Three native AI tools give law firms the ability to qualify leads, engage prospects, and manage operations automatically

Lawmatics, the leading CRM and client acquisition platform for law firms, announced the most significant expansion of its platform to date, adding three native AI tools that redefine how firms acquire clients, manage intake, and run day-to-day operations. Built natively inside the Lawmatics platform, QualifyAI, EngageAI, and MerlinAI give law firms the ability to instantly qualify new leads, engage prospects across every channel, and manage their operations through natural language prompts. Together, these agentic and generative AI tools help firms convert more leads into clients and operate at their full potential.

Law firms — particularly small and midsize practices — face a persistent gap between the volume of leads they receive and their capacity to respond to all of them effectively. Intake coordinators and attorneys managing high caseloads often cannot follow up with every prospect quickly enough, and leads that go cold represent real lost revenue. At the same time, the administrative burden of intake, reporting, and workflow management consumes hours that could otherwise be spent serving clients. With its AI suite, Lawmatics gives firms the capacity to respond to every opportunity, without adding to anyone’s workload.

“Law firms don’t lose potential new clients because of bad lawyering. They lose leads because of manual processes,” said Matt Spiegel, founder and CEO of Lawmatics. “QualifyAI, EngageAI, and MerlinAI give every firm on our platform the ability to operate at their full potential — converting more leads, serving more clients, and building the kind of practice they set out to build.”

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QualifyAI is an agentic AI that evaluates incoming leads against a firm’s specific criteria — including practice area, case type, and client profile — and automatically prioritizes the highest-value opportunities. Already recognized with an Excellence in AI Award from Business Intelligence Group, an independent organization that honors innovation across technology sectors, QualifyAI is the first of the three tools to reach general availability and is live for Lawmatics customers today.

“Since rolling out QualifyAI, our firm has seen better quality leads coming through, higher conversion and close rates, and we’ve lost less time on poor-fit inquiries,” said Glenn Gilmour, director of operations at Johannesmeyer & Sawyer, PLLC and a Lawmatics customer.

EngageAI deploys AI-powered outreach agents across email, phone, text, and chat, ensuring every prospect receives a timely response and continues moving through the intake process regardless of staff availability. MerlinAI, an in-platform copilot, allows users to build automations, generate reports, and surface insights using simple conversational prompts. EngageAI and MerlinAI are in production and will be released to customers in the coming months.

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Customer acquisition specialist, esbconnect, has launched Optivo, its new audience retargeting tool, Optivo. In a UK first, Optivo enables brands to retarget anonymous website visitors not on their CRM system with an email. Retargeting website visitors via email has long been proven to be effective. Cart abandonment emails uplift conversions by 26% on average, but it is estimated that 90% of a brand’s website traffic are “ghosts”, who visit sites without identifying themselves or starting a purchase. esbconnect now enables brands to identify those anonymous visitors, link them to an email address, suppress any of their current customers, and retarget them by email, encouraging them to purchase or subscribe.

Using esbconnect’s GDPR-compliant database of 17 million opted-in UK email addresses, Optivo can match up to 20% of unknown visitors to real email records that are not in a brand’s CRM. Within minutes of a visit, matched users are enrolled into a compliant email journey, offering them a chance to subscribe and later to purchase. For those that choose to subscribe,  they are immediately added into the brand’s CRM to nurture towards a conversion.

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esbconnect has already seen that between 40-70% of people who enter into this process convert to a subscriber, and the ROI is typically 2.6 times higher than a straight, purchase-led campaign. esbconnect estimates that Optivo will be able to match 20% of anonymous site visitors to an email address, much more efficiently and cost-effectively than retargeting ads on Meta or Google.

This is the first GDPR-compliant service to launch in the UK. It enables brands to potentially retarget anyone who visits their site via email, not just the 10% of visitors who typically add to a cart, whether they complete the purchase or not. Email is extremely effective for retargeting, delivering the best ROI of any channel, according to the DMA. It typically delivers read rates in excess of 40% and an ROI of 4x, with some retail pilot test partners reporting 2.2x this figure.

“With customer acquisition costs growing, and retargeting becoming less effective as more stringent privacy regulations take hold, we are seeing a lot of interest in Optivo from UK brands,” said esbconnect CEO, Suzanna Chaplin. “In the US, tools like Retention.com have proven this model can work, but until now, there was no GDPR-compliant solution in the UK. Optivo changes that.”

esbconnect is currently running a pilot programme with a number of selected brands in the Fashion, Home & Garden and Travel sectors, with a full roll-out scheduled for later this month. The platform integrates quickly and easily with existing marketing tech stacks and CRM platforms like Klaviyo, Ometria, Adobe and Salesforce. Brands interested in early access can register at www.optivo.digital to start recovering lost website traffic before the peak H2 sales period.

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Social listening is now essential in the era of social media, user-generated content, and digital footprints. A plethora of businesses that specialize in listening, evaluating, and offering practical solutions have surfaced in the market. Social listening allows you to evaluate the brand position in the market and act quickly on opportunities as they arise.

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What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is the process of gathering and examining every digital trace associated with a brand, which includes millions of online discussions and publications every day. A wide range of sources, such as blogs, webzines, online press, and social media platforms, are used by these technologies. The days of manually reading through thousands of blogs looking for mentions of your company are long gone.

The days of manually reading through thousands of blogs looking for mentions of your company are long gone. Social listening tools gather information and analyze it so you can make good use of the insights. In practice, this implies that you can use a social listening tool to quickly ascertain whether a possible crisis regarding your most recent product is developing on Twitter or, on the other hand, whether you are becoming more well-known on a relevant industry forum.

This enables you to respond quickly and effectively, whether it’s to avert a crisis or take advantage of favorable trends. The main advantage of these solutions is that they let you listen to your customers and their feedback, enabling you to pinpoint issues, demands, and frustrations in far greater depth than you could with just knowing what a tiny percentage of social media users are saying about your company. It has a significant effect on customer interactions.

Additionally, social listening can be useful for spotting emerging consumption patterns among particular audiences—trends that conventional marketing surveys might overlook. It also gives you more detailed information about your target market, which you can utilize to reposition your products or introduce new products.

It’s a common misconception among marketers that social listening is all about stats, but that’s just half the story. The other half is the reaction to problems identified or particular circumstances. Therefore, a crucial component of social listening is effective communication. This approach goes beyond simple data collection to include data interpretation and response that builds brand equity and improves consumer happiness.

Is Social Listening and Social Monitoring the Same Thing?

The answer is “No” and social listening has a broader scope as compared to social monitoring. Social listening is more about tracking brand mentions, feedback of customers, industry trends and more. However, social monitoring has a narrower focus where the concentration is more on certain type of campaigns and keywords.

The Importance of Social Listening

Not only can social listening improve data collection and insights, it significantly enhances a range of business function in numerous industries:

• Marketing:

Are you planning to introduce a new service to the 23-to 33-year-old demographic? You can use social listening to determine important demographics about people who are interested in your business or product, like their gender, city, and occupation. This important information aids in customizing and promoting your product in the most efficient manner.

• Social Media Management

You may tailor your social media postings to your target audience by using social listening to learn more about them and their passions. This degree of comprehension is a treasure when it comes to creating relevant and captivating content that appeals to your audience.

• Social Media Marketing

Social listening is very helpful in social marketing, which selects, listens to, and helps you engage with prospects on social media. Gaining a thorough understanding of your prospects can help you tailor your approach and make highly targeted sales presentations that speak to their individual requirements and interests.

• Online Image or Digital Reputation

Social listening allows you to foresee possible negative publicity and take action before it gets out of hand. You may effectively safeguard and manage your digital reputation by taking proactive steps to uncover concerns as soon as they arise, regardless of their source, and avert small setbacks from becoming major emergencies.

