This is 2021, and no this is not another post about how dystopian the year has been.
It has been a tough one though, hasn’t it?
Nevertheless, getting back on track, this is 2021 and we are way past the point where we discuss the efficacy of AI/ML in modern-day marketing. It is here, and it is here to stay.
What remains open to discussion and has scope for improvement is the way AI now interacts with marketers like you. Focusing on our affinity towards actionable intelligence and demystifying with the “artificial” aspects is the way forward.
Need for Transparency
Most of us have very little knowledge about what goes on within the blackbox of AI. This leads to apprehension and a lack of trust in AI-led systems.
A person would be more willing to take action X if he or she was informed that it would help scenario Y which is being caused by scenario Z, than being told to do X because the AI knew what it was doing and it was in their best interests.
Scores of machine learning algorithms used today cannot be examined after a decision or suggestion to understand specifically how and why a decision has been made. This holds true especially for one of the most popular approaches today – deep learning neural networks.
With the focus on optimization and with so much riding on every action we take, building transparency over trust is imperative for any AI system. The lack of trust diminishes the opportunity to take advantage of AI. This is where Explainable AI kicks in – giving equal importance to the presentation of the path taken towards a specific decision along with the decision itself.
To the Drawing Board
The belief in AI in marketing automation has always been steadfast at Netcore Solutions. In fact, our AI engine – Raman’s – Send Time Optimization model has demonstrated quantifiable success since 2018.
Sticking to the philosophy of the 4Rs of marketing, Raman has continued to gain capabilities of engaging at the right time (Raman Send Time Optimization), With the Right content (Raman Subject Line Optimization), on the Right channel (Raman Preferred Channel), and to the Right audience (Raman Predictive Audience) along with state of the art predictive models such as the App Churn Management module.
As conversations and the excitement around the capabilities grew, so did the realization of the need to bring in trust and focus on the “Why” along with the “What”.
In May 2019, the Netcore’s Machine Learning team decided it was time to take a fresh look at AI in Martech. Weeks of conversations and research lead to the comprehension of what the space lacked. While a number of moving pieces, impressive models, and capabilities existed; a comprehensive approach of bringing the many moving pieces together did not.
The very essence of AI-driven marketing automation is the presence of relevant and actionable intelligence at every step of a marketers’ day to day life – focusing on making the marketers’ life easy and stress-free and not just a couple of timely quick-fixes here and there.
Explainable AI was the way forward!
An ingenious marketer, like yourself, needs to be empowered with reasoning and not just opaque suggestions.
An AI engine that can be your personal marketing guru empowering you at every step with suggestions backed by crystal-clear explanations and justifications; so you can fully comprehend the impact of its actions/suggestions.
That’s precisely the refreshed vision with which we set to work.
Explainable AI: Focus on Measurable, Detectable, and Actionable Marketing Insights
At Netcore, we’ve named our AI engine “Raman” as a tribute to two great Indian scholars: Nobel Laureate and Physicist C.V. Raman, and the intuitive Mathematical genius, S. Ramanujan. It was their groundbreaking discoveries that put India on the global scientific map.
It was the inspiration derived from these two great Indian scholars’, that we worked tirelessly on our vision of helping and enabling brands to foster strong omnichannel customer connections with minimal effort and extreme efficiency. Thus, Raman, our AI engine, with his marketer-focused capabilities and features was born.
With each passing year, we at Netcore strive to accomplish that vision – step by step, but the philosophy at heart – to stay customer-centric, has never dwindled. All capabilities of Raman were built with a focus on empowering the marketer with data-driven insights, actionability and the quantification of the impact explained and justified.
Read more about how Raman has helped the following brands become truly customer-centric and see skyrocketing ROI:
How our ingenious AI Engine, Raman, Helped fbb online Boost Email Open Rates by 39%
See how Raman Helped Indonesia’s Leading Travel Company Increase Email Open Rates by 36%
“Wouldn’t you want to spend more time on decisions than on dashboards?”
As a digital or mobile marketer, there are a number of questions and metrics that you have to keep tabs on – your DAUs, Revenue, New vs. Repeat Users, App Uninstalls, etc.
Keeping tabs is important to track evolving trends, understand if everything is working as per plans, or act and adapt to changes in the onground situation. To accomplish this, however, a disproportionate amount of time goes into actually looking at dashboards and reports to identify and understand changes in such patterns and hidden trends.
Enter Raman!
Not only does he augment the efficient execution of your marketing strategies while you are on Smartech (Raman Nudges), but he also closely monitors any changes in multiple data patterns across the board, even while you are not active on the Smartech platform (Raman Insights).
In a nutshell, Raman offers deep-dive insights into the following:
- Descriptive (What is happening?)
- Diagnostic (Why is it happening?)
- Prescriptive (What to do next?)
- Descriptive Insights: What is happening?
Raman helps you understand if it is business as usual…or, if there is some positive or negative trend or anomaly that needs your attention.
For instance: Did your DAU see a huge uptick yesterday? Or, is there something alarming with a metric that needs your immediate attention such as rising app uninstalls or overall drop in the revenue?
You could also let Raman know about the relevant business metrics that you want him to monitor. He would monitor the data 24 X 7 and highlight “needle-in-the-haystack” anomalies as and when they happen.
- Diagnostic Insights: Why is it happening?
Simply being aware of positive or negative trends is not enough. It’s also important to simplify your lives by helping you figure out the “why” behind the “what”.
With Raman, a number of variables that could be responsible for the sudden change in behavior of the metric is analyzed to help you zero in on the possible factors causing the change.
For instance: A drop in your overall revenue could be due to several reasons.
Raman looks at understanding the scenario in three ways:
- Smartech-campaign associated indicators: For instance – Uptick or downgrade in the contribution of a specific campaign on a particular channel deployed on Smartech
- Business metric indicators: For instance – App downloads
- Trend and seasonality indicators: For instance – improved email campaign CTRs or website conversions attributed to a festival season like Diwali
- Prescriptive Insights: What to do next?
Raman now also enables you to take corrective or remedial action, guiding you through the tools in Smartech and Raman’s arsenal that can be used to achieve your business objectives.
For instance: App churn can be prevented by crafting actionable campaigns on the Raman dashboard to target a group of customers predicted as ‘Most likely to churn’ with Raman’s App Churn Management.
Additionally, you could also engage with your users at a time and on a channel that they’re most engaged with Raman’s Send Time Optimization and Preferred Channel features.
Raman through his insights module would then measure the impact of the action and if it has caused a correction in the direction of the negative trend.
Parting Thoughts
Don’t forget:
Outstanding results are often a result of strategic collaboration and complementary teamwork!
With our AI engine – Raman as your ally, you will now be able to understand how to unlock higher conversions, uplift your revenue, and bid adieu to low retention rates.
Welcome Raman to your team and he will support you to make better marketing decisions, faster. And, all of this is aimed at helping you deliver the most personalized and memorable customer experiences consistently.
See how teaming up with Raman, helped a leading e-commerce brand – Myntra to increase their CTRs,
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This was just a sneak-peek at the comprehensive and diverse capabilities of Raman. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we introduce you to multiple cutting-edge features within our breakthrough AI-led product!
