1. Supercharge brainstorming with AI

Brainstorming sessions can be made more productive by integrating generative AI tools. Dotdigital’s WinstonAI can quickly sift through data to uncover trends and insights that can spark creative thinking in your team. This can help to overcome writer’s block and lead to discussions that generate fresh ideas. Be sure to make your prompts consistent and don’t hesitate to put your tool of choice to the test by asking it to deliver more creative ideas than previously. 

2. Embrace moments-based messaging

Moments-based messaging is a highly personalized approach to customer engagement, using AI technology to identify and capitalize on real-time micro-moments throughout the customer journey. By utilizing this method, you can ensure that your marketing campaigns consistently address the demands and desires of your customers, ultimately driving conversions and brand loyalty.

Here’s how you can make the most out of moments-based messaging in 2024: 

Use smarter segmentation

One effective way to optimize your marketing strategy is to use AI-powered segmentation tactics such as eRFM. By analyzing customer engagement levels, as well as the recency and frequency of their interactions with your brand, you can group customers into distinct segments. This helps you better understand their unique characteristics and preferences, allowing you to provide seamless customer experiences that resonate with your target audience on every channel.

Anticipate micro-moments with predictive analytics

AI-powered predictive analytics can reveal key micro-moments throughout the customer journey. These analytics can be used to categorize customers based on their probability of churning or their most likely date of next purchase. With this foresight, your marketing campaigns can proactively address a potential pain point or fulfill a need before your customer even realizes it. By utilizing predictive analytics, you can make data-driven decisions and stay ahead of the curve.

Employ dynamic content

By using AI-powered dynamic content blocks, you can display catalog items that are based on your customer’s shopping and browsing behavior. This will make your emails and product pages feel extra special to the viewer. The dynamic content is generated in real-time, so the experience adapts and updates every time a customer returns to your site or email. This will help increase engagement and drive conversions.

3. Elevate your email content using generative AI

Generative AI can be a game-changer when it comes to creating email content that engages your audience. WinstonAI offers valuable insights to improve the tone of your emails, identify areas that may require additional information, and highlight opportunities to take your email campaign to the next level.

But that’s not all, WinstonAI helps you optimize your email subject lines. By analyzing data from your 25 most recent email sends, it provides three alternative subject lines that are tailored to your brand and campaign style. This personalized approach ensures that your emails stand out and increase your open rates.

4. Upgrade customer support with live chat and AI

Live chat has come a long way in recent years and its capabilities go beyond simple customer service inquiries. Now you can solve customer problems in real-time with live-chat widgets that you can add directly to your website. 

Live chat can customize responses based on customer profiles, history, preferences, and their past interactions. This not only improves the customer experience but also saves valuable time, and resources for marketers and removes the barriers to purchase. 

5. Craft timely connections with triggered messages

Using triggered messages can help you deliver a more timely, personalized, and efficient approach to engaging your audience. These messages, sent in response to specific user actions or behaviors, strengthen customer relationships by providing relevant and valuable content or offers at just the right moment.

For example, consider a customer who adds a product to their online shopping cart but leaves without completing the purchase. An automated message—triggered by cart abandonment—could be sent a few hours later, reminding the customer of their unfinished transaction, offering assistance, or even providing a limited-time discount to incentivize the purchase. This personalized approach not only enhances the customer experience but also drives conversions and fosters brand loyalty.

6. Optimize send times for maximum impact

Are you looking for ways to improve your email marketing campaigns in 2024? If so, you might want to consider send time optimization. The time you send your email could be the difference between someone reading and engaging with your email and someone ignoring it. 

Send time optimization is a strategy that can help you maximize engagement rates by automatically sending emails at the most opportune moments. This AI-powered technology analyzes your contacts’ historical click behavior and finds the best time to send your emails to ensure they are seen and opened. This means you can tailor your send times to specific segments within your contact database, ensuring that your message reaches your audience members when they are most likely to engage. 

By automating your email sends, you can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on manual scheduling, and this will help you achieve consistently high engagement rates across your campaigns. 

Embrace AI and automation for a winning 2024 marketing strategy

As get closer to 2024, it’s more important than ever to harness the power of AI and marketing automation to stay ahead of the competition. With the help of these cutting-edge technologies, you can streamline your marketing efforts and improve engagement, leading to continued growth and success for your brand. So why wait? Start exploring the possibilities of AI and marketing automation today.

In this blog post, we will explore the top personalization trends that will define the future of digital marketing in 2024. From artificial intelligence (AI) advancements to hyper-personalization and dynamic content, we’ll delve into the strategies that will help brands engage, attract, and keep customers loyal.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Personalization has become more advanced thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). With its ability to go through huge amounts of data and find meaningful patterns, AI helps deliver content that’s tailored just for your customers. By using machine learning, these algorithms can continuously improve and adapt to your user’s preferences. This results in highly relevant product recommendations, custom content, and promotions that are designed to captivate customers.

Dotdigital’s AI-driven product recommendations, for example, help pinpoint the products customers are most likely to be interested in. Our seven pre-built product recommendation categories — best sellers, trending, most viewed, lookalikes, best next, also bought, and custom category — cater to different stages of the customer journey.

Each category is designed to strategically target customers with personalized product options that match their preferences. When you offer customers products that genuinely pique their interest, you’re not only increasing the likelihood of a sale but also making their shopping experience a breeze. It’s a win-win situation for both you and the customer – they find what they’re looking for, and you achieve a successful sale.

Predictive analytics

By 2024, predictive analytics is expected to become essential for businesses seeking a competitive edge in understanding customer behavior. Digital marketers can utilize AI-driven predictive analytics to identify what customers are likely to do next.

At Dotdigital, we are dedicated to utilizing the potential of AI-driven predictive analytics to help digital marketers achieve their objectives. Our predictive analytics capabilities focus on four key areas: churn probability, predicted next purchase date, predicted customer lifetime value, and predicted total future orders. With Dotdigital’s predictive analytics capabilities, you can build customer segments based on these predictive metrics. What’s more, you can leverage the anticipated next purchase date to fine-tune your campaigns, ensuring they are tailored to your customers’ unique spending habits.

