I’m going to start this article with a gentle warning. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a tool that can help you become a more efficient and successful marketer. You can use AI to inform your marketing strategy and take some of the heavy lifting out of your activities, but remember, the buck stops with you. AI is not a “magic marketing button” that you can hit to suddenly automate everything you do. So when deploying AI, you’ll need to carefully consider those marketing objectives and double-check everything it produces to ensure that its output meets your needs and is of the quality you would expect before releasing it to the world.
This doesn’t mean you should be afraid of AI. If you think of AI as a member of your team that needs your guidance and occasional support, you can’t go wrong.
What is AI?
AI refers to computer systems and software that can perform tasks that previously required human intelligence. These tasks include problem-solving, learning, understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, making decisions, and more. AI systems are designed to mimic or simulate human cognitive functions.
As a marketer, you might already be familiar with AI systems like ChatGPT, Bard, and Dall-E for informing your content marketing efforts and producing unique images for blog posts, social media campaigns, and emails. You may also be using AI tools like Otter.ai and Grammarly to transcribe audio into text and proofread your content. But AI can do much more for your business if you put some human intelligence (HI?) into the thought process.
10 Ways AI Can Be Used in Your CRM
Using AI to optimize your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy and workflow can bring many benefits to your business. Here are some examples we currently see our clients enjoying:
- Enhanced Customer Insights: AI can analyze large volumes of customer data to provide deeper insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and needs. This information can help you tailor your marketing and sales efforts to individual customers, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This might be your first real opportunity to explore the realms of big data.
- Personalization: AI can enable personalized customer interactions by recommending products or services based on a customer’s past behavior, preferences, and demographics. This personalization can improve customer engagement and increase the likelihood of conversions.
- Predictive Analytics: AI-driven predictive analytics can help you anticipate customer needs and trends. By analyzing historical data, AI can make accurate forecasts about future sales, customer churn, and demand, allowing you to make informed decisions.
- Automation: AI can automate routine CRM tasks, such as data entry, lead scoring, and appointment scheduling. This automation saves time for your team, reduces manual errors, and allows employees to focus on more strategic, value-added activities.
- Lead Scoring and Prioritization: AI can assess leads and prospects based on their likelihood to convert, providing your sales team with a prioritized list of potential customers. This ensures that your team focuses their efforts on the leads with the highest chances of closing a deal.
- Improved Customer Support: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide 24/7 customer support, answering common questions and resolving issues promptly. This enhances the customer experience and reduces support costs.
- Streamlined Workflows: AI can optimize and automate workflows, ensuring tasks are assigned to the right team members at the right time. This improves efficiency and helps teams stay organized and productive.
- Data Management: AI can assist in data quality management by identifying and rectifying errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies in your CRM data. Clean, reliable data is crucial for effective CRM strategies.
- Sales and Revenue Growth: By providing sales teams with valuable insights, automation, and prioritized leads, AI can increase the efficiency of your sales process, leading to higher conversion rates and revenue growth.
- Cost Savings: AI-driven automation and efficiency improvements can lead to cost savings in CRM operations, including reduced labor costs and more efficient resource allocation. This isn’t about reducing the size of your marketing team. It’s about giving them the space and the time to do more.
Choosing the Right AI Tools
There is also a really good chance you are using AI tools in your existing Martech stack without even realizing it. That’s the beauty of intuitive technology—it sometimes just works like magic.
When considering how AI can help your business, it is always worth speaking to your existing technology providers. They may have tools pre-installed in their systems that simply need configuring to your needs. Remember, as unique as your business is, it’s doubtful that any technology platform of scale has yet to encounter the problems your business experiences in its operations. Even if they don’t have an immediate solution, they should be well-positioned to advise what solutions will work best in your current stack.
The Takeaway
While there are numerous benefits to using AI in CRM, it’s essential to plan and implement your AI strategies carefully. Take your time to consider your business’s specific needs and objectives and how AI fits.
To learn more about how you can incorporate AI into your email marketing, SMS, marketing automation, or CRM strategy, contact the marketing experts at emfluence for some genuine “human intelligence” about how AI can help you become a more efficient and successful marketer. We’re waiting for your email at expert@emfluence.com.