• Client Relationships

Maintaining solid client connections requires being able to recognize issues, requirements, and frustrations. You can obtain significantly more detailed information through social listening than through customer service calls or online reviews. You will be made aware, for instance, if a customer simply complained about your most recent offering on a forum or voiced displeasure with a rival’s product or service. Your ability to react quickly and efficiently thanks to this real-time insight will increase client happiness and loyalty.

Social listening revolutionizes the way businesses function by furnishing profound understandings of their target audience, augmenting marketing approaches, maximizing social media oversight, refining future sales techniques, preserving online repute, and fortifying customer bonds. Businesses may remain ahead of the curve and keep a competitive edge in their sector by utilizing the power of social listening.

Key Components Of  Social Listening

Social listening is crucial to companies who are trying to better understand their customers, maintain a positive reputation, and enhance their range of products and services.

Businesses can obtain important information from monitoring online chats, which they can use to guide their marketing plans, customer support initiatives, and general business decisions.

Key components of social listening:

• Data Collection

Scope: The first step in social listening is gathering information from a variety of online sources, including blogs, forums, news websites, social media networks (such Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter), and review websites.

References: Selecting which sources to keep an eye on is essential. Major social networks, forums devoted to a particular industry, rival websites, and any other venues where pertinent discussions might take place fall under this category.

Monitoring in Real Time: Businesses are certain to be abreast of the newest discussions and trends as they emerge thanks to constant, real-time data collection.

• Analyzing Data:

Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment analysis is the process of evaluating the feelings that participants in online discussions express. Sentiment analysis tools aid firms in gauging public opinion by classifying mentions as neutral, negative, or positive.

Trend Identification: Businesses can spot new trends and interesting subjects in their market by examining the volume and context of mentions.

Keyword Tracking: Businesses can watch online sessions about specific issues by keeping an eye on keywords, hashtags, and phrases related to their brand or sector. This technique is known as keyword tracking.

• Audience Views

Demographic Information: Knowing the age, gender, location, and interests of the people with whom you are having a conversation.

Audience Interaction: Analyzing audience interactions with content, such as likes, shares, comments, and other engagement measures, is known as behavioral data analysis.

 Influencer Identification: Finding important opinion leaders and influencers who steer industry discussions is known as “influencer identification.”

• Actionable Insights

 Analyzing competitors: keeping an eye on rivals to learn about their tactics, advantages, and disadvantages.

Crisis management: By identifying possible problems or crises early on, companies can take appropriate action and lessen their negative effects.

Customer feedback: Gathering and evaluating consumer input to enhance goods, services, and overall customer satisfaction.

Boosting Content Strategy with Social Listening Data

Developing a content strategy that genuinely connects with your audience in the digital age needs more than just imagination and instinct. It requires a thorough grasp of the requirements, preferences, and behaviors of your audience in real-time.

These insights can be obtained through social listening, which is a potent tool that gives brands the ability to recognize content trends, produce timely and relevant content, and continuously assess and improve their content strategies. This is how using social listening data into your content strategy can make a big difference.

Finding Popular Topics and Hashtags

Brands can keep an eye on discussions taking place on a variety of social media platforms, blogs, forums, and news websites by utilizing social listening solutions. Your target audience’s interest in trending subjects can be found by monitoring keywords, hashtags, and mentions. You can keep on top of trends and produce interesting and relevant content with the aid of this real-time data.

For instance, you may instantly produce content around a hashtag or term that is trending in your industry to join the conversation with more impact. Social listening technologies can also help you strategically plan your content calendar by demonstrating how these tendencies change over time.

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Case Studies  

• Oreo’s 2013 Super Bowl tweet:

A blackout occurred in the stadium due to a power outage. With a timely tweet, Oreo quickly jumped on this trend, saying, “You can still dunk in the dark.” This tweet greatly increased Oreo’s social media engagement and was widely praised for being created and posted in real-time.

• Netflix and #StrangerThings:

Netflix tracks talk about their shows on social media by using social listening. On “Stranger Things,” they observed viewers talking about how nostalgic the show is for the 1980s. Following that, Netflix produced material centered around this concept, such as social media postings, games, and behind-the-scenes glimpses, all of which struck a deep chord with viewers and encouraged more interaction.

• Developing Timely and Relevant Content with the Help of Social Listening Insights to Generate Resonant Content

Social listening offers insightful information about the issues, concerns, and opinions of your target audience regarding both your business and rivals. Through the analysis of this data, you can produce content that speaks directly to your audience’s interests and problems, increasing its relevance and value.

For example, you can make blog entries, social media material, and videos that showcase your company’s sustainable processes and eco-friendly products if social listening indicates that your audience is talking about sustainability and eco-friendly items.

• Matching Content Strategy to Pain Points and Interests of the Audience

You can better grasp the particular problems and subjects that are most important to your audience by using social listening. This makes it possible for you to match their interests and problems with your content strategy. For example, you can make how-to manuals, video tutorials, and FAQs to answer issues that customers commonly bring up regarding a specific aspect of your product.

Establishing your brand as a valuable resource and fostering trust with your audience are achieved through regular content creation that fulfills their demands. This encourages enduring loyalty in addition to increasing engagement.

•  Analysis of Content Performance Using Social Listening Information

With social listening technologies, you can track the performance of your content in real time once it is published. Metrics like shares, likes, comments, and mentions are useful for determining how well your content connects with readers. This information reveals which content kinds work best and which might use some tweaking.

If a certain blog article, for instance, gets a lot of interaction, you can examine what worked about it—the subject, the structure, the distribution method, etc.—and use that information to create similar material in the future. On the other hand, social listening data can assist you in determining why a piece of content is performing poorly and how to modify your approach.

• Modifying Content Strategy considering Engagement Metrics and Feedback

Through social listening, you may get both direct and indirect audience feedback. You can make well-informed changes to your content strategy by monitoring the conversations surrounding your content and examining engagement numbers. Your content will always be current and adaptable to your audience’s changing demands and tastes thanks to this iterative approach.

For example, you may decide to concentrate more on making videos if social listening indicates that your audience prefers watching videos than reading textual content. In a similar vein, you can modify the format of your material if feedback shows that readers would rather read in-depth instructions than brief articles.

One of the best tools for improving your content strategy is social listening. It is possible to make sure that your content connects with your audience and encourages engagement by recognizing content trends, producing timely and relevant material, and regularly assessing and improving your strategy based on real-time data. Effective use of social listening by brands allows them to stay one step ahead of the competition, forge closer bonds with their target market, and accomplish marketing objectives more quickly.

Enhancing Customer Engagement through Social Listening

Beyond merely listening in on conversations, social listening is a very useful tool. It facilitates proactive customer service, offers in-depth insights into client sentiment, and allows for individualized interactions. All these components work together to improve client engagement, which builds stronger bonds and increased loyalty. Here’s how your consumer interaction efforts can be greatly enhanced by social listening.

 Understanding the emotional reactions of the Audience

An essential part of social listening is sentiment analysis, which enables companies to learn how consumers feel about their brand. Businesses can determine if the attitude is positive, negative, or neutral by examining the tone and context of online conversations. With this knowledge, businesses can pinpoint their strong points and areas for development.

Sentiment Analysis Examples That Influence Engagement Strategies

Product Launches:

A business may choose to increase marketing efforts, disseminate client testimonials, and promote more user-generated content if sentiment analysis indicates favorable feedback regarding a new product launch. On the other hand, if feedback is unfavorable, the business can quickly address issues by providing justifications, apologies, or ways to lessen annoyance.

Brand Campaigns:

Businesses can make real-time adjustments to their tactics by keeping an eye on sentiment during marketing campaigns. For example, when a marketing team receives unfavorable feedback on a social media campaign, they might adjust the messaging or strategy to better suit the expectations and preferences of the audience.

