According to the “Building Lasting Consumer Relationships in Retail" report by WBR Digital and Persado, the majority of respondents (47%) are looking to spend up to $50 million on artificial intelligence (AI), while a quarter are budgeting as much as $100 million. For marketing leaders surveyed, effective customer engagement is expected to be the primary benefit of implementing AI, where “engagement” is considered foremost as a driver of revenue (37%) and to a much lesser extent, brand awareness (13%).
Retail marketers look to improve engagement by providing more relevant experiences but continue to struggle with personalization. On a scale of 0 to 4, with 0 as least effective and 4 as most effective, marketers find that they could do a better job with personalization techniques: tailoring product recommendations (2.85); segmentation (2.53); offer personalization (2.49); and personalizing content (2.13).
Even with an onslaught of tech innovation giving retailer marketers deeper insight into what motivates audiences on a personal and emotional level, their ability to activate this insight is stunted. For example, only 22% of respondents believe they are skilled at applying emotion to content. Furthermore, retailers’ personalization techniques are typically limited to the basics of demographic and location data.
You can read more about the report and/or download a full copy.