February 1, 2023 5 min read

Top 5 AI tools for marketers to boost ROI in 2023

Many consider 2023 to be the world’s first post-pandemic year. And, while it’s reassuring to see life return to somewhat normal, digital marketers are facing competition that they haven’t had to contend with in a while – in-person, brick-and-mortar shipping. Add to that the economic downturns occurring in large swathes of the world, and things are looking a little… complicated.

As marketers face pressure from the C-suite to cut budgets and improve return on investment (ROI) in this climate, many are turning to artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, marketing giants like Asana, Digital Marketing Institute, Hubspot, and Forbes all named the use and efficacy of AI tools among their 2023 marketing trend predictions. These AI tools can save marketers – and therefore the businesses they work for – time, energy, and money, serving as an invaluable part of a digital marketer’s toolkit.

What is artificial intelligence for digital marketers?

While AI can often feel like some frightening, complex technological phenomenon, we promise that robots aren’t poised to take over the world. Rather, we’re talking about algorithms, which AI marketing runs on.

At its core, AI for marketing uses artificial intelligence technologies to make automated decisions based on data. For example, you may notice that when you log in to LinkedIn, you only see posts from the connections you’ve engaged with recently or from their connections. That’s because LinkedIn uses an algorithm to select content that it thinks will appeal to you. This is AI work!

Over the last few years, AI has been the silent hero of digital marketing and most digital marketing platforms. There are features that analyze social messaging, assess campaign effectiveness, automate email marketing, enable programmatic buying — and the list goes on ad infinitum. Nearly all marketing platforms use AI in some way to help marketers find the right people to engage with and, in turn, achieve the best results in a time- and cost-effective way. 

How to choose the best AI marketing tools

It seems that anyone and everyone is talking about ChatGPT right now. Even as the world tries to sort out the ethics and accuracy of this new tool, it will no doubt impact how marketers research and even craft copy, but it’s merely one of hundreds of AI tools available to marketers. With so many to choose from, deciding which AI tools to use can feel daunting. 

The simplest way to decide is to begin with the goals of your project or campaign. What are you hoping to accomplish, and what tactics and channels will you need to use? From there, research the best tools for each marketing tactic or channel, making sure that the tool addresses your goals. If you’re running paid social campaigns for example, consider a tool like Alison that can cut down on cost per click and boost return on ad spend.

After narrowing it down to a short list, look at reviews and case studies to ensure tools are simple enough to use and effective. Remember that trial and error is a part of marketing, so experiment with a few tools until you find the mix that works best for your team. 

Here is our short list.

1. For email marketing, use Seventh Sense

Email inboxes are crowded! That’s why you need the right subject line, preview copy, and even delivery time to stand out from the crowd. Without data, however, knowing what time and day to send an email is a shot in the dark. 

That’s why Seventh Sense uses behavioral profiling to help users get a coveted click in an overcrowded inbox. By identifying the best day and time to send email to each individual recipient, as well as the optimal email frequency for each recipient, Seventh Sense cuts through the inbox clutter to improve email open rates. 

Seventh Sense currently works best when integrated with Hubspot and Marketo databases, where it looks through user data and builds a predictive model based on user activity from these two services. If you’re already using these databases, it’s certainly worth your while.

2. For search engine optimization (SEO), use SEMRush

SEMRush offers a variety of SEO and content marketing features, but one of its most powerful is its ability to track and showcase search engine result page rank (SERP) for various keywords against competitors’ websites. This allows you to track how your site’s keywords rank against the top 100 in Google’s organic or paid search results and adjust accordingly to maximize SEO. And, unlike Google Analytics, SEMRush has a comprehensive historical trend database so you can compare domain and keyword analytics on a month-to-month basis. 

There is also a content marketing toolkit, where a search allows you to identify potential blog and content topics to optimize for ranking. Best of all, it’s easy to use for anyone with even a passing knowledge of SEO and paid search.

3. For creative analytics, use Alison

Alison takes the guesswork out of producing results-driven creative assets by providing intelligent creative insights. It integrates with popular media and measurement platforms like Google, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and IronSource in addition to supporting mobile measurement partners through AppsFlyer and Adjust. Once integrated, Alison looks at all available account data to identify creative insights and make recommendations around ad creative, like characters, colors, sounds, text, and more. That means you’ll understand which creative elements resonate with your audience and which need to go.

You can even compare your creative assets to those of competitors and see elements that you’ve never used before but have worked well for them, speeding up the ideation process. Then get all those creative insights and recommendations wrapped up in a detailed, data-driven brief that empowers designers and digital marketers to produce better creative assets faster.

Plus, Alison’s creative data breaks recommendations down by everything from platform and channel to OS and location to help you tailor your creative for each audience. The result is creative copy and design that just performs better – enhancing engagement, maximizing conversion rate, and increasing ROI.

4. For automation, use Zapier

Think of Zapier like a set of Legos: It connects one tool to another and can act as a foundational building block for your marketing tech stack. Have a new email marketing subscriber in Hubspot, for instance? Zapier uses customized workflows to automatically add that subscriber to your newsletter list in Mailchimp.

Zapier calls its automations “zaps,” and it currently offers over 3,000 of them, allowing you to set up complex workflows using logic criteria that you create. And, since it requires no knowledge of coding, Zapier is accessible to all.

5. For customer journeys, use FullStory

Tracking every click, cursor movement, and page visit, FullStory records each user’s journey across your site to create… well,  a full story. You’ll receive data that follows each user journey from the very first visit to your site straight on through to conversion (or eventual drop off).  

You can then drill down into each user’s story and compare it with the behavior of other site visitors, allowing you to identify errors, opportunities, and insights to help you work toward your overall goals. Businesses uses FullyStory to improve UX, boost engagement and conversions, and ultimately retain more customers.

AI that powers creative intelligence

In today’s challenging landscape, digital marketers can’t go it alone, and these five AI tools are sure to help you save time, energy, and money as you work toward making 2023 a successful year for your business.

Of course, we’re partial to creative analysis technology like Alison, which enhances ad engagement, boosts conversion rates, and maximizes ROI. Our creative analytics puts an end to A/B testing and, instead, help you harness live data to build out high-performing creative assets. 

 

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