Hyper-personalization

Another trend for 2024 is hyper-personalization, which takes personalization to the next level by combining data from various sources such as behavioral, demographic, and transactional information. This comprehensive approach to personalization helps you gain a complete understanding of your customers, delve deeper into their preferences, and create messaging and offers that cater to their individual needs and desires.

Dotdigital has dynamic partner-built app blocks that allow you to personalize content and create engaging campaigns in just a few minutes. With no coding required, you can easily drag and drop third-party partner content into your emails and landing pages using EasyEditor. This helps you make the most of your existing martech stack while also reducing the number of customers who unsubscribe.

Today’s customers expect better experiences from the brands they choose to spend their money with. They prioritize quality over quantity and won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere if they feel they’re not getting value from a brand. With our App Blocks, you can provide each customer with a better experience in every interaction.

Dynamic content

Looking ahead to 2024, dynamic content will play a significant role in personalizing email marketing. By utilizing customer data, such as their location, you can easily tailor your content and provide localized offers that engage your audience.

Imagine being able to address each recipient by their first name, showcase products they’re interested in, and highlight nearby in-store events. With the advancements in technology, personalizing your marketing communication has become a seamless process. You no longer need to create multiple campaigns for each version or individual recipient.

To achieve this, you can use data fields in your campaign creation to ensure each email feels unique to each customer. This method fills the content with information that is specific to each recipient, adding a personal touch to your email copy. As your audience interacts with your digital content, it adapts and becomes more tailored to their preferences, creating an effortless, personalized experience.

Personalizing your content with dynamic blocks allows you to reach your audience on a deeper level without spending countless hours manually crafting individual emails. Ultimately, you can elevate your email marketing by sending multiple variations of a single email, each rendered uniquely through the power of dynamic content.

Summary

The future of digital marketing lies in personalization. Customers crave tailored experiences, and marketers must embrace trends such as AI personalization, predictive analytics, hyper-personalization, and dynamic content to meet these expectations. Staying updated with these trends and leveraging advanced marketing solutions like Dotdigital will enable you to create effective and impactful campaigns that truly connect with your audience.

Get to know your target audience

Copywriting is all about creating a connection with your audience. To do so, you need to understand their needs, desires, and pain points. Start by diving into market research, identifying your customer’s demographics, and learning about their preferences and habits. By understanding your audience, you can create personalized content that resonates with them.

The second step is empathy. Place yourself in your customer’s shoes and see the world from their perspective. Write as if you’re speaking directly to them, addressing their concerns, alleviating their fears, and offering solutions to their problems. The more you understand and identify with your audience, the more impactful your copywriting becomes.

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a powerful assistant that you can use to optimize your SEO copywriting efforts. Generative AI helps you with:

• Content optimization: You can use AI to analyze your content and provide real-time suggestions on improving your content. These recommendations may include keyword density, readability, structure, and other factors that could impact your search rankings. By utilizing these insights, you can ensure your content is more likely to be discovered by your target audience. 

• Keyword research: Keyword research is an essential aspect of SEO copywriting and tools like SEMrush can simplify this process by providing insights into relevant search terms your audience might be using. 

• Generating ideas and headlines: Content ideation can often be time-consuming for marketers. AI tools can help you scan the web and analyze popular trends and topics within your niche to provide fresh, engaging content ideas. 

• Proofreading: AI-driven grammar and spell-check tools like Grammarly are great for automatically identifying and correcting errors, ensuring your copy is polished and professional.

Write an attention-grabbing headline

The headline is often the first thing your reader sees and plays a significant role in grabbing their attention. A good headline should get your message across, spark curiosity, and encourage them to read more. Use powerful words and be concise to evoke emotion and pique interest.

Headlines should include your primary keywords. A mix of powerful, actionable language and SEO best practices will skyrocket your content visibility, attract new readers, and improve your search rankings.

Keep it clear and concise

Effective copywriting is all about delivering your message to the target audience in the most straightforward and impactful way possible. Remember, every word you write should serve a purpose, and unnecessary fluff will only dilute the power of your message. Here are some quick tips:

• Focus on one idea at a time: When writing copy, focus on one main idea per paragraph or section. Write in an active voice, keep your sentences, short, and punchy to communicate your point effectively. This makes your message easy to grasp and leaves no room for confusion. 

• Use accessible language: While you may have expertise in your industry, remember that your target audience might not share your level of knowledge. It’s important to use simple language and avoid jargon, technical terms, or acronyms that your audience may not understand. 

• Break up the text: Long, unbroken blocks of text can be intimidating and hard to read. Improve the readability of your copy by using white space, bullet points, and subheadings. This will make your content more visually appealing and easier to digest. 

• Use clear headings:  Clear, well-organized headings are essential not only for capturing your reader’s attention but also for providing accessibility to screen reader users. Properly structured headings help in guiding both visually impaired and non-impaired users through your content with ease. 

Use effective call-to-actions (CTAs)

Create effective CTAs to encourage your readers to take action. To achieve this, strategically embed persuasive CTAs throughout and at the end of your copy that focus on the benefits, and are action-oriented. Tailor your CTAs to fit your specific goals, such as driving subscriptions, boosting product sales, or generating leads —a CTA should be direct, use active language, and be interesting. 

Incorporate power words like ‘Discover,’ ‘New,’ and ‘Unlock’ to evoke a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Don’t hesitate to experiment with different formats and styles to see what resonates best with your audience.

Optimize for SEO

Copywriting plays an essential role in creating content that ranks high on Google and other search engines. Research relevant keywords that your audience is likely to search for and seamlessly incorporate them into your content, headlines, and meta descriptions. Strike the perfect balance between readability and keyword density to avoid penalties from search engines.