Customizing Customer Communications and Interactions with Social Listening Data

Enhancing consumer engagement through personalization is crucial, and social listening data offers the necessary knowledge to customize interactions. Through a comprehensive grasp of distinct consumer inclinations, actions, and challenges, companies may devise tailored communications and proposals that effectively connect with their target market.

The Significance of Social Listening in Recognizing Influencers and Brand Advocates

Finding brand champions and influencers who actively interact with your business and have a big impact on their followers is made easier with the aid of social listening. Businesses that identify these people can build relationships with them and use their influence to spread brand messaging to a wider audience.

For instance, you can interact with a well-known blogger who consistently promotes your items with individualized messaging, special offers, or joint ventures if social listening reveals this. This improves the relationship while also expanding the reach and credibility of your brand.

Proactive Client Support- Real-time detection of customer issues and questions

The capacity of social listening to instantly identify problems and inquiries from customers is one of its most useful features. Businesses can determine when customers are having issues or are looking for information about their goods or services by keeping an eye on conversations taking place on a variety of platforms.

Strategies for Quickly and Efficiently Addressing Customer Needs

Real-Time Responses:

It’s critical to respond quickly to consumer complaints or inquiries as soon as social listening techniques notify you of them. Resolving problems promptly shows that your company appreciates its clients and is dedicated to offering top-notch support. By doing this, unpleasant encounters can be kept from getting worse and developing into PR disasters.

Proactive Outreach:

Social listening enables companies to spot possible problems before clients get in touch with customer support. To address a prevalent problem, a company can proactively publish thorough explanations, guidelines, or tutorials if several consumers are expressing concerns about a particular product feature.

Engaging Positively:

It goes beyond simply responding to criticism. Reacting to favorable mentions by expressing gratitude to clients or showcasing their work can improve rapport and inspire more positive communication.

Understanding audience sentiment, personalizing discussions, and offering proactive customer support are all part of improving consumer engagement through social listening. Businesses can develop more meaningful and responsive engagement strategies that strengthen their client relationships by utilizing the data gathered from social listening.

Customers feel appreciated and understood when they receive personalized interactions, and effective engagement methods are shaped by an understanding of and response to consumer emotion. Customers are guaranteed to receive the assistance they require at the appropriate moment thanks to proactive customer care, which is bolstered by real-time issue identification and quick answers. Including social listening in your customer interaction plan improves customer experience and encourages advocacy and loyalty, which will lead to long-term business growth.

Effective Crisis Management with Social Listening

In the rapidly evolving digital era, brands need to be equipped to respond to crises with promptness and efficiency. With its ability to provide early detection, real-time response, and post-event analysis, social listening is an essential tool for crisis management. Businesses can avoid damage, rebuild their brand, and handle crises more skillfully by utilizing social listening data. This is how using social listening to your advantage might improve your crisis management.

How Social Listening May Be Used to Spot Possible PR Disasters Earlier

With social listening, brands can keep an eye on discussions happening in real-time on blogs, forums, news sites, and social media platforms. Businesses are able to identify early warning indicators of impending PR disasters because to this ongoing observation. Companies might anticipate a crisis before it materializes by recognizing anomalous spikes in mentions, trends in negative sentiment, or the quick dissemination of false information.

Brands That Have Used Early Detection to Reduce Crises as Examples

 Southwest Airlines:

Using social listening techniques, the airline discovered growing consumer concerns and unfavorable sentiment on social media following a significant technical problem on a flight. Because of the early detection, Southwest was able to considerably lessen the impact of the situation by responding quickly with official announcements, real-time information, and support.

Starbucks:

The company used social listening to keep an eye on the heated online discussions and public opinion during the contentious arrest episode that occurred in one of its locations. Starbucks was able to promptly identify the problem, offer a public apology, and announce corrective measures, which included racial bias training for workers, thanks to this early discovery.

Using social listening data to manage and respond to crises in real-time: Real-Time Crisis Response Strategies

Real-time data from social listening is critical for efficiently managing and handling crises. The following are important strategies:

Instant Recognition:

It’s critical to acknowledge a possible problem as soon as it’s identified. To demonstrate that your company is aware of the issue and is treating it seriously, use social listening data to build a prompt, sympathetic, and open response.

Correct Information Dissemination:

Social listening makes sure that the information you give is correct and takes into account the issues that people are bringing up. This controls the narrative and stops false information from spreading.

Give regular updates as the circumstances change. Make use of the information gleaned from social listening to educate stakeholders of the actions your brand is taking to address the problem.

Effective Stakeholder Communication in Times of Crisis

In times of crisis, communication that works is essential. The following are some recommended procedures:

Transparency: Be forthright about the incident, the actions you are taking to make it right, and the measures you are taking to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Credibility and trust are increased by transparency.

Empathy: Be understanding and empathetic to people who are impacted by the issue. If need, honestly apologize and acknowledge their concerns.

Consistency: Make sure that all correspondence across various channels is consistent. Utilize social listening to track the reception of your messages and make any modifications.

Analyzing Social Listening Information to Determine a Crisis’s Impact

It’s crucial to fully evaluate the effects of a crisis once one has occurred. You can benefit from social listening tools:

Measure Sentiment Changes: To determine how the crisis affected public opinion, examine changes in sentiment prior to, during, and following the event.

Monitor Dialogue Level: To determine the extent and severity of the problem, keep an eye on the amount of discussions surrounding your brand.

Determine the Important Issues: To identify specific issues or complaints voiced during the crisis, use social listening. This information will help you design a recovery plan.

Adapting Strategies to Rebuild Trust and Brand Reputation After a Crisis

Key concerns: In light of the conclusions drawn from your post-crisis analysis, focus on the particular concerns that were most important at the time of the crisis. This could entail initiating new projects, revising policies, or making adjustments to operations.

Positive Engagement: Restore trust by having positive interactions with your audience. Tell tales of your brand’s improvement and the lessons it learned from the disaster.

Keeping an eye on ongoing sentiment: As you put recovery tactics into practice, keep an eye on sentiment and feedback through social listening. This continuous observation will assist you in making the required corrections and guarantee the efficacy of your endeavors.

Early identification, prompt action, and in-depth post-crisis analysis are all necessary for effective crisis management via social listening. Brands may detect possible crises early, handle them effectively, and recover more robustly by utilizing social listening techniques. An important benefit is that real-time monitoring and analysis of online interactions gives businesses the capacity to stay in charge of the story, respond quickly to issues, and earn back the audience’s trust.

By incorporating social listening into your crisis management strategy, you can minimize harm and build a resilient reputation for your business by being ready to address crises proactively and effectively. You can confidently maneuver through crises and come out stronger if you remain aware of the issues and criticisms raised by your audience.

Tools That Drive Social Listening

Even while it’s not possible for us to read minds directly, social media listening enables us to come very near. You can obtain vital information from social media chats that will help you protect your brand and develop marketing plans. You can keep an eye on and follow conversations on social media about particular companies or subjects by using social listening tools. By analyzing this data, you can find insightful information that can guide your marketing selections.

Nevertheless, the type of tools you employ has a major impact on how useful your insights are. Here are some great social listening tools for brands to take into consideration so you can make the best decision.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s social listening tools offer a comprehensive view of conversations relevant to your brand. They enable you to track brand-related discussions across all major social networks and other online sources. By automatically sifting through millions of data points, Sprout Social uncovers insights crucial to your brand’s success.

These tools allow you to learn about audience preferences and gauge their feelings toward specific products, campaigns, or topics. This information helps you stay on top of industry trends and identify untapped business opportunities. Additionally, Sprout Social helps you discover key influencers and thought leaders driving conversations, enabling you to engage with the right people.

