Ways to Use AI for Holiday Marketing

To say AI has grown in recent years would be the understatement of the century. A few years back, AI was largely a buzzword, with its use cases predominately limited to predictive analytics and chatbots. (This is grossly simplifying things, but you get the point.) Now, we’ve reached an end where you can ask, “Are there ways to use AI for holiday marketing?” And, voila–this question warrants an entire article. Written by a human, of course.

If you’re looking to answer said question and snag a few generative AI prompts while you’re at it, you’ve come to the right place.

How AI is used in marketing

Before we dive into the ways you can use AI for holiday marketing, it’s important to understand the basics of how AI is used in marketing. (Although if you’d like to skip right to the ideas, feel free to do so here!).

AI for analytics

Marketing analytics and AI have gone hand in hand for some time now. In the past, AI played a smaller role in analytics, helping with segmentation and even suggesting keywords to target.

Today, AI powers real-time insights for social posts and ads, allowing marketers to pivot ad spend or ad copy on the fly.

Current AI also allows for more improved targeting. Using AI-powered platforms, you can analyze your existing audience groups and demographics and weigh them against your competitors, past campaign performance, and more.

These emergent uses of AI in analytics, coupled with good old-fashioned historical analytics data, can result in more refined decision-making and the ability to pivot on a dime.’

AI for chatbots

Using AI, chatbots can deliver more advanced responses to site visitors. This enables more timely, helpful support, as the chatbot can either resolve the issue or route the person to the correct department.

Advanced AI-powered chatbots can take support even further, answering product questions and making recommendations. This opens up the door to more cross or upselling opportunities.

Personalized recommendations with AI

For years now, online stores have used machine learning algorithms to recommend products and services to shoppers. Nowadays, modern AI can pull from browsing data to serve recommendations in real-time.

Coupled with historical shopping habits, this allows for a more personalized, tailored shopping experience.

Generative AI

Generative AI is all the rage right now, with companies like ChatGPT and Jasper becoming borderline household names. Generative AI is a form of machine learning that uses natural language processing (NLP) to learn from large sets of structured data and then create a deliverable to the best of its predictive ability.

Generative AI is largely thought of as a way to generate blogs and school papers, but it’s capable of much more. Generative AI can help you brainstorm marketing campaigns, email copy, social media posts, and virtually any other campaign asset.

ways to use AI for holiday marketing

Now that you’re an AI expert, it’s time to use this impressive and terrifying power for some holiday good.

Tailor holiday ad copy.

There’s nothing wrong with handling your ad ideation and copy by hand. But if AI is available, why not squeeze a little juice out of it?

There are a number of AI tools that allow you to utilize your current data to improve segmentation. Coupled with your funnel and customer journey knowledge, you can use AI to help you create holiday ad copy that’s ready to meet your customers wherever they’re at.

For example, you could use AI to help you create several variations of ads for the same holiday-themed campaign, each one targeting those at different stages and from different audience segments. You can then take things a step further and use AI to help you reshape some of these ads to offer product recommendations in line with the shopper’s previous habits.

Personalize product recommendations

The holidays are a time of joy and cheer and a ton of shopping. Using AI, you can help streamline shopping for your customers, delivering more accurate and timely product recommendations based on their browsing of your store.

Amazon is a prime example of using AI to make accurate product recommendations. Not only do they suggest products on a product page, but they also have a “Top picks” section where they offer even more suggestions.

If you’re not already using it, implement AI-powered product recommendations before the holidays and help your customers find gifts they didn’t even know they were looking for.

Optimize cross-channel holiday campaigns.

The holidays are a sales-packed, hectic time for many shoppers. During this time of year, it’s not uncommon for customer journeys to be condensed or expedited, as many people are in crunch mode and skimping on research. With the right AI-powered tools, you can keep up with the wildest of holiday journeys.

• Use advanced analytics to monitor campaign and ad performance in near real-time.
• Make tweaks to landing pages, emails, ads, etc., on the fly to counter bounce rates.
• Pair AI with any number of AI personalization tools to deliver customized page experiences for shoppers based on their behavior.
• Leverage AI-powered chatbots to support customers during hectic holiday campaigns.’

With all the above efforts combined, you can quickly alter your campaigns during the holiday season. If people aren’t resonating with a certain piece of your campaign or a particular discounted holiday special isn’t performing as planned, of course, correct on the go!

Improve customer support routing.

Customers are bound to need help during the holiday hustle and bustle. With the right AI chatbot and routing systems, you can help customers get the help they need during what should be a fun, not stressful, time of the year.

• Set up chatbots to offer not only help with sales but also product recommendations.
• Make sure your chatbot can direct people to the right department and that someone is available when they’re redirected.
• Utilize AI-powered call routing that looks at previous call history and sentiment to ensure people get in touch with the right person at the right time.
• For bonus points, set your chatbot to include fun holiday greetings or language in the introductory chat.

There are a number of AI chatbots and call routing systems, so shop around and find the one that fits your budget and needs.

Most importantly, test any chatbots and call systems you put in place. The last thing you want is an AI-powered chatbot that’s sending people to a 404 page.