Boost Your Sales with Artificial Intelligence
The great business challenge has always been turning outreach to companies into sales. This complex task is now easier thanks to Artificial Intelligence and its ability to increase sales by improving the conversion rate.
Conversion Rate and Artificial Intelligence
When making purchasing decisions, we certainly value quality and price—there’s no doubt about that—but increasingly, other factors come into play, most notably personalized, direct, and immediate attention. As consumers, we have access to products from anywhere in the world, which means there are countless purchasing options, and we access them through a multitude of channels. This forces sellers to be where potential buyers are and to differentiate themselves from the competition.
It’s no longer enough to offer products and wait, and not even large corporations backed by extremely costly advertising campaigns can afford to do so. The sales approach must be active, non-invasive, and effective—that’s the great challenge, precisely because consumer behavior is neither linear nor one-directional. In this complex current landscape, how can we reach potential buyers and increase conversion rates? The answer lies in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
This metric, the conversion rate, is the most important one for Sales and Marketing departments, as it determines the proportion of potential sales that actually materialize. Increasing this value is, as we’ve mentioned, possible thanks to AI, Data Analytics, and Machine Learning, which tell companies what their customers want, making it possible to redesign strategies to boost that conversion rate we’re talking about.
Algorithms as a Sales Force
Leveraging the information consumers provide is an obligation for staying competitive in a global market with countless options. You have to listen to the customer, and listening well means understanding everything the consumer tells us—which is a lot. Analyzing the trail of visits, interests, needs, channels used, timing, and the types of interactions they leave behind in their searches makes it possible to deliver the personalized attention we’re talking about, with messages tailored to the reality of the recipient, sent through the channels best accepted by the user.
Algorithms are now responsible for offering products and closing sales, even predicting needs to anticipate user requirements. And they’re highly effective at this task—as confirmed by a study from the prestigious consulting firm Gartner, which shows that implementing Artificial Intelligence in sales strategies increases the conversion rate by up to 30%.
Artificial Intelligence in Sales
Artificial Intelligence can contribute to sales processes in different ways, though they all share the same goal: achieving an optimal user experience based on immediate, personalized attention.
Data Analysis
Disruptive new technologies are capable of analyzing the customer’s complete footprint—the thousands of data points they generate—to build a profile of needs, priority channels, and purchasing times… for each potential buyer. This is an unfeasible task without the involvement of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. With this information, it’s possible to generate reports for Sales teams and launch automatic conversion actions.
Conversational Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots—software built with AI that enables conversations with digital devices simulating human interaction—offer fast, round-the-clock service. They attend to customers whenever needed, regardless of the calendar or the clock, which improves their perception of the product and brand. Those equipped with machine learning can also deliver personalized experiences based on the customer’s previous behavior.
Predictive Systems
Artificial Intelligence can predict consumer needs and determine the best channels for interacting with them, based on their usage habits. This makes it possible to anticipate customer requirements and address them through the channels they best respond to.
Product Recommendations
AI also helps companies offer products to their customers based on information gathered about their preferences and needs. The likelihood of purchase in these cases rises considerably. Retail giant Amazon achieved a 35% increase in revenue through a combined strategy of on-site product recommendations and email marketing, according to a study by McKinsey & Company.
Email Marketing
Through algorithmic data mining, Artificial Intelligence can generate personalized emails for each customer, sent on the days and at the times they prefer. By moving away from mass messaging, this approach increases consumer receptiveness, making them more likely to complete a purchase.
Artificial Intelligence for Customer Service
As we’ve seen, customer service, experience personalization, and higher conversion rates all depend on data and the technologies that collect, analyze, and make sense of it. The essential individualized treatment we’ve discussed isn’t possible without the use of Artificial Intelligence. Only through this technology is it possible to work with the information generated by the millions of potential customers of e-commerce businesses, for example, to develop personalized journeys.
Marketing and Sales departments can no longer do without AI and Data Analytics tools. They’re the key to achieving more effective strategies that increase conversion rates, making every company’s goal a reality: turning visits into purchases.