Brand-specific conversations provide deeper visibility into customer experiences and overall brand sentiment. Custom alerts can be set up to anticipate potential brand crises, giving you ample time to address issues before they escalate. With integrated social media management tools, you can manage and resolve these issues seamlessly in one place.

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, allowing you to test its publishing and analytics capabilities. The social listening tools are included in a custom-built plan tailored for enterprise users, ensuring you get the most out of your social media strategy.

Brandwatch

Leading social listening and analytics tool Brandwatch was created to give companies comprehensive understanding of online discussions and industry trends. Brandwatch is excellent at gathering information from numerous internet sources. This all-inclusive strategy guarantees that you record any pertinent discussions regarding your company, sector, or rivals. These data are sorted through by the platform’s sophisticated algorithms, which find important patterns and trends that are crucial for strategic planning.

Brandwatch’s powerful sentiment analysis tool is one of its most notable features. The program classifies online mentions as positive, negative, or neutral based on an accurate assessment of their emotion. You may better grasp how the public feels about your brand, merchandise, and advertising campaigns with the use of this analysis.

With Brandwatch’s robust analytics capabilities, you may spot new trends and business prospects in your sector. You can remain ahead of the curve and produce content that is topical and relevant by keeping an eye on trending topics and hashtags.

Managing crises well is essential to preserving a brand’s reputation. By tracking increases in unfavorable sentiment and anomalous activity surrounding your brand, Brandwatch assists you in anticipating potential PR issues before they arise. Real-time notifications that are customizable provide you the opportunity to take immediate action to minimize damage. Investing in brandwatch gives your company the resources it needs to be competitive in the ever-changing digital market.

Brand24

A useful tool for gauging brand awareness and reach is Brand24. It gathers insightful data on consumers by monitoring 25 million internet discussions. This aids in your comprehension of the positive and negative aspects of your brand. Brand sentiment may be measured, and reputational issues can be promptly identified.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an all-inclusive social listening tool that is highly good at finding and researching content. The platform is made to assist you in keeping tabs on hot subjects and viral material, giving you ideas and insights for your content strategy.

BuzzSumo lets you keep an eye on popular subjects and viral material on multiple social media platforms. Finding out what appeals to your audience and what is trending in your field is made easier with the help of this function. You may produce pertinent content that successfully engages your audience by being aware of the current trends.

BuzzSumo’s extensive monitoring options enable you to keep tabs on mentions and trends pertaining to particular companies, subjects, and keywords. By setting up alerts, you can make sure you keep up with the most recent discussions and are able to react quickly to any new trends or problems. You get alerts through BuzzSumo’s alert system when there are noteworthy changes to your tracked metrics. These alerts assist you in maintaining a proactive social media approach, regardless of the rise in brand mentions or the popularity of a certain phrase.

BuzzSumo’s base subscription begins at $119 per month. One user’s access, eighty searches, and one alert setup are all included in this package. For small firms or independent marketers seeking to improve their content strategy with insightful data from social media trends, it’s a great choice.

Keyhole

Strong social listening tools from Keyhole are available to help you get to know your audience better. Keyhole’s enterprise-grade features give you important insights into your audience’s demographics and areas of interest. Keyhole offers comprehensive insights into the characteristics, habits, and preferences of your audience. Having this knowledge is essential for creating interesting, relevant material that appeals to your audience.

With the platform’s ability to follow particular hashtags and keywords, you can stay on top of pertinent discussions and developing trends. This feature is very helpful for tracking campaigns and seeing how various themes perform over time. Plans for Keyhole, which give access to its extensive social listening features, start at $99 per month. Businesses that want strong social media monitoring and analytics skills might use this entry-level subscription.

By using these tools in your social media strategy, you can improve your audience engagement, trend tracking, and proactive problem-solving.

Examples Of Brands Using Social Listening Effectively

Let’s examine the social listening tactics employed by the aforementioned businesses, providing insight into their methodologies and resources.

Nike:

Nike’s approach to social listening focuses on seeing patterns in the running, footwear, and fitness industries. Nike uses tools like Google Trends, Twitter Analytics, and Facebook Insights to track talks on popular social media networks. This information helps them build products that are in line with customer desires.

JetBlue Airways:

The massive airline uses social listening to improve real-time customer support. JetBlue responds to customer questions quickly via Twitter Direct Messages and other channels, helping with questions about flights and other matters. By constantly interacting with customers on social media, their committed customer care team cultivates a favorable brand image.

Zappos:

In order to interact with customers and obtain information for product development, Zappos uses social listening. Zappos answers questions from customers and offers free shipping on orders over $50. They also offer product recommendations. Since 2003, Tony Hsieh, the founder, has actively responded to customer inquiries and feedback, having seen the potential of social listening early on.

Taco Bell:

Well-known for its social media presence, Taco Bell places a high priority on customer service by actively monitoring social media in real time. Taco Bell interacts with consumers on a variety of channels, quickly responding to criticism and concerns to increase brand loyalty. Taco Bell guarantees a great brand experience on social media by constantly addressing customer feedback.

These businesses are good examples of how social listening can improve consumer engagement and provide valuable insights for business choices. They build strong relationships with their audience by actively engaging with them and monitoring them in real-time, which promotes favorable brand sentiment and brand loyalty. These businesses are excellent examples of how to fully utilize the valuable tactic of social listening as it develops.

The New York Times:

The New York Times, a well-known news source, uses social listening to keep up with breaking news. Their team of data scientists and journalists searches social media for terms and phrases associated with current affairs, allowing them to spot new trends and advancements in real time. The New York Times enhances the journalistic integrity and relevancy of news articles by utilizing social listening techniques to ensure timely and complete coverage.

Amazon.com Inc.

To improve its customer service and product offers, Amazon.com Inc. leverages the power of social listening. Product development and marketing strategies are informed by Amazon’s analysis of customer preferences, habits, and sentiments through data obtained from social media sites. Amazon determines customer demand by keeping an eye on conversations about popular products and pricing patterns. Then, it modifies its inventory in response. By taking a proactive stance, Amazon is able to efficiently address consumer demands and guarantee a flawless purchasing experience for its customers.

Final Thoughts

The significance of social listening in today’s digital environment, where social media platforms act as centers for information sharing and communication, cannot be emphasized. Businesses may improve their approaches to content development, customer engagement, and crisis management by utilizing the priceless information it provides about the behavior, preferences, and attitudes of consumers.

Using social listening data to inform content strategy is one of the main advantages. Businesses can spot content gaps, new themes, and hot topics by keeping an eye on conversations, trends, and subjects related to their brand or sector. With the help of this knowledge, they can produce content that appeals to their target audience and is more timely and relevant, which will increase engagement and interaction.

To increase consumer involvement, social listening is essential. Through proactive social media discussion monitoring, brands can discern prospects for meaningful engagement with their audience. Through social listening, organizations may build stronger relationships with their customers by answering questions from customers, handling complaints and comments, and taking part in pertinent conversations. In addition to enhancing brand loyalty, this proactive strategy aids in establishing credibility and trust with customers.

Furthermore, social listening is a crucial instrument for crisis management that works. News and information circulate quickly on social media in today’s hyperconnected world, so it is critical for brands to keep an eye on potential issues and act quickly to address them. Through proactive social media channel monitoring, brands are able to identify early indicators of a crisis and promptly address them to minimize their effects.

Brands can efficiently handle crises and safeguard their reputation by utilizing social listening to address unfavorable sentiment, correct disinformation, and provide timely updates. it is imperative that organizations incorporate social listening as a fundamental element into their digital marketing efforts.

Through the use of social listening technologies and methodologies, companies may obtain significant insights, enhance client engagement, and adeptly navigate the always changing digital terrain.

Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Chris, tell us about your marketing journey and what you’re looking forward to as Twilio’s new CMO? 

I took a nontraditional path that led me to marketing. I’ve held leadership roles in customer success, product management, and marketing analytics. Working in different roles enables me to view the business through a general manager lens rather than a solely marketing perspective – in other words, I am always thinking about how we can grow the business overall.

I’m excited to join Twilio for a couple of big reasons. First, I’m a longtime Segment customer and I’ve always admired Twilio as an innovator in the industry. Second, as customer-focused leader, the opportunity to join a company like Twilio and build the next generation Customer Engagement Platform is incredibly exciting. I’ve spent almost 20 years in various roles in customer engagement and marketing technology, so I understand and love the category. Twilio happens to have world class CDP and the CPaaS platforms and is positioned well to really capture the opportunity AI presents right now.

What about today’s state of B2B marketing is broken in your view? 

In many companies, including B2B, there are silos across tech stacks. There are different programs for CX, marketing, sales and these programs aren’t connected and it’s difficult for these teams to communicate. When building an experience for our customers, we need to think holistically – if you have great marketing but your CX is disjointed, that ruins the experience for customers. The experience needs to be seamless from end to end. As an added benefit, when these silos are broken down, brands also get a full view of the customer and can leverage that data to continually improve the customer experience.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview With Seth Nesbitt, CMO @ Zuper

Tell us more about your marketing strategies that you’ve relied on over the years to boost impact and the martech that has helped power it all?

Over the years, my marketing strategies have been anchored on three core principles:

1. Customer-Centric Focus: We prioritize relevance and empathy in our messaging and experiences to ensure that every interaction resonates with our audience. By putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes, we create more meaningful connections and foster loyalty.
2. Data-Driven Decision Making: A data-driven approach enables us to create targeted campaigns, personalize experiences, and optimize performance continuously. Additionally, we cultivate a “test and learn” culture, where we experiment with different strategies and iterate based on insights gained from data analysis.
3. Agility and Nimbleness: We understand the importance of adapting quickly to changing market conditions, consumer trends, and technological advancements. Whether it’s responding to shifts in consumer behavior or capitalizing on emerging opportunities, we remain nimble to ensure our marketing efforts remain effective and impactful.

How do you use AI in your current marketing plans and martech stack? 

At Twilio, we leverage the data from Segment’s CDP to power our AI solutions. Predictive AI enables our team to predict behaviors based on past actions. Generative AI creates unique and personalized campaigns at scale, builds out audiences, and creates more precise segmentation for campaigns. These solutions can be built and implemented quickly across our teams – to improve our ROI across campaigns.

Can you share your thoughts on the future of AI, marketing and martech: what will the market look like down the line?

There’s a massive opportunity for AI to combine data from across customer touchpoints to drive truly personalized, 1:1 marketing. This is something the industry has been talking about for years, but few have actually delivered on. With AI, every company can have the tools needed to provide personalization across the customer journey for each individual customer,  something we’ve come to expect from big companies that have the resources.

Five daily essentials you feel every B2B CMO should action or follow before we wrap up…

• Always be learning. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, be open to embracing new perspectives, learning, and growing. Leaders too often push to validate their own point of view, rather than seeking to find the truth, which can be counterintuitive. Be curious and try to learn something new everyday.
• Being humble. I’ve been continually delighted that great ideas often come from those you might least expect! We don’t have all the answers so ask lots of questions and assume a beginner’s mindset.
• Get technical, if not already. The science of marketing is changing constantly and marketers need to understand how all the technology works together in order to better lead. This is only going to accelerate with AI. Get smarter every day. Ask your marketing partners to help educate you during executive business reviews.
• Focus on the customer. You really need to deeply understand your customers to successfully serve them. Spend time with them and ask them what they want and need from your brand. Ask them about the problems they are trying to solve and why. At the end of the day, we are in business to help our customers succeed.
• Think like a General Manager or CEO. Too often, Marketers get enamored by our technology and buzzwords. Focus on the customers and growing the business. Translate marketing activities and results into language your peers outside marketing will understand. This will drive credibility and respect from the C-Suite.

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This technology surpasses traditional data analysis by utilizing AI to uncover intricate patterns and trends, thereby informing more targeted and effective marketing strategies. This means marketers can adjust their strategies faster, saving time and money. Plus, AI doesn’t just examine what happened in the past – it can predict what might happen in the future too.

Here’s a look at how AI-powered consumer insights are benefiting marketers, the startups driving innovation in this space, the challenges that must be overcome, and what the future might hold.

AI vs. Traditional Data Analysis

Traditionally, marketers relied on sampling methods and manual efforts to analyze consumer data, often leading to time-consuming processes and limited insights. However, AI-powered consumer insights represent a huge leap forward. Unlike traditional methods, AI enables the analysis of vast datasets in real-time. By leveraging real-time feedback, marketers can make instant adjustments to campaigns, improving engagement rates and reducing costs.

AI-driven insights also surpass the confines of historical data analysis. Instead of merely examining past trends, AI empowers marketers to predict future behaviors and preferences. For example, by synthesizing past sales data with variables such as disposable income trends and seasonal patterns, AI can forecast future consumer trends with remarkable accuracy. AI also has the capability to analyze unstructured data sources like social media posts and customer reviews, providing marketers with invaluable insights that traditional methods might overlook.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Brad Gillespie, GM @ Cvent Consulting

Benefits of AI-Powered Consumer Insights for Marketers

AI could power 95% of all customer interactions by 2025. And this has already begun to drive changes in consumer demands and expectations. To continue to meet customers where they are, organizations are adopting use cases that differentiate them from their competitors.

AI-powered consumer insights offer marketers a multitude of specific benefits, enhancing the optimization of marketing campaigns in various ways:

• Hyper-personalization: AI enables marketers to create targeted campaigns tailored to individual consumer behavior and preferences, fostering heightened customer engagement and loyalty. A great example is Starbucks: with AI, the coffee giant uses real-time data to send users unique offers based on their preferences, activity, and past purchases.
• Optimized Marketing Mix and Predictive Analytics: Analyzing data from multiple channels, AI can recommend the most effective strategies, maximizing the return on investment (ROI) for marketing expenditures. AI models can predict campaign performance based on past data, enabling marketers to allocate resources more efficiently. By forecasting outcomes, marketers can make informed decisions about where to invest their time and budget, increasing the likelihood of success.

For example, companies like Vidmob and CreativeX use AI to analyze images and videos for compliance with brand guidelines and digital ad performance, enabling brands to maximize the impact of their content. Leading CPGs, including PepsiCo, partner with CreativeX to improve quality, consistency, and engagement in real time.

• Improved Customer Segmentation: Advanced clustering algorithms facilitate enhanced customer segmentation, uncovering nuanced audience segments for more targeted approaches. This allows marketers to tailor their messaging and offers to specific groups, increasing relevance and effectiveness.

Companies of all sizes and across industries are utilizing these tools, including Intuit, Burger King, The Guardian, and HBO Max, among others. They are being powered by platforms like Braze and Klaviyo, which help businesses to personalize their customer communications through robust data analytics and AI-powered segmentation.

• Real-time Insights and Continuous Improvement: AI provides real-time insights into consumer behavior, allowing marketers to adapt their strategies on the fly. This agility enables marketers to capitalize on emerging trends and respond quickly to changes in the market, staying ahead of the competition. AI-powered analytics systems can learn and adapt over time, continually refining their algorithms and improving their accuracy. This iterative process allows marketers to continuously optimize their campaigns and drive better results over time.

Companies like OfferFit are leveraging self-learning AI to kill A/B testing. OfferFit’s platform allows its user to segment customers and optimize offers for each segment using machine learning to continuously learn and adapt based on each customers’ response.

