How Machine Learning is Changing Digital Marketing

Machine learning is now one of the latest trends in digital marketing. Its ability to analyse huge piles of data in minutes and deliver deep insights about marketing are quite amazing. While some marketers still think of machine learning as a future technology, many have started incorporating it for their benefits. This article explains how machine learning is changing the digital marketing world. See whether you can include any of these changes in your marketing style.

What is machine learning and why it is important for digital marketing?

In machine learning, a computer is fed data based on which it makes its decisions. It uses trends and patterns to recognise relations between different data and constantly improves its algorithm. This means, the more data you will feed into a machine, the more accurate results it will produce. The main aim of machine learning technology is to make machines learn on their own and adjust accordingly.

You might have experienced machine learning technology at times in your daily life. For instance, smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home use machine learning technology. The shopping recommendations that you get on Amazon are also a result of machine learning as the software collects data about your shopping patterns and preferences and hence recommends products that would interest you. Now, 66% of marketing leaders agree machine learning will enable their team to focus more on strategic marketing activities.

What is digital marketing?

Marketing and advertisements are an indispensable part of businesses today. With the rise of digital media and websites and online stores, it has become important for businesses today to market their products electronically. If you are not creating an online presence today, you are missing a lot on the business front.

The process of marketing a product or service through electronic media such as social media platforms, emails, search engines and websites is known as digital marketing. It cuts through all the traditional marketing methods and makes it easier for businesses to reach a wider audience despite any geographical or even language barriers.

How machine learning is changing digital marketing?

#1 Social media monitoring and machine learning

With social media analytics tools, any business can track the latest activities on their social media accounts. This includes the number of shares, number of mentions, comments, followers/subscribers or unfollowers/unsubscribes. The introduction of machine learning in social media monitoring enables deeper insights for businesses into their social media accounts.

Marketers can check which posts were appreciated the most by the audience, the times when their customers are highly active on social media and the demographic information for every post.
The latest tools can help marketers track every social media activity related to their brand whether it be brand name mentions or keywords perception. Tools like Hootsuite, Digimind and Sprout Social use machine learning technology for similar purposes.
Machine learning tools can also help marketers filter out urgent messages or complaints from customers on social media that need immediate attention. Marketers can now easily check what people are saying about their brand.

#2 Email marketing and machine learning

Email marketing refers to sending out emails to your current customers or potential customers at regular intervals to keep them engaged with your brands. You can reveal an upcoming sale, invite them for a giveaway or simply share the latest news of your business through your emails.

But what if you can send personalised emails to your clients? What if you can create custom campaigns by analysing how your clients are responding to your emails?

Machine learning can help you determine the right frequency of sending emails. The intelligent tools determine the patterns, habits and downtimes of your email recipients and suggest when is the right time to send an email.
You can personalise emails for your customers with the help of machine learning. For instance, a customer was shopping at your online store but they abandoned the cart. You can identify such clients and send them a personalised reminder that something is there in their cart.
With machine learning, you can categorise your customers based on their behaviours. For instance, some of your customers might be interested only in one type of your product. So why not have a separate campaign for that group instead of compelling them to see all your products. Win their hearts by giving what they like.

#3 Personalised marketing with machine learning

Personalised marketing has been a buzzword for quite some time in the digital marketing field. Marketers are trying out new ways of delivering a personalised message to every customer indicating that every customer is valued. This where machine learning can be most helpful as it can take accurate decisions for the customers based on data collection and analysis.

One of the most common ways of personalised marketing is personalised emails, as we discussed above. Based on the age, gender, location and preferences of a customer machine learning can help marketers to send out personalised recommendations to them.
Another way is to send out personalised video messages. For instance, sending a personalised birthday video to your customers or sending out a personalised thank you message to every customer with their names on your business anniversary.
Machine learning has also made it possible for marketers to share product recommendations with the customers based on their shopping behaviours, interests and trends. For instance, the shopping recommendations that you get on the Amazon shopping app or website once you log in are because of machine learning technology.

#4 Chatbots and digital marketing

Chatbots are software powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and can be a boon to digital marketing. They can be programmed to answer specific questions and can train themselves based on the input they receive from the users. Customers today do not like to wait and it sometimes becomes practically impossible for a live team to handle customer queries. Chatbots are quick, accurate and intelligent. They can be an asset to your business. According to Sam, working as a marketing assignment help expert in GoAssignmentHelp, around 80% of businesses are estimated to integrate a chatbot system by 2021. But how can these chatbots help in marketing?

Chatbots can help in the initial marketing stage like ensuring sales calls, gathering client information and answering general questions related to the product or for signing up clients for email subscriptions et cetera.
Chatbots become ‘wiser’ on converting with more and more clients. They can provide a seamless experience to your customers on social media and websites. They can answer multiple queries and side by side provide your insights into the conversations.
Chatbots can help you find the right leads for your business. They can gather all the data related to marketing and help you engage in meaningful conversations with potential clients.

#5 Content optimisation with machine learning

Content always plays an important role in marketing, whether it is generating personalised content for your client or creating effective content for search engine rankings. Machine learning can immensely help digital marketers by analysing user behaviours and competitor content to determine the best possible ways to approach a customer. From monotonous tasks of finding the right keywords to advanced tasks of content suggestion and optimisation, machine learning technology can make content generation a hundred times easier for digital marketers.

Machine learning can help marketers determine what’s in trend these days so that they can curate content accordingly. For a usual content writer, it will take a lot of time to research the latest trends, gather insights and find a conclusion. Machine learning software can do that in minutes.
Creating content is not enough. A marketer needs to know how the customers are responding to the content. Machine learning can provide such insights in minutes. From the number of unique visitors to keywords tracking, you can have everything on tips.
Machine learning software can also be used to refine content. Highlighting incorrect sentences, cliches, use of passive voice and complex sentences can be easily done with machine learning.

Wrapping up

The digital marketing industry is experiencing a massive change through machine learning technology. With more tasks being automated, marketers can focus on essential aspects like generating traffic, branding and of course, curating better content. The customers are already aware of machine learning and many of us are using it in our day to day lives. It is time for the digital marketing industry to embrace this technology and make the most of it.