Additionally, consider the overall structure of your content. Break it into easy-to-read sections with informative subheadings that also contain your keywords. To enhance your online presence and strengthen your backlink profile on Google, make certain to integrate high-quality, relevant external and internal links within your content, as these play a vital role in search rankings.

Cultivate a consistent brand tone of voice

The tone of voice, which serves as the “how” when conveying your message, combines elements like word choice, punctuation, and font style to evoke emotion in your readers. Striking the right balance between creativity and adherence to brand guidelines ensures that your messaging remains both engaging and familiar to your audience.

Defining a brand voice that aligns with your target audience is important for creating an emotional connection and laying the groundwork for meaningful, long-lasting customer relationships. By remaining consistent across various channels, you’ll not only strengthen your brand identity but also cultivate trust with your audience.

Test and measure results

Improving your copy is a continuous process, and A/B testing can help you achieve that. Create multiple variations of your copy, analyze which ones resonate well with your target audience, and use those insights to enhance your content. It’s important to remember that the first draft may never be perfect. Therefore, keep refining your copy based on your test results.

To improve your writing, set up a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on. These metrics will help you pinpoint the areas of your copy that require more attention. When creating new content, prioritize those areas and give them the attention they deserve.

Adapt to evolving market trends

Adapt to evolving market trends, to create content that continues to strike a chord with your target audience. Here are some quick tips to keep up with market trends:

Look at the competition: Keeping an eye on your competitors gives you valuable insights into emerging trends, strategies that work (and those that don’t), and potential gaps to fill in your niche. Analyze their content, marketing tactics, and customer reviews, then use this information to refine your copy and stay ahead in the game.

Do market research: Staying updated with the latest market research helps you understand emerging trends and the shifting needs of your target audience. By gathering and analyzing information on customer preferences, you can adjust your content accordingly and maintain a strong connection with your audience.

Set up trend alerts: Keep track of industry trends and news that could impact your target audience by setting up alerts and notifications. Set up alerts and notifications – you can use platforms like Google Trends to effortlessly follow relevant topics. Use the insights you gather to update your copy and address any new developments or concerns with your audience.

SEO copywriting tips summary

Mastering the art of copywriting is a valuable skill that can significantly impact the success of your digital marketing efforts. By truly understanding your target audience and using empathy to connect with them, you’ll be able to create compelling messages that inspire action. Remember, every aspect – from attention-grabbing headlines to persuasive CTAs – works in harmony, guiding your reader through a captivating journey.

Don’t forget to prioritize SEO optimization and maintaining a consistent brand voice to maximize the reach and impact of your content. Embrace AI-based tools as they can assist you in streamlining your content creation process, optimizing for search engines, and better connecting with your target audience. As you refine your copywriting skills, stay agile and adapt to evolving market trends. Keep experimenting, measuring, and learning from your results, and you’ll soon become a copywriting expert with the ability to convert your readers into loyal customers.

Key takeaways from the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo

Let’s discuss the key takeaways from sessions at #RICE23: 

1. Leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI)

One of the most intriguing and innovative concepts presented at this year’s #RICE23 was the potential and utilization of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the retail industry. As retailers aim to deliver more personalized, efficient, and engaging customer experiences, the introduction of generative AI proves to be a game-changer in meeting these expectations.

A prime example of generative AI in action is WinstonAI. WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Built directly into the Dotdigital platform, WinstonAI can now easily provide you with hints, tips, and advice on how to improve your email marketing and customer experiences. 

If you want generative AI tools like WinstonAI to meet your expectations, it’s crucial to dedicate time and resources to train them. By refining these AI models with suitable data and feedback, you can unlock your full potential to develop more powerful marketing campaigns.

2. Deliver personalized customer experiences

In the era of fierce competition, driving customer loyalty and retention goes beyond offering high-quality products or services. To create meaningful connections, brands must prioritize personalization and create positive customer experiences tailored to individual preferences. By cultivating a loyal and dedicated customer base, businesses set themselves apart from the competition.

Harnessing the power of customer data is crucial to this strategy. Data guides brands in crafting unforgettable customer experiences tailored to their target audience. By gaining insights into customers’ preferences and needs, businesses can develop innovative products, launch strategies, marketing campaigns (both offline and online), custom packaging, superb in-store experiences, and user-friendly website designs that elevate their brand from the rest.

The solution lies in adopting a human-to-human (H2H) marketing approach. This paradigm shift emphasizes treating customers as humans with emotions and stories rather than mere data points. By humanizing your marketing strategy, your brand will stand out from the competition and foster stronger relationships with your target audience. This deeper connection ultimately influences their decision to choose your brand over others.

3. Embrace creativity

If you want to stand out and attract the attention of the tech-savvy Gen Z audience, creativity is key. This generation appreciates new and unique ideas, and they are more likely to try out brands that break away from the norm. Don’t hesitate to be innovative with your products, marketing strategies, or brand stories to set yourself apart from the competition. Additionally, make sure to communicate with this generation on their preferred channels and engage in meaningful conversations.

Liquid Death is a brand that has effectively used creative marketing to establish its own unique identity. While they sell canned water, their success comes from their entertainment and content-driven approach. Their marketing strategies aim to create an exciting and unconventional image that stands out among competitors and captures the attention of customers.

4. Build a community

Cultivating a sense of community within your brand is pivotal to forging lasting, personal connections with your customers. This intimate relationship fosters a sense of belonging, support, and empowerment, transforming casual customers into passionate, engaged champions who actively use your products and services.

The power of a strong brand community offers: 

• Enhanced virality: When customers feel connected to your brand, they are more inclined to share content and products within their networks. This organic sharing significantly expands your reach and fuels viral growth.
• Natural brand advocates: Members who are deeply engaged with your brand community will readily share their positive experiences, recommendations, and testimonials with their circles, establishing trust and credibility among potential customers.

