You’ve more than likely heard about Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially
in terms of marketing. The question now becomes, how can we use Artificial intelligence in eCommerce? And how can we use it to improve brand loyalty?
With this in mind, we thought we would list all the ways that you can promote brand loyalty, for small eCommerce stores, using AI.
AI is quickly becoming an integral part of our daily lives, Take self-checkout machines, and automatic security checks in airports, as prime examples of this. Its main goal is to make our lives easier and tasks more automatic.
AI is expected to only grow in upcoming years – a recent study by Business Insider showed that 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human by 2020. As an eCommerce store, this is inarguably something that you should be considering. Many eCommerce companies are already using AI to help with brand loyalty. Here’s how.
Retargeting
Sometimes, leads go unfollowed – which allows potential customers to disappear. Obviously, this isn’t desirable for a small eCommerce business. Also, many businesses, regardless of how small, are packed with customer data – that they just can’t do anything with. This is a perfect opportunity for AI.
For instance, you could notice that a particular customer is continually checking out a specific product on your site – you can then target emails and adverts towards that particular product. In terms of loyalty, this helps customers to feel noticed – their preferences and interests are noted, and you reduce irrelevant product advertisements.
The Sales Process
The sales process was once extremely lengthy. Thankfully, this has all changed.
AI enables people to buy products in new and more natural ways. In particular, voice input systems allow customers to buy a product by asking a smart speaker like Siri or Alexa.
Reducing and simplifying the sales process will encourage customers to return to your company.
Personalization
For brand loyalty, customization comes hand in hand. You’ll already know that personalization isn’t new to eCommerce, but for small companies, it could be revolutionary.
With AI technology developing day by day, new and deeper levels of personalization have swept the eCommerce world. For instance, if a customer is browsing your green tea collection on your site (as an example), you could create a push notification which advertises a sale for all green teas. Not only will this create a positive experience for your customer (which helps with brand loyalty), but it provides them with something beneficial.
Customer-centric Search
Customer-centric revolves around making the customer the focus of the process, from the point of sale and after the purchase. For brand loyalty, it’s absolutely imperative – so how does AI come into this?
AI has enabled search results to be narrow and contextualized – ultimately only providing the customer with relevant products. With this, your customers will find it easier to find a product that they want. A more relaxed, positive experience will encourage them to form some kind of loyalty to a brand.
As a benefit, it also gives your company a competitive edge. The best news? This kind of technology is available to any type of business, regardless of size or budget.
Recommendations
On the same topic, you can use AI to enable brands to recommend products in a more intelligent and efficient way. Providing consumers with helpful recommendations will help with forming a certain degree of loyalty.
The process of recommendations is highly used by e-commerce retailers.
It helps customers to find the best product or item, depending on their past activities, purchases, and interests. AI is already widely used in this department, and it’s only expected to grow in the future.
Chatbots
Of course, we have to mention chatbots. They’re arguably the most important marketing technique in recent years. Chatbots provide customers with an unrivaled degree of help, at any time, at any place.
Chatbots are predominately used to help with customer service. When customer service is exceptional, you’ll more than likely create a loyal customer.
Chatbots provide valuable solutions and help e-commerce retailers out exceptionally. While contact forms, emails, and phone numbers are available online chat is fast becoming one of the most convenient and helpful ways for visitors to gain answers.
Target Prospective Customers
AI gives e-commerce businesses a way to overcome specific problems including lead generation. Many AI marketing companies provide AI solutions for sales, CRM systems, and marketing. Ultimately, this helps e-commerce stores find new prospective customers in a meaningful and helpful way. You can be more convinced that leads are interested in your store, and will become a loyal customer. Part of brand loyalty efforts includes targeting customers, that are more likely to be loyal customers in the future. If you reach out to the wrong people, they’re less likely to be faithful to your brand.
Personal Shoppers
Have you ever had the privilege of a personal shopper? It’s a great experience, that makes the entire buying journey so much easier and fun.
Now, AI allows e-commerce stores to do this, to help assist their customers online. This provides a company with the chance to explain various products, and recommend similar items that may be more beneficial to a customer.
AI is looking into ways to improve this process, as it still remains quite time-consuming. However, with more technology, there’s no doubt that this will happen in the near future. In fact, Amazon’s Alexa provides a really great modern shopping experience for their customers.
Virtual Assistants
On a similar note, AI now offers e-commerce stores with virtual assistants. We all need help online, it’s inevitable. Especially if we’re buying a product or investing in something.
Again, Amazon’s Alexa is an excellent example of this. You can now ask your personal robot to order various products, sort through paperwork, and other tiresome tasks. You can also tell your virtual assistant to set reminders and create shopping lists.
With both virtual assistants and personal shoppers, they improve customer service. As we mentioned, positive customer experience drastically enhances brand loyalty. You’re more likely to return to a shop which was easy, fun and helpful than one that wasn’t, aren’t you?
Privacy
AI often places a significant focus on personalization. However, in the new age of technology, many shoppers are worried about privacy online – and with understandable reasons too. Brands need to make sure they’re transparent, secure, and sincere.
AI helps you to be personal, and still ensure that security is of paramount importance. For obvious reasons, this helps to improve brand loyalty. A customer will trust you, your site, and will feel secure buying from you. You don’t have to compromise on personalization when it comes to AI.
Dialogue
AI is improving the bridge between robots and communication. For years, as humans, we have shied away from talking to robots – we would much rather have a natural conversation with a human.
With AI, you can have a meaningful, natural, and intelligent conversation with a robot. With a deep level of understanding, customer data, and machine learning algorithms, “deep learning” is no available. This allows computers to now only talk to a customer in a human-like way, but also gain new information as they go along. This ultimately provides you to a new way to engage with customers, helping them to gain a connection/relationship with you.
Fake Reviews
Fake reviews are terrible news for a small e-commerce brand. They can appear for various different reasons, and in both negative and positive ways.
Reviews can negatively impact your brand image, especially if they’re obviously fake or overtly cynical. They’re a form of word of mouth marketing, which is still one of the most effective types of marketing for a
company. AI can be used to combat fake reviews, and also boost verified/real reviews.
This helps your customers to only see relevant reviews, which might just sway their decision. Brand loyalty can also be formed from reviews; it’s like being recommended a particular product or item by a friend.
Localization
Technology has made the world incredibly smaller, which has made promoting your shop internationally an obvious move. To ensure that your customers in other countries gain loyalty to your brand, localization is imperative. This not only translates your website, but it makes it culturally and socially relevant – helping to ensure your customer feels noticed and
respected.
Localization AI has proved exceptionally popular in the travel industry. How you use it depends on your target audience and location.
Conclusion
Many have a negative impression of the term “artificial.” However, as shown above, it has allowed businesses to provide a more personal shopping experience and improve customer service. This new technology is empowering small eCommerce stores, giving them opportunities to communicate with their customers, in ways that weren’t possible before.
For brand loyalty to become possible, you have to ensure that your customer feels seen, respected, and essential. AI helps you to reassure them that they are. It doesn’t matter how big or small your eCommerce store is, AI is breaking into every aspect. It’s not expected to slow down any time soon, it’s time to embrace it.
