With an average open email rate of 18.0% in 2020, it's not like marketing teams are crushing this email thing. Wait, isn't 18% pretty good? We get that standards are low here, for sure. About four billion people have an inbox. It's a tough sell to abandon that marketing strategy.

Marketers see great potential value in using artificial intelligence (AI) to support the use case of recommending highly targeted content to users in real time. That use case scored the highest among 49 use cases presented to marketers in the 2021 State of Marketing AI report by Drift and the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. That use case scored a 3.96, putting it on the cusp of "high value" (4.0), with 5.0 being "transformative." The AI marketing use cases that trailed in the top five include: "Most websites you go to today for businesses, a human is writing the rules to say which content to recommend," Paul Roetzer, CEO and founder of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, told CMSWire in a CX Decoded Podcast. "What are the related articles? There is some basic tagging system for if they read this, then read that. Most of them are human-powered. They don't have a Netflix or a Spotify type algorithm that's actually learning preferences, knows the last 15 articles someone read, and how far along he got into them. Therein lies potential, however it's something marketers and customer experience professionals remain hopeful about: 54% of them told CMSWire researchers in the State of Digital Customer Experience 2021 report they see AI having significant impacts on digital customer experience over the next two to five years. And most of them see "gaining actionable customer insights" (27%) as the area where they see the most potential. Roetzer said it is hard to find really good solutions to do this out-of-the-box. Noz Urbina of Urbina Consulting agreed, calling the technology nascent. The bigger question for marketers beyond what kind of tools are out there is do we have the data to support the use case, according to Roetzer. And do we have a strong foundation of metadata, content tagging and content taxonomies, according to Urbina. "You need enough data, for one," Roetzer said. "Sometimes the problem is smaller data, not necessarily the cost.

Marketers see great potential value in using artificial intelligence (AI) to support the use case of recommending highly targeted content to users in real time. That use case scored the highest among 49 use cases presented to marketers in the 2021 State of Marketing AI report by Drift and the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. That use case scored a 3.96, putting it on the cusp of "high value" (4.0), with 5.0 being "transformative." "Most websites you go to today for businesses, a human is writing the rules to say which content to recommend," Paul Roetzer, CEO and founder of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, told CMSWire in a CX Decoded Podcast. "What are the related articles? There is some basic tagging system for if they read this, then read that. Most of them are human-powered. They don't have a Netflix or a Spotify type algorithm that's actually learning preferences, knows the last 15 articles someone read, and how far along he got into them. Therein lies potential, however it's something marketers and customer experience professionals remain hopeful about: 54% of them told CMSWire researchers in the State of Digital Customer Experience 2021 report they see AI having significant impacts on digital customer experience over the next two to five years. And most of them see "gaining actionable customer insights" (27%) as the area where they see the most potential. Roetzer said it is hard to find really good solutions to do this out-of-the-box. Noz Urbina of Urbina Consulting agreed, calling the technology nascent. The bigger question for marketers beyond what kind of tools are out there is do we have the data to support the use case, according to Roetzer. And do we have a strong foundation of metadata, content tagging and content taxonomies, according to Urbina. "You need enough data, for one," Roetzer said. "Sometimes the problem is smaller data, not necessarily the cost.

Artificial intelligence generates lots of interest and more than a little bit of fear among agency owners. How will machine learning, AI, and all that super-technical stuff change agency life? Will it make agency work irrelevant? Not according to my guest, Paul Roetzer from PR 2020 and The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. In this episode, Paul shared how his agency is leaning into AI because of the power and possibilities he sees in terms of agency efficiency and profitability. He makes a strong case that AI has the potential to make agency work more intelligent and even more human. AI is one more way agencies can leverage new technology and new tools to serve our clients better, to help them grow their businesses, and to more profitably, efficiently, and effectively grow our own agencies. I’m sure that some of you find this a little scary to even contemplate. But just like we’ve embraced all of the technologies before AI (the internet, mobile, programmatic media buying, etc.) we’re going to have to wrap our heads around this one too. One of the best aspects of owning an agency is that we constantly get to evolve and re-invent ourselves to better serve our clients. AI gives us all the opportunity to scale and grow in ways we couldn’t imagine. AI isn’t about robots stealing jobs. It’s about the potential to eliminate the boring, repetitive tasks so we can spend more time thinking creatively. Paul always sets his eyes toward the horizon. He’s continually wondering what will happen next in our industry and how he and his agency can be at the forefront of that. So, I wasn’t at all surprised when Paul and I were talking a […]

Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and the marketing teams they lead are expected to excel at creating customer trust, a brand that exudes empathy and data-driven strategies that deliver results. Personalizing channel experiences at scale works when CMOs strike the perfect balance between their jobs' emotional and logical, data-driven parts. That's what makes being a CMO today so challenging. They've got to have the compassion of a Captain Kirk and the cold, hard logic of a Dr. Spock and know when to use each skill set. CMOs and their teams struggle to keep the emotional and logical parts of their jobs in balance.

Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and the marketing teams they lead are expected to excel at creating customer trust, a brand that exudes empathy and data-driven strategies that deliver results. Personalizing channel experiences at scale works when CMOs strike the perfect balance between their jobs' emotional and logical, data-driven parts. That's what makes being a CMO today so challenging. They've got to have the compassion of a Captain Kirk and the cold, hard logic of a Dr. Spock and know when to use each skill set. CMOs and their teams struggle to keep the emotional and logical parts of their jobs in balance.

Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and the marketing teams they lead are expected to excel at creating customer trust, a brand that exudes empathy and data-driven strategies that deliver results. Personalizing channel experiences at scale works when CMOs strike the perfect balance between their jobs' emotional and logical, data-driven parts. That's what makes being a CMO today so challenging. They've got to have the compassion of a Captain Kirk and the cold, hard logic of a Dr. Spock and know when to use each skill set. CMOs and their teams struggle to keep the emotional and logical parts of their jobs in balance.

If you watch Netflix, listen to music via Spotify, or have bought a product via Amazon, you will have interacted with machine learning or AI at some level. Much of what you watch, listen to or buy comes from recommendations made by AI algorithms. More and more, algorithms are helping us to make both subtle and important life altering decisions. So, what does this mean for marketers? They are an AI-first company.

Gartner and McKinsey Global Institute forecast trillions of dollars in annual impact from artificial intelligence, yet most marketers still struggle to understand what AI is and how to pilot it in their organizations. A recent research project from MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) analyzed AI adoption based on a global survey of 3,076 business executives. Now, keep in mind, this study is not specific to marketing, so the Pioneers percentage would be significantly less if only applied to our industry. The vast majority of brands we talk to at Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute (MAII) fall into the Passives group, with some easing into the Experimenters category. No matter how you look at it, we are in the infancy of AI adoption, meaning you and your organization have the opportunity now to be proactive in advancing knowledge and capabilities before your competitors beat you to it.

There's no point automating marketing tasks that have little value. Here's a look at how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to identify the opportunities most likely to drive real business growth. Over the past year, artificial intelligence has worked its way into the popular lexicon. Not a day goes by without a story hitting major media outlets on the impact of AI. The marketing industry has not been immune from this heightened interest.