5. Maintain your digital presence

It’s important to keep your digital presence up-to-date to create a positive perception of your brand. Your ecommerce site and martech stack should evolve with changing consumer expectations, as customers often form their first impression of your products and services through your digital presence.

If your website is outdated, it may harm your brand’s reputation and give potential customers the impression that you are not up-to-date with current trends. This could affect their decision-making process and lead to losing customers. Therefore, it’s important to update your website regularly.

To maintain your digital presence, you can: 

• Update your technology stack: As technology evolves, so do the expectations of tech-savvy consumers. Invest in tools and integrations to deliver a seamless user experience that meets consumer demands.
• Refresh your design: A visually appealing, modern design can significantly influence a brand’s image. Regularly update your website or email design elements, layout, and color scheme to reflect the latest design trends and maintain a fresh, contemporary appearance.
• Monitor your competition: Keep an eye on your competitors’ websites and take note of any updates or changes they make. This can help you stay informed of the latest industry trends and anticipate consumer expectations.

Summary

During #RICE23, experts in ecommerce, social media, and martech discussed valuable insights. In today’s rapidly evolving retail industry, it’s essential for brands to keep up with industry trends and consumer preferences to succeed. Thankfully, we were right there, soaking it all in for you, so you don’t miss a beat in keeping your business on top of its game! 

Today, machine learning and artificial intelligence have joined forces with data science to help us see into the future with predictive analytics. Marketers can use insights to boost revenue, generate sales, and prevent shopper churn.

What is predictive analytics?

Predictive analytics is powered by machine learning models that analyze past behavior to identify patterns that predict what’s next. In other words, you can predict the future from today’s data.

According to a Venture Beat report, an impressive 44% of companies are embracing the power of data-driven insights by integrating predictive analytics into their marketing strategy. 

This growing trend highlights the widespread recognition of predictive analytics as a game-changing tool for businesses. Insights into the future are key to helping brands stay at the forefront of customers’ minds. This is done by identifying opportunities ahead of time and mitigating risks before they happen. 

Dotdigital offers four predictive insights: next order date, customer lifetime value (CLV), number of purchases, and churn probability.

Spot opportunities a mile away with Dotdigital

The best thing about seeing into the future is that you have the upper hand. Imagine a world where you could get intel on your customers before they even knew it themselves. Well, you don’t need to imagine it.

More revenue when you need it most

More revenue is always good. But seeing where and when it will come from is even better. Marketers can create campaigns that push people over the sales line with predicted next-order dates. 

Let’s say it’s been 21 days since a customer last placed an order, and they’re predicted to place another one in seven days. Here’s what you could do within the next week to increase the likelihood of them making a purchase:

• Send them personalized product recommendations
• Offer them a discount code
• Notify them of any active sales you’re running

Better yet, create a segment of customers who meet similar criteria to maximize campaign ROI. That way, anyone orders in the next seven days could be nudged to the end of the purchase funnel. 

Delight your most valuable customers

It’s likely you already know who your biggest spenders are, but that only looks retrospectively. Predicted CLV lets you see the overall value a customer could add to your business. That means you know exactly who to reward, expanding the longevity and value of your most engaged contacts. What are some ways to reward brand champions at scale?

• Remind them to join your loyalty program
• Give them exclusive or early access to sales or products
• Offer them VIP deals to expand their purchasing power with your brand

Foresee, expect, and avoid the risk

In the fast-paced marketing world, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. With predictive analytics, you will see potential risks and make data-driven decisions. 

Keep customers shopping with you over competitors

No one likes losing a customer. When churn happens, it‘s often too late to do anything about it, especially if you’re looking at customer data retrospectively. If you can foresee churn, it’s easier to craft experiences that re-engage because you have a key tool on your side: time.

Don’t spend too much or too little on a lost cause

The most effective retention campaigns take a lot of time and resources to create; in fact, they can be very expensive. When you have access to churn predictions, you know where to spend your energy. For example, why spend a week crafting a retention campaign for customers with a 95% churn probability? If they’re already uninterested, the last thing you want to do is push them away with another email.

Target those with a lower probability

Equally, those with the highest predicted churn rates will likely need a much harder sale to get re-engaged—for example, a hefty discount. To avoid reducing your profit margins, it’s best to only send this message to customers with a high probability of churning.

Hyperpersonalize to avoid brand erosion

We can all admit how easy it is to become fatigued by boring emails that don’t offer much value, particularly when they’re not personalized. The last thing you want to do is send an SMS campaign aiming to increase loyalty to a customer whose churn probability is high. You also don’t want to advertise a premium offer to someone with a low predicted CLV. It’s crucial to make sure that your messaging resonates with your audience to safeguard your brand. Otherwise, it may come across as insincere.

Easier customer profiling

If you want to know more about your customers, you can do it at a glance with the Dotdigital predictive diagram in the single customer view. Not only can you access all contact data in one easy location, but you can spot similarities seamlessly. Let’s say you discover that your customers with the highest predicted churn rates have not opened an email in over two months. 

You can then determine a customer profile that shows a correlation between engagement and churn. Better still, Dotdigital lets you generate a lookalike segment, which kickstarts your re-engagement campaign in just one click. With Dotdigital, profiling your customers for re-engagement or offering promotions is a few clicks away. This can help prevent customer churn and keep them interested in your brand through different channels.

Step into the future

Predictive analytics has revolutionized marketing. Marketers can now seize the opportunity and navigate risks before they arise. In the age of technological advancements, the potential of predictive marketing will only expand. This will reinforce the need to embrace a future-ready approach for a competitive edge. In today’s world, making data-driven decisions is crucial for success, and predictive analytics is leading the way in this transformation toward a bright future.

Predictive insights, AI-powered campaign support, and unified customer data all give you next-level tools to deliver successful marketing that stands out and lands with impact.

Let’s explore the new features now available from our May release.