Challenges and Solutions in Implementing AI-Powered Insights

Despite the potential of using AI for generating consumer insights, businesses face several challenges in implementation:

• Data Quality and Availability: AI follows the garbage in, garbage out rule. Ensuring the accuracy and relevance of data is crucial for AI-driven insights. Businesses should implement data governance policies and leverage data cleaning tools to overcome this challenge.
• Integration with Existing Technologies: Integrating AI systems with existing marketing technologies can be challenging. This hurdle can be overcome through the use of APIs, middleware, or collaboration with specialized vendors.
• Talent and Expertise: Many organizations lack employees with the expertise to implement AI solutions, or the resources to outsource this expertise. Today, this is especially challenging given the talent market, and how hard traditional companies must fight to attract and retain talent in AI. Investing in innovation and training, as well as engaging with the open innovation economy, can help bridge the gap.
• Data Privacy and Security: Addressing concerns surrounding data privacy and security, as well as biases in models and hallucinations, are essential for building consumer trust and compliance with regulations.

The Future of AI-Powered Consumer Insights

Looking ahead, the future of AI-powered consumer insights in the marketing industry is characterized by several key trends. Amid ongoing pressure to streamline expenses, AI tools offer companies a means to cut costs and gain autonomy in marketing endeavors, potentially reducing reliance on external agencies. This shift toward AI-powered tools enables companies to efficiently optimize their marketing efforts, enhancing competitiveness in the marketplace while maximizing cost-effectiveness.

Emerging platforms like chatbots and in-store retail present new avenues for collecting valuable consumer insights. By seamlessly integrating these insights, companies can craft a holistic omnichannel experience, bridging the gap between online and offline consumer interactions. AI tools are also fostering collaboration and efficiency across marketing, sales, and customer service domains, blurring traditional boundaries and necessitating a more comprehensive skill set across talent in these functions.

The key differentiator for brands and companies lies in their capacity to access and leverage individualized data on each customer or product, facilitated by verticalized GenAI models. Data quality and depth will emerge as the primary sources of gaining a competitive advantage, overshadowing the commoditization of LLMs. By prioritizing unique data assets and ensuring robust data quality, organizations can position themselves at the forefront of market differentiation.

Catch – Episode 203 Of The SalesStar Podcast: Sales Trends Dominating 2024 with Andy Kankula, Vice President of Business Development at Sion Power

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These approaches prioritize personalized engagement and tailor-made experiences for key accounts. Thereby enabling businesses to forge stronger relationships, drive revenue, and achieve marketing success.

Account-based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts rather than broad, generic audiences. It involves aligning marketing and sales efforts to deliver personalized content and experiences that resonate with individual accounts.

Account-based Experience (ABX) takes ABM a step further by encompassing the entire customer journey. It also has a focus on delivering seamless and personalized experiences across all touchpoints. ABX recognizes that successful marketing goes beyond generating leads. It requires fostering strong, ongoing relationships with customers at every stage of their journey.

More on ABX –> Optimizing Your ABX: With Jon Miller, Chief Evangelist at Demandbase

Key Aspects of Account Based Marketing and Their Benefits

ABM typically involves a multi-channel approach to engage and nurture the identified accounts. This approach includes strategies such as email marketing, social media advertising, personalized landing pages, and targeted events.

1. Targeted Approach:

ABM has a focus on targeting specific high-value accounts rather than broad audiences. This targeted approach enables businesses to prioritize their resources and efforts on high potential accounts for revenue generation.

2. Personalization:

ABM lays emphasis on personalized marketing experiences. By understanding the unique needs, pain points, and goals of each account, businesses can create highly relevant and tailored content. This content has a better resonation with decision-makers and stakeholders.

3. Sales and Marketing Alignment:

ABM encourages close collaboration and alignment between sales and marketing teams. This collaboration ensures that both teams have a shared understanding of target accounts. This learning enables them to work together effectively to nurture and convert leads.

4. Multi-Channel Engagement:

ABM leverages a variety of channels and touchpoints to engage target accounts. By reaching out to accounts through multiple avenues, ABM increases the visibility and impact of marketing efforts. Thereby leading to higher response rates and conversions.

5. Measurable Results:

ABM is data-driven and highly measurable. By leveraging analytics and tracking tools, companies can monitor the efficacy of their ABM campaigns in real time. This data offers actionable insights into account engagement, conversion rates, and revenue generated allowing leaders to make data-driven decisions.

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Key Aspects of Account Based Experience and Their Benefits

ABX incorporates various strategies and technologies to deliver exceptional experiences. It leverages data and analytics to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviours.

1. Customer-Centric Approach:

ABX revolves around delivering personalized and exceptional experiences throughout the entire customer journey. ABX focuses on understanding the unique requirements, preferences, and pain points of each account. This knowledge allows enterprises to offer tailored solutions, content, and support.

2. Seamless and Consistent Experiences:

ABX aims to create seamless and consistent experiences across all touchpoints and interactions with the account. By maintaining a unified brand voice and messaging, businesses can provide a cohesive and memorable experience. This consistency builds trust, improves brand perception, and enhances the overall customer journey.

3. Data-Driven Insights:

ABX relies on data and analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences. By leveraging data, enterprises can anticipate customer needs, personalize interactions, and deliver relevant content and recommendations. Data-driven insights enable companies to proactively engage with accounts, improving engagement rates and driving conversions.

4. Automation and AI-powered Tools:

ABX leverages automation and AI-powered tools to streamline and optimize the delivery of personalized experiences at scale. These tools enable businesses to automate repetitive tasks, personalize messaging, and deliver content based on real-time data.

5. Customer Success and Retention:

ABX extends beyond the initial sale and focuses on fostering long-term customer success and retention. By continuously engaging with accounts, providing ongoing support, and anticipating their evolving needs, enterprises can build strong relationships and reduce churn.

How do ABX and ABM Complement Each Other?

ABX and ABM are highly complementary strategies. They can work together to create a comprehensive and impactful approach to B2B marketing.

1. Targeted Account Selection:

ABM identifies high-value accounts that have the potential for significant revenue generation. This targeted approach provides the foundation for ABX to deliver personalized experiences to these specific accounts.

2. Personalized Engagement:

ABM creates personalized messaging and content based on the unique needs of targeted accounts. ABX extends this personalization throughout the customer journey, ensuring consistent and tailored experiences across all touchpoints.

3. Ongoing Relationship Building:

ABM initiates the relationship by engaging and converting target accounts. ABX then takes over by fostering ongoing engagement and support beyond the initial sale, driving customer success, retention, and advocacy.

4. Data-driven Insights:

ABM and ABX both rely on data and analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences. ABM utilizes this data to identify ideal accounts, while ABX uses it to deliver personalized experiences and anticipate evolving needs.

By combining the targeted approach of ABM with the personalized experiences of ABX, businesses can build strong customer relationships. They are thus able to deliver exceptional customer experiences and maximize revenue potential from their key accounts. The synergy between ABM and ABX enables a comprehensive and effective B2B marketing strategy.

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A well-crafted GTM strategy minimizes risks, optimizes resources, and accelerates success. It acts as the linchpin that connects your vision to actionable tactics. Without it, even the most innovative products can falter, lost in the market maze. In essence, a GTM strategy is the compass that guides businesses to their true north: market success.

Key Aspects of a GTM Strategy

Creating a strong Go-to-Market strategy is much like constructing a pathway that connects your offering to prospective buyers. It goes beyond merely introducing a product; it’s about ensuring its market triumph. To ensure that your GTM strategy is both effective and agile, focus on these key aspects:

• Market Research

Understanding your target market is the cornerstone of any GTM plan. Dive deep into customer demographics, preferences, and pain points to tailor your offering.

