The global AI eCommerce market is predicted to escalate from $5.81 billion in 2023 to $22.6 billion in 20301. Staying relevant is a key reason many companies are choosing to go down the AI route, with 35% of marketers seeing the adoption of AI as necessary to keeping their business competitive. 2
But does the shift towards AI eCommerce marketing signal a fundamental change, or is it more of a passing trend?
In this article we’ll examine whether AI in eCommerce marketing is here to stay. We’ll also discuss the merits of integrating a Promotion Experience Platform with your current technical capabilities. By doing so you can rapidly upgrade your eCommerce marketing efforts, without the expense, or challenges, that come with AI.
Suggested reading: One of the best ways to ensure marketing success is by using a promotions engine. Discover the right solution for you in our downloadable guide “Do You Need a Promotion Engine?”
What is AI eCommerce marketing?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used by more and more eCommerce marketers, to help them understand their customers better and identify new purchasing behaviours and trends.
AI can, for example, help businesses create highly targeted ads, engaging marketing campaigns, and personalised offers, as well as enhance functions that are already performed by an eCommerce company’s existing software.
AI eCommerce marketing: Primary uses
AI can help to boost eCommerce marketing efforts in numerous ways, including:
1 Creating more personalised promotions
Omnichannel personalisation is a top priority for online retailers, because shoppers now expect personalised experiences as standard. Personalisation has been shown to not only boost revenue and retention, but lead to marketing cost savings of between 10-30%. 3
That said, many retailers continue to fall short of these expectations. AI can help to rectify this situation, by contextualising shoppers’ browsing behaviours, so that companies can deliver more personalised promotions and discounts to customers.
The ability to analyse big data from multiple touchpoints and use this data effectively enables businesses to deliver a seamless customer experience.
Tip: Promotions Experience Platform Uniqodo can also provide you with the ability to run highly personalised promotions, based on browsing behaviours that happen at key touchpoints on a user’s journey. The software gives you the ability to apply unique, single-use codes across all your marketing channels, with incentives delivered to the right customers, at the right time.
This not only affords greater degrees of personalisation, but protects your profits by preventing over-discounting and code leakages.
Case study: Happy Beds - Controlling Promotions
Problem: Happy Beds needed to ensure their promotions were truly exclusive and not leaking onto other sites.
Solution: Uniqodo gave them the ability to create unique, single-use codes to control offers. They also enabled auto-fill of codes at checkout with dynamic error messaging.
Results: An uplift in conversion rates of 21. 17% and 57.51% lift in engagement rates.
2 Scaling content marketing
48% of businesses already use ChatGPT and AI to help them generate content and 10% are planning to use it in future4. Generative AI tools allow companies to scale content production while ensuring that their messaging aligns with the target audience.
Despite the popularity of generative AI for content marketing, it’s worth taking a cautious approach. While it’s not currently outlawed by Google, it could face future restrictions, which could impact a website’s domain authority, including its ability to rank for target keywords on SERPs.
AI-generated content can also fall short in terms of quality, something that potential customers could find off-putting.
3 Increasing UX optimisation
Consumers choose retailers based on the ease and richness of their end-to-end user experience. AI can interpret a user’s unique behaviours and tailor their onsite experience accordingly, with the ability to customise interfaces and content for each user while setting individual prices based on user data.
Tip: Uniqodo also has the ability to provide users with bespoke experiences, with the option, for example, to create custom landing pages and curate specific deals for a target audience.
Uniqodo also helps create a seamless purchasing experience for users, with discount links that take consumers directly to checkout, along with the convenience of auto-filled forms.
4 Automating email marketing
Email tools with built-in AI can help to increase the personalisation of emails, boost open rates, and drive people to eCommerce sites. The software can infer data, make recommendations, and do tasks in real time.
These AI-based tools can help to design emails, as well as send them at scheduled times. Some email software can segment audiences too (based on a combination of criteria) and split-test campaigns, to determine which are working and which are not.
Tip: Uniqodo integrates with AI-powered email marketing tools like DotDigital, to enable the distribution of unique coupon codes via email. Codes can be imported from a business’s own eCommerce platform, or Uniqodo’s Promotion Engine can generate unique codes to use within promotions.
Challenges of using AI eCommerce marketing
- High initial outlay: Implementing AI can be a costly business, involving significant investment in infrastructure, skills, and maintenance. This means AI solutions can take time to yield positive ROIs.
- Data privacy: Collecting consumer data via AI algorithms raises concerns about privacy and data protection. With so much customer data being collected, there’s a risk of information falling into the wrong hands and being used maliciously.
- Bias: As algorithms are created by humans, preconceptions and biases can creep into programs, bringing potential ethical considerations into play.
- Lack of talent: It can be time-consuming and difficult to integrate AI solutions with current systems and eCommerce platforms. The process could require specialist knowledge and skills, something that’s often hampered by the lack of technical talent available.
- Saturated market: With so many eCommerce AI solutions on the market, it can be difficult to stand out from the competition by relying on AI alone.
- Over-reliance on AI: Over-reliance on AI algorithms to make decisions and automate tasks could lead to mistakes further down the line.
AI: The state of play in eCommerce marketing
AI is neither a “trend”, nor an “industry change”. It’s simply a different way of doing things, with its own strengths and weaknesses like any other marketing strategy. But with 78% of brand owners already using, or planning to use, generative AI, the ascendency of AI eCommerce marketing is indisputable.5
In future, AI could provide the innovation, efficiency, and customer-centricity that will make it an indispensable partner to eCommerce marketers.
Many marketers, however, remain cautiously optimistic about AI’s ability to drive growth in the near term. As we’ve seen, AI also often comes at a higher cost, can be challenging to implement, and is surrounded by privacy and ethical concerns.
Uniqodo: A risk-free way to upgrade
Uniqodo is a powerful SaaS solution that’s trusted by many of today’s leading eCommerce companies. Our Promotions Experience platform provides you with a ready-to-use, cost-efficient, way to develop more engaging promotions and generate higher revenues without having to rely heavily on AI.
With its valuable range of features and integrations, you can enhance your current tech stack and deliver unique, tailored, promotions to your customers, based on specific behaviours and purchases.
Importantly, you can also ensure promotions only apply where they add value to the business. The ability to incorporate unique codes across all touchpoints (including mobile apps, email, social, paid search channels, affiliates and onsite) means you can drive customer engagement and encourage repeat purchases while preserving your profits.
Uniqodo: Playing the long game
Uniqodo, like AI, provides you with a way to boost the effectiveness of your eCommerce marketing campaigns. It’s a powerful solution that can work in harmony with your existing systems including AI-powered software, like DotDigital.
Find out more about how to future-proof your marketing strategy by booking a free discovery call today.
1. Artificial Intelligence in Ecommerce Market Size and Forecast
2. 3 in 4 Marketers are using AI for Content Creation
3. Retail Speaks 7 Imperatives for the Industry McKinsey & Company
4. How Many Companies are using ChatGpt and AI for Marketing?
5. GenAI figures in most brands’ marketing plans, says new WFA research.
Subscribe to the Blog