In 2023, over 80% of marketers worldwide integrated AI marketing, and that number continues to climb. While the efficiency gains are undeniable, underneath it’s also influencing how businesses connect with their customers and and shaping the future of authentic customer engagement.
Remember when Netflix first began personalising our recommendations? That simple feature now drives over 80% of content viewed. It showed us how to blend algorithmic precision with a genuine understanding of human preferences. Now small to medium businesses increasingly recognise approaches like this for their AI-marketing efforts for authentic customer engagement.
AI-marketing technology and empathy for authentic customer engagement
In Australia, 57% of businesses are already using AI to improve engagement and customer experiences. While AI excels at automating tasks and analysing data, it can’t replace the emotional intelligence and creativity that humans bring (and that ultimately trains these tools).
Consider RedBalloon, an Australian gift retailer that used AI to automate marketing campaigns and reduce customer acquisition costs by 25% in just a month. Australian companies Ryderwear and City Beach are using AI to supercharge authentic customer engagement, with Ryderwear flipping its revenue mix to 80% human-centred automation and 20% campaigns, and City Beach winning back 48% of defecting customers within 90 days with AI-marketing strategies that resonated with audiences.
Another standout example is Sephora’s Virtual Artist chatbot. It lets users virtually try on makeup, resulting in an 11% increase in conversions by personalising the shopping experience and keeping customers engaged for longer.
What does authenticity mean to your brand?
Consumers are clear about what they want: authenticity. For instance, a study by Cohn & Wolfe found that 62% of consumers would buy from a brand they perceive as authentic, even if it’s not the cheapest option. Businesses need to define what authenticity means to them and consistently show it across all channels.
When AI-generated content is involved, balance is vital. While AI can produce content that reflects your brand, relying too heavily on it can water it down and can make consumers wary. People can often sense when the tone of voice has changed. By combining AI efficiency with human insight, marketers can ensure their brand’s unique qualities shine through.
Maintaining a human oversight in AI marketing strategies
Ways businesses can create human-centred automation.
- Use AI to analyse customer data, segment audiences, and identify patterns that inform personalisation strategies to create targeted campaigns without manual effort.
- Implement AI tools like Jasper or HubSpot AI to generate content, but ensure human marketers and content writers refine and personalise the messaging to align with the brand’s voice and emotional resonance.
- Set up automated response mechanisms to start communications based on customer actions (behavioural triggers), such as abandoned cart reminders.
- While AI handles routine tasks like gathering the customer insights, human marketers are free to focus on crafting messages to connect with the customer stages of awareness and refining brand strategy.
Preserving authentic customer engagement
Whether to, and how, to adopt AI-marketing into your strategy is the smaller challenge now since there are countless tools businesses of all sizes can integrate into their marketing. If you’re not, then talk to us! The real question is how to use these tools while preserving the authentic connections that make your brand distinct. We can support you with that, too.
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