for their businesses.

AI: a game-changing technology for marketers? 

The potential for AI to create digital experiences is vast and still evolving. The technology can be harnessed to create compelling copy, support content optimisation and SEO, and even produce visuals and video creation. However, all of this technology is irrelevant if it does not communicate with customers using a brand’s core messaging and tone of voice.

Ultimately, marketers need to understand AI’s current limitations. The content it generates often lacks the genuine creative and emotional depth humans bring to storytelling. AI tools are only as effective and intelligent as the data they are trained on. If that information contains unexpected biases or inaccuracies, these can be reflected in the experiences it generates, leading to issues with brand consistency and authenticity.

Humans can bring nuances, cultural understandings, and gut instincts to their content. They are also highly cognisant of brand consistency issues. All of these factors present challenges for AI.

Yet these limitations should not mean that brands put the brakes on AI, limiting it to simply generating social media posts or email content.

The technology can analyse complex datasets (such as browsing history, previous purchases, and other data) to anticipate and predict future behaviours, and this can play a pivotal role in personalisation.

Harnessing these insights enables marketers to personalise content in real-time, ensuring audiences receive the right information or product recommendations at the right time. Dynamic online experiences that adapt to personalised product recommendations or content based on real-time data can optimise the entire customer journey and lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Developing personalisation strategies

So how should brands move forward with AI-powered marketing? At the very least, companies need to take a strategic approach with a willingness to shift how things have always been done.

Small-scale pilot programmes that let companies test new AI applications without making a significant commitment are an excellent way of experimenting with the technology.

Moving forward brands need to integrate AI into existing content workflows. AI, for example, can assist in content ideation and research by analysing audience insights and trends to help deliver the right message, at the right time. Usefully AI can also generate product descriptions or recommendations, enabling marketing teams to focus on the more human elements of the job, such as high-level campaign strategy.

In order to optimise that content brands need to continuously run A/B tests. By analysing customer insights such as customer preferences or purchasing behaviour, AI can predict which variations resonate best with specific audience segments, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Finally, brands need to ensure that AI enhances content creation. Marketers should deploy AI tools to improve and reuse campaign materials. A good example would be to repurpose an existing piece of long-form content into shorter, shareable bites for a timely email campaign. Alternatively, AI could be used to adapt content for different audiences and experiences depending on the platform.

Yet, how effective AI is for a brand depends on how well it has been trained. If it accesses datasets that are steeped in the brand’s unique voice, it will be able to implement style guides and rules to guarantee consistency across all experiences. Using AI tools within a flexible framework allows for AI personalisation that adheres to brand guidelines while still benefiting automation so marketing teams can create once, then use (and reuse) everywhere.

Humans in the loop  

The key to all successful marketing campaigns is a robust review process staffed by intelligent and knowledgeable humans who are well versed in a brand’s values. Sometimes, even with these fail-safes things can go wrong. Yet for the most part it is the humans in the loop that deliver the marketing initiatives that cement the relationship between a brand and its customers. A “final step human review” ensures accuracy, relevance, and alignment with brand standards before it goes out into the world.

Teams need to understand AI’s strengths and limitations and create feedback loops to refine performance over time. By implementing a growth mindset and willingness for quick iterations to improve results quickly, teams can learn from past content to continuously enhance the quality and relevance of future experiences.

AI personalisation offers tremendous opportunities for brands to easily and consistently scale meaningful and engaging experiences for their audiences. Yet any AI-driven approach should still feature people front and centre. Only then will companies be able to deliver personalised campaigns that not only meet but exceed the expectations of today’s audiences.

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

• Caitlin McCulloch is the VP of performance & growth at content management system provider, Contentful.