Get early access to the new Dotdigital

Welcome to the new Dotdigital. We’ve upgraded our platform architecture and UI to ensure Dotdigital is everything you need now, and in the future. Taking on board customer feedback, the new version of our platform reflects changes in the marketing landscape, and in the ways you want to work. A customer experience and data platform built by marketers, for marketers.

A better user experience

We’ve updated various areas of the Dotdigital user interface to perfectly align with the working methods of the future marketer. We’ve incorporated your comments and suggestions to make it easier than ever for you to utilize all elements of the platform to the fullest, and save time thanks to our new, streamlined navigation.

Changes include:

• All channels now under one campaigns section.
• New and improved audience section to manage contacts, segments, personas, and more.
• Easy to discover analytics and reporting with the new analytics section.
• A new connect area for all your data requirements.

Plus, we’ve also made improvements to our campaign management tools to make the day-to-day management of your campaigns run smoother.

Updated campaign features:

• Simpler campaign replies. Campaign replies are now easier to manage in the Dotdigital platform.
• Improved sign-off process. You can now select multiple team members to have sign-off powers within the platform, reducing backlog and improving usability for large teams.
• Better campaign tags management. Campaign tags can be used to filter and customize performance reports in Dotdigital. A new dedicated area makes it much easier to see and manage all existing and new tags.
• Easier organization. You can now filter your campaign reports by date and even see how transactional campaigns performed during a specific time.
• Effortless product search. We’ve also made some improvements to make it quicker and simpler to find the products you want to include in campaigns.

Get a stronger, unified picture of your customers

Our new unified contact data technology allows you to link all customer data back to one single customer record. You now have more ways to identify contacts, and we’ll continue to expand the sources available to you, including our improved API and our ever-growing list of integrations.

Unified contact data allows you to get the full picture, and gives Dotdigital’s analytics tools more data to analyze when creating recommendations for you. Unified contact data is a big part of what powers a CXDP to enable you to elevate your customer experience.

Why unified contact data is important

• All your data in one place. All of your contact data will be kept together as a single source of truth.
• A clearer, 360 degree view. Unified contact data strengthens the insights you have on a customer, no matter where that data originates.
• Improved campaigns. Seamlessly create data-led campaigns in Dotdigital, providing highly relevant and personalized experiences for your customers.
• Save time. Benefit from all of your customer data from different software applications and multiple variations of customer accounts automatically syncing to Dotdigital.
• A future-proof platform. Unified contact data ensures Dotdigital grows with you as your business and tech stack grows.

How unified contact data works

Unified contact data allows you to unify your customer data from various marketing channels and different software that makes up your customer journey, under one roof. This gives you the full picture of your customers’ journey and experience so you can react with relevant and timely communications across multiple channels.

Unified contact data is now in a Public preview, so you can self-enroll straight away to unify your contact data if you wish to. All of our customers who took part in the limited early-preview love it, so we’re confident you’re going to as well.

An improved API

Our improved API helps you better unify your data by making it easier to connect your systems. Greater efficiency and speed means you can enjoy high speed access to data and easily put in and get out the data you need. There’s also more guidance to help you build your integration and troubleshoot any issues issues, faster than ever before. Our improved API is ready to integrate with your marketing stack now, and in the future too. Flexible infrastructure means that our platform is built to grow with you, and support you in that growth too.

Some highlights include:

• RESTful API with JSON payloads.
• Higher than ever call rates.
• High performance real-time data access, with bespoke content selection criteria.
• High throughput bulk data import mechanisms.
• Support for service versioning to ensure you automatically access the best version of the service without backward comparability issues.
• Unified security across all our APIs.

How to get started

You can start using the new Dotdigital today! Just head to this article in our help center for more information.

The power of generative AI at your fingertips

At Dotdigital, we’ve long utilized AI technology to offer you sophisticated insights, find engagement and revenue opportunities, and provide concrete actions for you to implement. Our latest release continues to build on this by giving you helpful tips and tricks on how to improve your campaign you when you’re putting together email content, or writing your next subject line.

Powered by WinstonAI

WinstonAI encompasses all sorts of known and new smart technology in the platform. Today we’re focusing on his generative AI capabilities. To do this, WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Working also with Microsoft provides us with the security and enterprise promise of Azure, so you can be sure that you are adopting AI responsibly.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI is a form of machine learning that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, and even audio, by analyzing huge amounts of previous data. Recent breakthroughs in the technology mean that the power of generative AI is now accessible to marketers in their day-to-day work, and we’ve incorporated this into the Dotdigital platform.

Why generative AI in marketing is important

• Get inspiration. WinstonAI appears when you create an email campaign and provides relevant and personalized inspiration based on analyzing pools of data.
• Stay focused and save time. You will receive AI-powered suggestions just when you need them most. WinstonAI is easily made part of your existing processes.
• Better content, more engagements. WinstonAI gives tips on how to improve the tone of your email, points out where your audience might need additional detail, and highlights opportunities that will make your campaign even more successful.
• Subject line support. WinstonAI will provide three subject line alternatives to the one you’re working on. These recommendations are based on data from your 25 most recent email sends, to ensure the advice is tailored to your brand and campaign style.

Predictive analytics

Know your customers’ next move before they do with predictive analytics. AI analyzes your customer data to create intelligence-driven predictions, so you don’t need to rely on guesswork.

Predictive analytics let you know what engagement and revenue opportunities are on the horizon and allows you to be proactive in converting that customer. This makes it easy to act at just the right moment to increase sales and put effective, long-term retention strategies in place.

Why predictive analytics are important

• Stronger campaigns. Improve customer targeting with intelligent insights powered by data.
• Improve CX. Provide an enhanced customer experience with expert personalization and just-in-time targeting.
• Save time. Let the tech do the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on other campaign elements.
• Be one step ahead. Get exclusive intel to create proactive targeting strategies that will keep you ahead of the game.
• Insights you can trust. Have more confidence in your campaigns, inspired by concrete data analysis.