• Product Positioning

What sets your offering apart in a crowded marketplace? Establish its distinct advantages and make certain they align with your intended consumers.

• Pricing Strategy

Price your product in a way that reflects its value yet remains competitive. Consider various pricing models to find the best fit.

• Sales Channels

Identify the most effective channels to reach your audience. Whether it’s online platforms, retail outlets, or direct sales, choose wisely.

• Marketing Mix

Leverage a blend of promotional tactics, from digital advertising to traditional media, to create awareness and drive engagement.

• Customer Journey

Map out the customer’s path from awareness to purchase. This helps in optimizing each touchpoint for better conversion rates.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Lina Tonk, Chief Marketing Officer @ Recurly

Debunking Biggest GTM Myths

Traversing the commercial terrain frequently means avoiding the pitfalls of false beliefs, particularly concerning Go-to-Market plans. Such fallacies can sidetrack your initiatives, squander valuable assets, and result in lost chances. Let’s debunk eight of the most pervasive GTM myths to set the record straight.

1. One-Size-Fits-All Approach

The belief that a single GTM strategy can work for multiple products is misleading. Each product has unique attributes and target audiences. Tailor your GTM plan to fit the specific needs and nuances of each offering.

2. GTM is a Sales-Only Function

Contrary to popular belief, GTM isn’t solely a sales initiative. It’s a cross-functional endeavor involving marketing, product development, and customer service. A holistic approach ensures that all departments work in harmony.

3. Speed Trumps Strategy

Rushing to market may seem advantageous, but speed without strategy is a recipe for failure. A well-thought-out GTM plan allows you to enter the market with purpose, maximizing your chances of success.

4. The Product Sells Itself

Even the most revolutionary products need a GTM strategy. Assuming your product will sell itself overlooks the importance of positioning, pricing, and promotion. A strong GTM plan amplifies your product’s strengths.

5. Focus Only on the Launch

Many think a GTM strategy is only relevant during the product launch. In reality, it’s a dynamic plan that evolves with market trends, customer feedback, and competitive landscapes. Continuous refinement is key.

6. Digital Channels are Enough

While digital marketing is vital, ignoring traditional channels can be a mistake. A balanced GTM strategy leverages both online and offline avenues to reach a broader audience and create multiple touchpoints.

7. Price is the Only Differentiator

Price is just one aspect of your offering. A robust GTM strategy considers other differentiators like quality, customer service, and brand reputation. These elements can often outweigh the importance of price.

8. GTM is a One-Time Effort

A common misconception is that once you’ve launched, the GTM work is done. On the contrary, it’s an ongoing process that requires regular updates, market analysis, and adaptability to changing conditions.

9. Customer Feedback is Optional

Some believe that a GTM strategy can be crafted solely based on internal insights. This overlooks the invaluable input that customer feedback provides. Incorporating customer perspectives ensures that your strategy aligns with market needs.

10. GTM is Only for Startups

The myth that GTM strategies are exclusively for startups can be limiting. Established businesses also benefit from revisiting and refining their GTM plans, especially when launching new products or entering new markets.

11. Marketing and Sales Alignment is Overrated

The notion that marketing and sales can operate in silos without affecting a GTM strategy is flawed. Alignment between these two functions is crucial for a cohesive and effective market approach.

12. Data-Driven Means Ignoring Intuition

While data analytics play a significant role in shaping a GTM strategy, the myth that it should entirely replace human intuition is misleading. A balanced approach that combines data insights with industry experience often yields the best results.

Conclusion

A well-crafted Go-to-Market strategy serves as your roadmap to market success. By focusing on key aspects like market research, product positioning, and customer journey, you can navigate the complexities of the market with confidence. It’s not just about launching; it’s about launching right and sustaining growth.

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Listen in -> Episode 175 of The SalesStar Podcast by SalesTechStar: Go-to Market and Marketing Best Practices with Bryan Law, CMO at Zoominfo

Research from Penn State University shows that Fortune 500 companies have been increasing the diversity of their marketing teams and campaigns since the 1980s. And yet, over 40 years later, fewer than half of companies have formal policies or plans to improve the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) of their business.

The importance of DEI should be reflected in marketing and companies that have put diversity, equity and inclusion practices in place can now measure the impact and see visible differences such as gender and race. However, a truly diverse marketing team also represents non-visible differences, such as having neurodivergent folks on the team. Over 15 percent of the population identify as neurodiverse, a term used to encompass conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism and dyslexia. In a creative industry such as marketing, the representation of neurodiverse workers is of particular benefit. Research by JPMorgan Chase found that neurodivergent employees can be up to 140% more productive than their neurotypical employees in certain tech roles. Additionally, meaningful inclusivity can enhance employee morale, contributing to a more positive workplace culture.

Truly embracing neurodiversity is not just about inclusion, it is also about businesses harnessing the unique strengths of each employee and fostering a culture that allows them to achieve a sense of purpose. The more successful companies are at including and engaging all their employees, the higher their retention rate tends to be along with overall company success.

While companies now generally acknowledge the importance of diversity and their accountability to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), forward-thinking leaders should be moving away from a box-checking approach focused solely on getting more people through their door. An effective method of boosting employee engagement can be achieved through initiatives such as Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). ERGs are voluntary, employee-led groups that are designed to allow workers to support their colleagues with shared identities, backgrounds, interests, and ultimately empower them with a sense of belonging. For business leaders, ERGs can play an important role in amplifying employees’ voices, allowing companies to gather insights, address concerns and implement policies that cater to the unique needs of a wide range of corporate communities.  Not to mention, the ability to bring more accurate and innovative services and products to the market.

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While collating employee feedback, employers can make the requisite changes to their policies and planning. This could include implementing more flexible work-from-home policies, an increase in training on certain skills, software programs, or more clarity on behaviors that support an inclusive environment or a company’s sustainability commitments.

An AARP survey showed that 83% of global leaders recognized a multigenerational staff is integral to business success, which means understanding the motivations behind each generation can help recruit, manage and retain successful teams more effectively. For example, young, Gen Z employees are often looking for more purpose-led companies who are working with employees’ communities to lift them and make their voices heard. They also value companies willing to change their traditional hierarchical structure, removing the supervisor and subordinate relationship between an employee and their ‘boss’. Simply put, ERGs have the potential to go far beyond neurodiversity. They can bring employees’ individualism to the fore, highlight their unique strengths, allow them to nurture their passion, and allow them to have a say in the way their company is run.

This is also the case in diversity marketing, a marketing strategy based on the inclusion of all customers and their many differences – regardless of their disability, gender, neurodiversity or race. Consumer buying power is more diverse than ever, with combined non-Caucasian spending, as a share of the entire U.S., increasing from 10.6% in 1990 to 17.2% in 2020. Diverse marketing teams can revolutionize the effectiveness of campaigns, allowing the varied perspectives of their employees to reflect in their brand’s messaging, and capture the imagination of disparate audiences.

The meaningful representation of visible and non-visible diversity is now integral to a successful marketing team and enterprise-wide confidence in a company. If employees see tangible changes to DEI, their view of their company changes, as they shift from acknowledging issues to taking action. In 2024, employers should be supporting the engagement of diverse voices through initiatives like ERGs and should continuously be looking for ways employees can get involved in CSR, policies and planning. When marketing teams reflect the diverse nature of their customer base, not only will a company benefit from an enriched culture, but all consumers will be clearer on the company’s mission, cultivating a loyalty that will give employees and customers a renewed sense of personal investment in a brand.

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However, there are now various AI tools that can streamline the process of creating personalized outreach emails. These tools essentially allow users to input any publicly available data on a prospect to create personalized email introductions. Yet the old adage “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should” is worth keeping in mind when using these tools. You need to be cautious, as the eagerness to leverage AI may lead you to include highly personal information – like social media data – which puts you at risk of seeming inappropriate and alienating recipients.

