Loren McDonald, Program Director, Marketing Research/Marketing, Acoustic (formerly IBM Watson Marketing), Presented 'Staying Ahead of B2B Marketing: Email Marketing, Automation and the Impact of AI'

1. AI: The B2B
Marketing
Imperative
Loren McDonald
Program Director, Marketing Research
Acoustic
Twitter: @LorenMcDonald
#GoAcoustic

3. 3

4. "AI systems are not wholesale replacing us;
rather, they are amplifying our skills and
collaborating with us to achieve productivity
gains that have previously not been possible."
— "Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI" by Paul R. Daugherty, H. James Wilson

5. Facebook facial
recognition and
tagging
Facebook facial
recognition and
tagging

6. 9
Spotify uses
collaborative
filtering, natural
language
processing
(NLP), and raw
audio models
to recommend
artists and songs
for you.

7. 9
Consumer
Innovation
Simplifying
Content Creation
Improving the
Consumer
Experience
Workflow
Optimization
Freedom from
Repetitive Tasks
Better, More
Creative Decisions
Source: PwC
Fully Automated Human Works With AI
Artificial Intelligence Marketing/Creative Intelligence Matrix

8. By 2021 virtually every aspect of
your marketing activities will be
powered by some form of
AI or machine learning.
@LorenMcDonald

9. 9
AI/ML: The biggest opportunity
of your career?
@LorenMcDonald

10. Examples/Opportunities
Key Success Factors

11. What if you could …
Create newsletters with:
• Personalized content
• In the order of most relevant
• Targeted subject lines
• Sent at the optimum time/day for each recipient?
@LorenMcDonald

12. • Curate content
+external machine
recommended
“industry” content
Each recipient is served
content based on:
• Past email and web
clicks and content
engagement
Average CTRs:
• Before: 2.6%
• With AI: 13.1%

13. Desire Paths – Uncover Opportunities

14. What if you could …
Uncover customer struggles or anomalies in:
• Form completion
• Automated program performance
@LorenMcDonald

15. Which fields are
causing form
abandonment?
Work with web
team to revise
forms!

16. Performance
anomalies
Correlations to
possible causes

17. What if you could …
Predict:
• Customer churn and renewals
@LorenMcDonald

18. Predict likelihood of
customers to churn or
renew.

19. What if you could …
Save 4.5 hours per work week?
@LorenMcDonald

21. 7.2%
19.5%

22. 19.5%
7.2%

23. 9/4/19
23
There are hurdles
to AI success:
- Data
- Culture/Process

24. 9/4/19
24

25. AI can give you superpowers, but requires …

26. …Building “data factories”
• Design “data creation interactions”
• Consider a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

27. …Shifts in Culture/Process

28. 28
Break down the silos
Organize around the customer
“The role of the CMO is evolving into ‘Chief Experience Officer.’
We need to own the client experience from beginning to end, across the
organization.” CMO, Financial Services company

29. Use agile
marketing
process

30. People
Center-brain marketing
melds creativity and tech
to fuel success in a future
driven by machine
learning.
30
Left-Brain
Analytical
Right-Brain
Creative

31. Takeaways
2. Organize around the customer
4. Your job won’t disappear, but it will change
5. AI is not a fad, embrace your biggest career opportunity
1. Make data your top priority
3. Get agile

32. Loren McDonald
Twitter: @LorenMcDonald
#GoAcoustic
Thank you.
“The real danger is not that
computers will begin to think like
humans, but that humans will
begin to think like computers.”
- Sydney Harris (Journalist)