How predictive analytics works

Our predictive analytics focus on:

• Churn probability: (e.g. This customer is 40% likely to churn).
• Predicted next purchase date: (e.g. This customer’s next purchase date is predicted to be June 3).
• Predicted customer lifetime value: (e.g. This customer’s predicted CLV is $360).
• Predicted total future orders: (e.g. This customer is predicted to have three future orders in total).

The data will be available in:

• Single customer view as dynamic metrics.
• You can also create segments that use predictive metrics to decipher which customers to include.

How you can use predictive analytics

• Prevent shopper churn. Easily identify which customers are at risk of leaving your brand. Be proactive and target these customers with a powerful win-back campaign.
• Hit targets faster. Segment contacts based on predicted next purchase date and create campaigns with urgent messaging to encourage sales, such as time sensitive discount codes and free shipping for a limited time only.
• Encourage loyalty. Target customers that are likely to shop elsewhere by creating a segment based on whether they have missed their predicted purchase date. Make these customers feel valued and revive their interest before they go to another brand.
• Drive profitability. Identify and reward your future high-value customers with predicted customer lifetime value. Nurturing these customers early on can help ensure long-term success.

To get started with predictive analytics, sign up to our exclusive early access preview here.

What else is coming in this release?

New campaign heat maps

New campaign heat maps provide a clear, visual map of where contacts are engaging with your emails. Heat maps use a traffic light system to visually highlight where the most clicks take place, with red meaning most clicked, and green meaning least clicked.

This allows you to re-structure your emails to ensure key content is in the most prominent positions.

New Shopify and WooCommerce metafields

We now sync metafields (also called custom fields) as part of our out-of-the-box integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce. Merchants will be able to utilize the extra data they store against their customers and orders to create even more personalized experiences.

Metafields will be synchronized automatically and can be used to to create segments, power hyper-personalized dynamic content, and be deciding factors in automations and more.

New Gorgias integration

Gorgias is a customer service platform built specifically built for ecommerce brands. It allows support reps to communicate with customers across multiple channels, including live chat, SMS, social media, email, phone and more.

This integration will allow you to

• Get more insight into your customers, enabling you to personalize the messaging, content, channel and timing of your communications.
• Exclude contacts based on ticket status.
• Automatically enroll contacts into a program when their ticket is closed.

Back-in-stock notifications

As part of this release we launched back-in-stock notifications for all Big Commerce and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) merchants using Dotdigital. Shopify merchants have been using and loving this feature for a few years. Our easy-to-use configurator means you can create on-brand notifications in no time at all and start generating more revenue in the background straight away.

Once a customer has signed up to back-in-stock notifications from your site, you can send them a triggered email as soon as the item is available to purchase. Back-in-stock email automations are a simple yet effective solution to recovering otherwise lost revenue. Not only do you save that initial sale, but also reduce the chances they will shop from a competitor (there and then, but also in the future).

Over to you

Now it’s over to you to get started with these new features, and of course reach out to your Customer Success Manager or head to our help center if you need any more information.

We’re also running a host of webinars to support this new release, sign up below.

Thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Google Bard, I think we can all agree that 2023 to date has already felt like a quantum leap when it comes to AI. We knew from talking to our customers that they loved how these new tools were saving them time and upping the quality of their work.

So, we wanted to make it even easier for our customers to access this new generation of AI in our platform at a click of a button.

Enter, generative AI for Dotdigital.

Digital marketing powered by WinstonAI

WinstonAI encompasses all sorts of known and new smart technology in the Dotdigital platform. Most recently, we added a new power to the mix: Generative AI. For this, WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Built directly into the Dotdigital platform, WinstonAI can now easily provide you with hints, tips, and advice on how to improve your email marketing. 

But what exactly is generative AI?

Generative AI is a form of machine learning (ML) that can produce different types of content. From text, audio, and imagery – generative AI can analyze huge amounts of data to generate highly relevant content. The leaps in technology made in recent years mean that the power of generative AI is now available to marketers in their day-to-day work – and we’ve incorporated this into the Dotdigital platform. 

Unleash your creativity with AI

With WinstonAI, you can receive campaign feedback on your email content in real-time. Use this feedback to gain inspiration and find data-driven and creative improvements to increase engagement levels.

WinstonAI shows up when you need him most: 

• Email content: WinstonAI appears in the Dotdigital email editor and provides you with personalized recommendations on how to refine your copy. Whether that’s simplifying your language, adapting the tone to fit your message, or giving you valuable tips on how to make your content more engaging.
• Subject line: Improve the open rates of your email campaigns with subject line recommendations. WinstonAI expertly analyzes up to 25 of your previous subject lines and provides tailored suggestions to resonate more effectively with your audience. You’ll receive 3 alternative solutions to choose from.

The benefits of WinstonAI

• Get inspiration quickly. It’s impossible to always be on top of your game. WinstonAI is there for you when you need help getting campaign ideas off the ground.
• Avoid writer’s block. Gone are the days of scratching your head, wondering what to write. Our AI assistant is always learning, so it will never run out of tips and suggestions.
• Focus on what matters. Because he’s in your workspace, WinstonAI saves time, making your workday more efficient and freeing up your time to focus on the bigger picture.
• Improve engagement and conversions. WinstonAI pulls from a vast pool of data and experience, giving you new ideas for campaigns you might not have thought of yet, ultimately leading to more engaging content that delivers conversions.
• Simple and effective. Native in our email builder, you don’t have to worry about integrating new AI software into your existing martech stack, we’ve already done that for you.

What are WinstonAI users saying?

WinstonAI’s users across the globe praise its capacity to simplify email campaign content creation and improve employment rates. Hear firsthand from one of our many happy WinstonAI users, Alana Arthur, from Wittner Shoes in Australia:

How does WinstonAI’s generative AI capability work?

Behind the scenes, WinstonAI draws on generative AI technology from our long-time technology partner Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure was one of the early sponsors of OpenAI, one of the foremost innovators in this space, and the team behind ChatGPT.