I’ve spent the better part of the last ten years working with personalized messaging tools – long before AI technology was good enough to be used at scale – so I’ve had a lot of time to think about the pitfalls and best practices when using these methods. As I see it, they can be incredibly valuable, but only when a user has a firm understanding of their capabilities and limitations.

Why personalize?

All the data suggests that personalized emails generate far more engagement than generic emails. We’ve seen this in almost every study, whether it’s examining that personalized subject lines lead to a 26 percent increase in email open rates or that personalized sales emails result in transaction rates six times higher than non-personalized emails. In short, there’s no doubt that some level of personalization is a good thing when reaching out to folks.

And it shouldn’t be too surprising why that is. Empathy is a hallmark of good writing in direct response emails, whether it’s sales outreach or a pitch to a journalist. In this context, empathy means demonstrating that you understand the person whom you’re reaching out to, what they care about, what they know about, and what their needs are. Your goal is to show that you understand the person and can offer them real value in achieving their goals. Then, you can encourage them to take the action that you want for a mutually beneficial result.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Caroline Huber, Executive Vice President of Product at GIPHY

Tools of the trade

When today’s PR and marketing professionals are looking to personalize their outreach emails, they have a wealth of AI tools and platforms to choose from. Two great examples are Apollo and Instantly, both of which we’ve extensively incorporated into our daily operations at my agency. These lead source and outreach tools allow us to customize pitches with information about a prospect, such as their location or company, and even use that information to draft a short personalized email introduction.

For example, if the prospect is based in Philadelphia, the text output might include a friendly inquiry like, “Hey, how’s the weather in Philadelphia these days? I hope you and your team are doing well.” Or, it might mention something about the prospect’s company, like “Hey guys, love what you’re doing with AI in the PR field; this is exactly where the industry needs to be heading.” The point is that this AI personalization uses basic relevant information about a prospect to craft a tailored and personalized message.

For now, most AI personalization tools are limited to providing introduction lines and other simple things like that. They’re not yet at a point where they can effectively compose a fully customized email to a person based on who they are, what they do, and so on. Eventually, the technology may reach that stage, but I personally don’t see that happening anytime soon. But what we have now are still great tools that can save a lot of time in outreach campaigns.

Best practices

If there’s one core bit of advice that I would give to anyone using AI to personalize their outreach emails, that would be to make it personalized but also keep it professional. This is where you can get into some risky territory when using AI. These tools allow you to input any information you wish about a prospect and you might be tempted to get a little trigger-happy with that.

For instance, I would strongly advise against using a prospect’s most recent social media posts as input. That could easily come off as invasive, overly friendly, or downright creepy. Instead, keep it to general stuff about their professional lives. Another thing to be wary of is that these AI models are far from perfect. Even with all the right inputs, they can still spit out some weird or robotic-sounding results.

For example, one project my company has been working on is a model to draft personalized follow-up emails. During testing, we noticed that if the recipient hadn’t received any communication from us in a while, the output would be something like, “Hey Steve, we noticed we haven’t sent you an email in 95 days and thought we’d follow up.” Clearly, the AI gets way too specific/literal – that would be a rather odd, artificial-sounding email to receive. This highlights the need to constantly train these models and maintain human oversight to review anything before sending it out.

Another thing I would strongly discourage is using AI to talk about your company. Any media professional who’s worth their salt should already have a tightly crafted way to talk about what their company does, their sales pitch, and their call to action. Don’t muddy the waters by having AI write these things because, right now, AI when left to its own devices can be a bit verbose and ham-fisted, especially when it comes to promotional writing.

Lastly, I would reiterate the importance of always keeping a human in the loop. Anything you send out should reflect a tone and style consistent with your own. The recipient doesn’t care if you wrote it, your assistant wrote it, or if AI wrote it. They’re holding you to the standard of what you’re sending out and there’s always the risk of AI writing something that is not up to your standard. If that happens, you are accountable. So make sure there is always a human to review and, if necessary, revise.

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Final thoughts

The use of AI tools in personalized email outreach has become a crucial asset for today’s PR and marketing professionals. And while these tools can provide a streamlined approach to crafting personalized messages, they are still only tools. You need to take care not to overstep any boundaries and maintain a delicate balance between personalization and professionalism.

Even as this technology continues to evolve, human oversight will likely remain a constant factor, underscoring the ongoing importance of a discerning human touch in the realm of personalized communication.

Also catch; Episode 184 Of The SalesStar Podcast: Al and Its Influence on Marketing: with Adri Gil Miner, CMO of Iterable

Also catch; Episode 179 Of The SalesStar Podcast: The Impact of Al in Sales and Marketing with Ketan Karkhanis, EVP & GM, Sales Cloud, Salesforce

Inbenta, an AI platform purpose-built to optimize customer experience, today announced its acquisition of Horizn, a provider of easy to embed interactive product demos, further expanding Inbenta’s customer experience platform. The acquisition adds a new component to Inbenta’s customer service toolkit, allowing companies to rapidly develop, edit and deploy helpful step-by-step tutorials, improving self-service and reducing agent escalation.

The acquisition of Horizn comes as businesses are increasingly looking to leverage visually engaging content in their help centers and other customer service settings to improve customer experience and employee training. In most instances, Horizn has shown to reduce agent escalations in favor of self-service in 80% of cases. Horizn has also been able to establish a large customer base with leading financial institutions in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

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The addition of interactive product demos will provide Inbenta’s customers with a more holistic set of customer experience-enhancing features, which currently include chatbot, search, messenger and knowledge management services. The addition also represents Inbenta’s emphasis on a platform approach which aims to consolidate AI and digital customer experience tools; address gaps in customer interactions; and empower companies with thoughtful automation that tracks customer experience throughout the customer lifecycle.

“Everyone knows how helpful and time-saving a tutorial can be when presented in an easy to understand, visual format. At Inbenta, customer experience is at the center of everything we do – it was only natural that product demo capabilities should be included within our customer experience platform,” said Melissa Solis, CEO at Inbenta. “The acquisition of Horizn marks yet another milestone in Inbenta’s journey to help companies more effectively drive down customer service costs, boost sales, and improve customer experience overall.”

“By acquiring Horizn, Inbenta has expanded the number of customer experience touchpoints that it can offer, setting itself apart from the industry’s text-reliant majority,” said Janice Diner, CEO and co-founder at Horizn. “The entire Horizn team is excited about this next stage of impact and innovation and looks forward to integrating itself into Inbenta’s leading customer experience platform.”

Helmed by CEO and co-founder, Janice Diner, Horizn was established in 2011 in Toronto, Canada. As a part of the acquisition, Janice will transition into a new role as Inbenta’s Head of Marketing.

The acquisition follows Inbenta’s announcement of its $40M funding in January 2023 led by Tritium Partners. Inbenta is using its resources to accelerate product innovation (including a broad Generative AI integration announced on August 8, 2023), and to drive new market expansion, partnerships, and additional M&A activity.

Marketing Technology News: Inbenta Secures $40M in Funding Led by Tritium Partners

Founded in 2005, Inbenta (www.inbenta.com) is a global AI platform purpose-built to optimize customer experience. The company’s powerful platform combines the use of Natural Language Processing, Neuro-Symbolic AI and Generative AI across four digital support communication modules – Chatbot, Knowledge, Search, and Messenger – delivering a complete and configurable solution for any enterprise. With its headquarters in Dallas, TX, and with regional offices in the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Japan, Inbenta has over 1,000 global brands using its solution across a range of industries, including: financial services, travel, ecommerce, telecom, and utilities.