AI Is Evolving Nonprofit Digital Marketing Strategies

The buzz con­tin­ues with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing (ML), oth­er­wise known as a com­put­er’s abil­i­ty to repli­cate human intel­li­gence and activ­i­ty. How­ev­er, sub­stance is also com­ing to life, through advanced behav­ioral analy­sis and the syn­the­sis and appli­ca­tion of data across all indus­tries and sectors.

From health care and edu­ca­tion to con­sumer goods and agri­cul­ture, advanced com­put­ing is enabling orga­ni­za­tions and prac­ti­tion­ers to be more effi­cient and effec­tive by lever­ag­ing data-first, algo­rith­mic-based prac­tices. In fact, accord­ing to the 2017 Trends In Per­son­al­iza­tion study, 96% of respon­dents believe per­son­al­iza­tion helps build cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, while only 45% agreed that mar­keters are actu­al­ly get­ting per­son­al­iza­tion right.

So, what are the impli­ca­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters today? AI has been grow­ing in impor­tance, espe­cial­ly regard­ing its abil­i­ty to increase engage­ment through direct mar­ket­ing and behav­ioral tar­get­ing. Busi­ness­es and non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions alike have a stake in max­i­miz­ing con­ver­sions, whether that’s dri­ving sales, increas­ing dona­tions or, in my case at Truth Ini­tia­tive, sav­ing lives. But how can mar­keters lever­age these AI and ML appli­ca­tions to gen­er­ate bet­ter yield in their cam­paigns? Here are three ways I have suc­cess­ful­ly used these tech­nol­o­gy advance­ments, all of which can be repli­cat­ed by your organization.

AI-Enhanced Advertising Campaigns

It’s been estab­lished that social net­works and search engines use algo­rithms to tai­lor con­tent to users, but mar­keters can also build their own adver­tis­ing algo­rithms. Prac­ti­tion­ers can deliv­er cus­tomized infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ences to peo­ple, based on their audi­ence mem­bers’ qual­i­fi­ca­tions and, more impor­tant­ly, inter­ests in par­tic­u­lar offers.

Con­tent trans­ac­tions equate to a unique con­sumer mes­sage around your brand or prod­uct. Hybrid cloud data man­age­ment process­es (DMPs) aid prac­ti­tion­ers in apply­ing those data ele­ments. These actions trans­late into an adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ence that is high­ly tai­lored and per­son­al­ized to audi­ence behav­iors and segments.

Instead of spam­ming your audi­ences, devel­op algo­rithm-based pro­files and use AI to effi­cient­ly deliv­er mes­sages across chan­nels. In oth­er words, use AI-enhanced adver­tis­ing cam­paigns to deliv­er the pre­cise mes­sage to the right user at the right time in their per­son­al cus­tomer journey.

AI-enhanced adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, like those pow­ered through DMPs, enable mar­keters to adapt to real-time changes in the behav­iors of the end users. They also reduce costs and mes­sag­ing sat­u­ra­tion, while tai­lor­ing adver­tis­ing experiences.

Personalized Customer Website Experiences And Conversion Rates

We talked a bit about adver­tis­ing dri­ving peo­ple to your web­site, but what hap­pens when the con­sumer gets there? Smart mar­keters can employ AI tech­nol­o­gy to con­tin­ue per­son­al­iz­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence on their sites.

Using con­di­tion­al para­me­ters, mar­keters can make sure the website’s mes­sage match­es the offer cus­tomers receive. For exam­ple, when a user vis­its thetruth.com and does­n’t watch a video, sub­mit their infor­ma­tion or click through an ad with the “watch video” call to action (CTA), that user will be invit­ed to “watch a video.”

Sounds straight­for­ward, right? It’s not, how­ev­er, as var­i­ous require­ments must be met. Our sys­tems cater to the spe­cif­ic user expe­ri­ence. Because the user has not seen a video, for exam­ple, the offer is to “watch a video.” Anoth­er exam­ple is based on the same user after watch­ing the video. The next page the user clicks on or the next web­site they vis­it, the engine serves up an invi­ta­tion to “join the move­ment,” because the per­son­al­i­ty traits and the basic qual­i­fi­ca­tion have been met for them to see the form.

Use ana­lyt­ics, tar­get­ing tac­tics and a pre­dic­tive and per­son­al­iza­tion engine to qual­i­fy your offers in adver­tise­ments for the long-tail expe­ri­ences users receive. This tech­nol­o­gy can cre­ate per­son­al­ized offer­ings based on your audi­ence mem­bers’ indi­vid­ual behav­ioral pref­er­ences. This increas­es con­ver­sion rates while rein­forc­ing brand and ad recall.

Email And SMS Messaging

Once the user com­mits to sign­ing up for a newslet­ter, how do we con­tin­ue to per­son­al­ize mes­sages for them? Many mar­keters still blast blan­ket emails, which often lead to more unsub­scribers than sales or dona­tions. Why? Sim­ple. The mes­sag­ing is not tai­lored. By inte­grat­ing automa­tion in mes­sag­ing, mar­keters can fur­ther guide users along in their cus­tomer journey.

Now that users receive adver­tis­ing offers in an auto­mat­ed way, pow­ered by AI, we need to car­ry that expe­ri­ence into the opt-in mes­sag­ing. By cre­at­ing pre­de­fined work­flows in email and short mes­sage ser­vice (SMS), the per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing aligns with your orga­ni­za­tion’s seg­men­ta­tion strategy.

When a user qual­i­fies for the high­est lev­el of engage­ment (i.e., a self-declared activist) with Truth Ini­tia­tive, they fall into our most exclu­sive mes­sag­ing path. Sub­se­quent offers are tai­lored towards their actions and activ­i­ties. If an acti­va­tion asks young adults to come out and par­tic­i­pate in a march to tell phar­ma­cies to stop sell­ing tobac­co, only those who are inter­est­ed will receive that mes­sage. AI-pow­ered automa­tion ensures that this offer goes to the right users, rather than those only inter­est­ed in attend­ing con­certs or respond­ing to give­aways and promotions.

Lever­age automa­tion and per­son­al­iza­tion engines in con­junc­tion with opt-in offers in your orga­ni­za­tion’s email and SMS efforts. This work­flow automa­tion and pref­er­ence-based mar­ket­ing accel­er­ates par­tic­i­pa­tion and increas­es ongo­ing conversions.

The machines are already here and more are on the way each day. Mar­keters and prac­ti­tion­ers must embrace per­son­al­iza­tion and algo­rith­mic, behav­ioral-based seg­men­ta­tion. With­out it, they will fur­ther alien­ate the very cus­tomers and con­sumers they are try­ing to reach and win. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in mar­ket­ing, pow­ered by machine learn­ing, con­tin­ues to grow its foot­print. Start shift­ing from rules-based seg­men­ta­tion and seize this new frontier.

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