We’re proud to work with Microsoft Azure on this because our relationship with them ensures we can deliver high-quality product features, great data governance, and security as standard, so you can be confident that all your data is protected and you’re adopting AI responsibly. 

Less than a week after launching, the app had more than a million users implementing the new technology to write essays, draft emails, create templates, and fix code. Reports of users being sassed and chastised by the chatbot quickly flooded in.  

While many of us have had fun testing the app’s responses to our questions, it has also given rise to a number of ethical and philosophical questions. Namely, how effective is ChatGPT and will it put jobs at risk?  

Before we get too deep, let’s take a step back and look at what ChatGPT really is, how it works, and what its limitations are.  

What is ChatGPT? 

When you pose the question to ChatGPT, this is the response you’ll likely receive:  

ChatGPT is a chatbot designed to assist with customer support, conversation, and information gathering tasks. It uses natural language processing and GPT-3 technology to generate responses that are tailored to the user’s input. ChatGPT can handle a wide range of queries and provide answers in real-time, making it a valuable tool for businesses looking to improve their customer support experience.  

Markettailor

So, what can we take away from that?  

Quite simply, ChatGPT is a chatbot, not too dissimilar to those you’re used to interacting with on live chat widgets on sites across the web. The main difference is the extent of data ChatGPT taps into to formulate its answers and the way it structures its responses.  

It’s a lot more conversational than previous chatbot iterations thanks to its natural language processing. This results in the human-like responses that have been attracting a great deal of attention.  

How does ChatGPT work? 

Okay, it’s time to get technical. 

The ‘GPT’ in ChatGPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer. Transformers are a type of deep learning algorithm that is widely used for natural language processing (NLP). It’s designed to process large sequences of data and learn patterns in that data. Processes vast amounts of text allows ChatGPT to perform various NLP tasks such as text generation and answering questions.  

What are the limitations of ChatGPT? 

While many of us have been impressed by the abilities of ChatGPT, it’s important for you to understand its limitations before choosing to implement the chatbot.  

1. ChatGPT can sometimes write plausible-sounding but incorrect responses 

 According to the company’s website, this is a challenging issue to fix because there is no single source of truth from which that chatbot can source its answers. Training the AI to be more cautious will lead to it declining questions and queries it can answer correctly, causing it to be significantly less effective.  

2. ChatGPT is sensitive to phrasing tweaks 

ChatGPT can sometimes claim to not know the answer to a question when it is submitted. However, a slight rephrasing of the question can lead to the chatbot interpreting the question differently and therefore answering the question correctly. As a result, you may sometimes have to rephrase and tweak your question a couple of times in order to get the response you require.  

3. ChatGPT can be jargon-y or repetitively use certain phrases

Issues can arise from biases in the training data applied to the app. For example, if the trainers prefer long answers that are ladened with industry-specific vocabulary, ChatGPT will likely formulate answers that jargon-heavy and difficult to understand based on patterns it has seen in its training data.  

4. ChatGPT can exhibit biased behavior  

The ChatGPT team at OpenAI have made efforts to teach the chatbot to refuse inappropriate requests using the Moderation API to block unsafe content. Unfortunately, there is still potential for ChatGPT to generate biased responses that contain offensive language if they are present in the text data it was trained on.  

How can marketers use ChatGPT? 

Even with these limitations, it’s clear that the capacity of ChatGPT is huge.  

For many of us, our day-to-day lives can feel like an endless to do list. Marketers are well-known for wearing many hats. AI has frequently been touted as the solution to this, allowing manual tasks to be automated and workflows streamlined to allow marketing teams to more effectively use their time.  

Given ChatGPT’s low-cost content output, it’s no surprise savvy marketers are already putting the app to use. If you’re planning on using it in your marketing, we’ve outlines the best ways you can negate the app’s limitations, while improving your productivity.  

1. Content creation 

ChatGPT is an effective tool for content creation. From blog articles and online content to social media, ChatGPT has already proven itself capable of creating marketing content.  

However, as with all marketing, it’s not that simple.  

There are a number of potential impacts to SEO you need to be aware of. Traditionally, Google has penalized auto-generated content, deeming it low quality according to the company’s spam policy. What’s more, ChatGPT is a competitor to Google leading to speculation that Google may move to penalize any content generated by its competitor.  As a result, your site could be completely removed from Google’s search results.  

So, instead of using ChatGPT to construct complete articles, it would be safer to use the app to build a general outline and have a human member of your team author and fact-check longer-form content. For short-form content that will not affect SEO such as social media posts or email, ChatGPT is here to make your life easier.  

2. Customer queries 

As with many chatbot, ChatGPT can help you create a pleasant and seamless experience for your customers. By delivering quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, you can free-up you and your team’s time. Your customer support agents will then have more time to focus on more complex queries or time-intensive tasks.  

3. SEO and research  

ChatGPT has the ability to research and curate content from sources across the web. This is much more useful than manually sifting through search engine results. The app can identify timely keywords that are impacting your industry and will significantly reduce time spent researching and planning.  

However, there is still room for errors or omissions, so ensuring your team review and verify information is essential.   

4. Coding  

As well as writing in human-like, conversational language, ChatGPT can write code in a number of languages including C++, JavaScript, and Python, as well as error-check existing code. As a result, creating simple computer programs has become significantly more accessible to marketers of all specialisms. Developing this skill will help you and your team automate routine elements of day-to-day life.  

5. Data analysis  

We all know how important data is. Dotdigital helps you turn data into unforgettable customer experiences with engaging visualizations and dashboards, but what about the data that sits separate to our CXDP?  

ChatGPT can interpret information, dissect text and numerical data, spotting patterns and extracting insights from your datasets. It even has the ability to create charts. Overall, ChatGPT can make identifying trends in customer behavior simpler.  

