Plan Smarter, Not Harder: How AI Drives Multichannel Success

Predictive AI models can empower retail marketing teams, optimizing their multichannel campaigns and achieving higher ROI.
Today’s news is packed with alarming headlines and stories about artificial intelligence (AI). These often feature the efforts of big tech companies to outdo each other in meeting our appetite for AI-generated summaries, chatbots, and almost realistic images. The stock market careens wildly with each new story, as many people worry about their jobs or the survival of their companies. But although the noise is deafening, we tend to forget that AI is simply a tool—one that can benefit every business. This is very much the case for retail teams. With the right AI-enabled predictive tools, marketing and advertising directors can “plan smarter” with their multichannel retail campaigns, achieving a better ROI than they could with intuition alone.

The secret is to remember that AI and predictive analytics are not new. They have existed for years, analyzing past data to predict the likelihood of future business trends. What is new is the increased accuracy and granularity of those predictions, thanks to advances in machine learning (ML) and the abundance of data available to retail teams. However, effective AI for campaign offer planning does notneed to process the entire internet—or even selected parts. Predictive AI for retailers needs only the data that they already possess.

For example, loyalty programs that reward retail shoppers with discounts and coupons collect an extraordinary amount of individual purchasing data. They collect the purchase dates and quantities of certain products and brands and the same information for related products. A competent product merchandizer likely knows intuitively that buying more milk is likely when a shopper has bought cereal. However, there are a vast amount of product purchase relationships in the data—too many for product teams to identify. Only a robust, AI-enabled predictive system can find meaning in such large datasets in time to plan an effective campaign.

We tend to forget that AI is just a tool – one that can benefit any business, as all it needs to effectively plan campaign offers is the data that retailers already have.

Data Into Dollars

To better understand AI’s potential to help retailers, think about the enormous challenges already faced by creative service managers, production managers, and their busy teams. Under the leadership of a retailer’s marketing directors and planners, they are tasked with creating multiple print and digital campaigns on a demanding schedule. This may even include customized regional and personalized versions, but only if they spend much more on labor.
Plan Smarter, Not Harder How AI Drives Multichannel Success - data

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Of course, much of that problem can be solved by employing a unified, single source of truth approach to a retailer’s product data. For example, by using Comosoft LAGO’s PIM, DAM, and workflow tools, they can optimize their multichannel campaigns without undue labor costs. However, cost saving is only part of the picture. A retailer’s product and purchasing data are potential sources for increased revenue, but only if marketing teams use the right tools to turn that data into dollars.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence is the perfect tool for doing all this and more—if it is employed wisely. In a recent case study, a leading regional grocer successfully used Comosoft LAGO and DecaSIM’s AI tools to plan promotions considering seasonality, unique pricing, and product and purchasing data. The AI-based approach to planning resulted in increased weekly sales and an eight percent profit growth (EBITDA).

Using AI in this way allows campaign planners to predict how customers will respond to promotions based on historical data, trends, and behaviors. They can also model interactions between products at a customer level, analyze price points, and identify which promotion will attract the highest number of shoppers.

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Will AI Take My Job?

The answer is complicated, but for the most part, AI will not replace the need for creativity, judgment, or strategic thinking. In fact, if directors of retail marketing and advertising—and their teams—are freed from the repetitive tasks of coming through data “by hand,” then they will be freed to make better and more effective campaigns. They are empowered to make better offers—more often and on multiple channels—enhancing their strategic value to their company.

Technology has always been both a blessing and a curse. It is never an “either-or” proposition; it is always “this-AND-that.” The challenge, of course, is to uncover how AI—or any technology, for that matter—can add the most value to a team while offsetting its negative and often temporary side effects.

One of the most significant challenges for retail marketing teams is understanding their customers’ shifting needs and behaviors. Knowing what makes customers “tick” is the holy grail, so to speak, and AI can help savvy marketers gain that knowledge much quicker. Equipped with those insights, they can use tools like Comosoft LAGO to align their campaigns with their company’s business goals, manage a mountain of promotional assets, and ensure they use the right product and promotion strategies.

Far from decimating a retailer’s marketing team, AI can free them to become superstars.

Discover how LAGO, powered by predictive AI, can transform retail multichannel marketing to engage customers, increase sales, and grow profits. Or book a demo to see for yourself.

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