The Al Advantage.

• Author: Brady, Sean
• Position: FRONTIER HORIZONS - Artificial-intelligence-powered marketing

EMARSYS, a global marketing cloud company, has announced the findings of a commissioned study--conducted by Forrester Consulting--on Artificial Intelligence Marketing Readiness in the retail and e-commerce industries. The study sought to understand if there still is a gap between the readiness of AI marketing solutions to execute on real-time business-to-consumer marketing campaigns, and the readiness of marketing tech users and business decisionmakers to adopt AI marketing technology. Businesses polled across the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia had revenues from at least $50,000,000 to $5,000,000,000.

The study highlighted that marketers and business decisionmakers polled believe Al-powered marketing will shift the role of marketing toward more strategic work (79%) and make marketing teams more efficient (86%) and effective (85%), as well as enabling them to focus on value-generating tasks as AI automates workflows (82%) and reinventing the way that marketers work (81%). However, it also flagged that 70% of business decisionmakers believe that their marketing team lacks the technical skills to leverage AI marketing technology, and do not necessarily understand AI marketing, which are both potential barriers to mainstream adoption of AI marketing technology.

What also is clear from the study and other Forrester reports cited is that AI marketing enhances personalization of omnichannel customer experiences as consumers interact with retail brands across various touch-points. This is paving the way for retailers to leverage AI marketing to personalize the customer journey (54%) and better understand customer behaviors (53%). However, this means that nearly one in two retail brands are missing out on the valuable personalization capabilities that AI marketing offers.

For retailers to harness the value of AI marketing and combat competitive threats, such as Amazon's growth into adjacent markets, requires a clear understanding of how AI can change the marketer's role. Retailers also must disavow the misconception that adopting such technology requires razor-sharp technical skills. An easy-to-use AI marketing user experience that is based on tangible business and marketing outcomes and delivers true personalization at scale is fundamental to successful mainstream adoption. Also, business decisionmakers who realize the low-risk, high-return nature of AI marketing, as well as how to prepare their organizations for it, will be...