6. Project management 

Finally, we know launching a new campaign or project is never simple. ChatGPT can be used to streamline the entire process. If you’re not sure about how to put your project into action, you can ask the app to create a step-by-step guide covering everything from what tools and skills are needed to how best to analyze and assess your results.  

Will ChatGPT affect my job?  

There has been a lot of chatter about the extent to which ChatGPT will start replacing people, but it’s safe to say it isn’t ready to take over any of our jobs yet.  

While it can help streamline work and processes, it still requires a lot of guidance and human supervision. Instead, you should see ChatGPT as a way to augment your skills. It’s a tool you should use to make your work life simpler.  

Content marketers can scale-up production and output by turning to the app to produce comprehensive content plans. Marketing managers can present the results of their campaigns in more engaging ways. Email marketers can dedicate more time to creating data-powered, personalized marketing by removing the time-consuming task of generating copy and templates.  

Overall, it’s important you understand what ChatGPT can and can’t do. If you’re planning on adopting the technology, remember that it’s only as good as your team. It still requires a lot of human checks and balances, so don’t expect it to immediately change your life. Simply allow it to improve your current outputs.  

Whilst there are a lot of things about this year we’d rather forget, there are some things that are worth highlighting.

Year of digital converts

2020 is the year that the ‘late majority’ became fully-fledged digital converts. With many countries asking their citizens to stay at home or minimize their travel, consumers who previously shopped in store or preferred to access services in person, found they had little choice but to give the internet a go. All age groups have seen an increase in the frequency with which they shop online, too. This increase is strongest with the under 35s, of which 62% now shop online once a week or more, versus 48% last year. 

With our places of interest shifting online, so have our expectations and habits. Google reports that ‘live chat’ and ‘online classes’, amongst many other service related terms, have seen an increased search interest across the world. So, many businesses and organisations delivering events and services have found themselves testing fresh creative formats.

From a MarTech standpoint, it’s been a very interesting year too. Many marketing terms that you’d have seen in a game of buzzword bingo last year are now displaying adulting behavior, and have made their way into our day-to-day conversations and actions. Of course, I’m talking about terms like actionable analytics, CX (customer experience), machine learning, retention marketing, scalability, and so many more.

Still sound fluffy? Let me try to unpick my top three and explain how our customers have used some of the latest and greatest features in Dotdigital to accelerate their way up the (here’s another for you!) digital maturity curve.

Actionable analytics

Since its initial launch in 2019, Commerce Intelligence and RFM persona modelling in Dotdigital has surfaced a wealth of online purchases and persona insights. Grouping different customers into meaningful personas means you can send messages and offers that will help them graduate to the next level of loyalty.

Earlier this year, we made it easier to create segments directly from these dashboards, as and when you spot a cohort of customers you want to retarget with a particular campaign, for example. Bringing these personas into segment builder lets you overlay other attributes and create incredibly refined target groups. What’s more, persona groups are mutually exclusive, so you don’t have to worry if some of last month’s customers that needed nurturing are now high potentials and ready for a different message.

In addition to this, we’ve introduced a dedicated dashboard where you can track what’s happening with your abandoned carts. Learning from your shoppers behavior and fine-tuning your tactics accordingly can have a huge impact on your bottom line. We analyzed 9.2 million carts and found that cart abandonment campaigns recovered $245 million in otherwise lost revenue this year alone; you can read the full report here.

Artificial Intelligence

AI, machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics. This topic corners an entire space in the ‘buzzword’ lexicon on its own! But not for long… Econsultancy concurs that some of the greatest challenges businesses have with AI implementation for marketing include: having access to the right data; not knowing what AI can do for your business in real terms; and (this one’s based on market feedback we’ve received) a worry that there is no control over AI output or no visibility of what that output even is.

If you’re already using our predictive recommendations (now accessible via a shiny UI that helps you match the right product recommendation type to the appropriate stage of the customer lifecycle), you’ll know that you can use ‘best next’ and overlay it with rules in segment builder. ‘Best next’ uses what is called collaborative filtering to, based on order behavior of similar shoppers, predict which products that individual is likely to purchase next. This is great, but sometimes you want additional control to exclude products from particular brands or categories in support of your latest campaign, for example. Many customers using predictive recommendations were asking us “How can I understand it?” and “What’s the AI doing?”, to help with this we launched affinity scores in October this year. You can find out more in this Q&A with Principle Product Manager Ian Pollard and resident Data Scientist Sam Crawley.

CX

As mentioned above, Google reports that ‘live chat’ and ‘online classes’, amongst many other service related terms, have seen an increased search interest across the world. In an increasingly digital and remote world, consumers are seeking and expecting more personal experiences with the brands they love.

Live chat is traditionally a great way to handle after-sales and support queries, but we believe there is more in store for marketers and consumers alike, too. This year we’ve upgraded Dotdigital Chat in more ways than one, so brands can be as helpful pre-sale as they would be after one. This includes things like:

• Multi-team support
• Agent insights including browse behavior history
• Forms in chat for easier acquisition
• Translation support and enhanced email and browser notifictions

Another great way to deliver experiences that stand out from the inbox this year is with interactive email, powered by AMP. It’s a major update to a much-loved channel that’s close to our hearts. Our Head of Product Management, Michael Duxbury, explains more in his blog post.

Is that it?

From all-new program reporting to SMS enhancements, a better way with transactional emails and upgrades to our Dynamics 365 CRM integration, there’s a ton more that we’ve delivered that I couldn’t possibly cover in one blog post alone. To ensure you always receive updates about our platform, make sure your preferences are up to date by signing up to product updates here.

And don’t worry if you don’t feel you’re quite up to speed with any of the above just yet. Our incredible customer success and support teams are on-hand to deliver the five-star experience we hope you have come to expect of us. So, do reach out if you want any more information on any of the above.

Next year is jam-packed with more platform enhancements and features that even the most seasoned of marketers should get excited about. For a sneak peak, remember you can always check out our roadmap here.