We are on the cusp of new technology. Autonomous marketing is positioned to become the backbone of the marketing and advertising industry, all thanks to the ingenuity of artificial intelligence.

Today, top-performing marketers are using the building blocks of autonomous marketing  to design their customer journeys and automate messages. With such easy access to a huge amount of customer data, the standard customer journey has become an increasingly complex, customer-centric view of customers spread out across multiple channels and touchpoints. And without automation, managing the end-to-end customer journey is near impossible.

The impact of this functionality has already been felt across the industry with AI in marketing becoming much more integrated. But what’s the next step? Does autonomous marketing automation make sense for your industry? What does the future look like and will it impact your marketing strategy? All these questions and more will be answered below. 

What is autonomous marketing?

An article written by Deloitte Digital, explains autonomous marketing as using, “predictive capabilities to personalize customer relationships in real time with content, recommendations, fulfillment, and even purchase follow-up that anticipate people’s needs.”  

To put it simply, tasks like optimizing digital campaigns, customer journey management or your customer support agents using chatbots, are all now being replaced with AI technology. This allows the activity to get done more efficiently leaving the marketer to focus on bigger picture items.

And this is only the beginning for autonomous marketing.

What can we do with autonomous marketing now?

Computer scientists are still in the early stages of creating fully-fledged autonomous marketing systems. This may seem surprising when current marketing automation software solutions are already so powerful. But there is still a long way to go.

Just like in a lead nurturing campaign, AI needs to gain trust with its target audience. Marketing directors won't just turn customer engagement over to an AI bot — they need time to develop confidence in the validity of the system. This can take a long time, most likely longer than it takes for the technology itself to develop.

As mentioned, marketing automation has already kicked in; with powerful, visual, easy-to-use systems like Ortto being available on the market. However, Ortto takes it up a notch, as it is also underpinned with AI, meaning it takes millions of data points to help accurately predict how your audience will react.

This can be experienced first-hand when using AI to craft conversion-driven subject lines. Ortto’s AI subject line writer tool not only accurately predicts the open rates of emails, but it generates alternative suggestions so you can be confident your emails will compete in the inbox.

The AI is trained on millions of high open rate subject lines designed to motivate subscribers to open your email. The more emails you send, the more the AI can learn how your customers engage. Ortto also offers free, pre-built email marketing templates, from welcome emails to new feature announcements. Simply select a template based on your needs, and plug and play! Check them out below.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As adoption increases and technology improves, autonomous marketing capabilities are set to help marketers make even more valuable predictions.

Over the next five years, expect autonomous marketing to:

• Find patterns in data quicker than ever, bringing more insights to the surface

• Comprehend insights and make intuitive suggestions

• Execute decisions within set thresholds and parameters

• Bring full autonomation to the marketing industry — resulting in more room for creative marketing strategy

Why autonomous marketing automation just makes sense

We might not all be comfortable with choosing the autopilot function on a Tesla. But there are some areas in life where autonomous automation will save you time, resources and remove a little thing called human error. Marketing is one of them. 

Today, autonomous marketing software is already producing marketers who are faster, smarter and better at their jobs. It improves the capabilities of marketing professionals.

Keeping current

The advent of the marketing tech stack has meant businesses have needed to adapt to new processes, skill requirements and organizational structures. The past few years of digital transformation have represented an extreme change for traditional marketers, but also an entirely necessary one.

Progressively-minded businesses who have implemented data-driven, integrated tech stacks are now the best-equipped for an inevitable autonomous future. Those who are integrating their CRM system, segmenting their customer base and mapping the customer journey are laying the groundwork for the next era of digital marketing. When autonomous marketing is in full-swing, these companies are going to be the winners.

Human limitations 

Marketers are already using tech stacks to leverage and action huge amounts of data. These platforms drive productivity and revenue at a scale that would have previously been impossible to manage. In fact, the proficiency of well-constructed marketing stacks is so good that their capabilities already exceed the potential of human beings.

At the current pace of data growth, there's literally no way for marketers to keep up with the sheer volume and complexity of highly personalized, multi-channel, customer-centric marketing systems. That's not an attack on the skills or intelligence of the modern marketer — it's just too much information for the human brain to process.

Affordability

In the past few years, affordable autonomous marketing solutions have started popping up in response to expensive, packaged marketing software.

Brands like Ortto offer an affordable solution that allows you to integrate your tech stack into one data unification and marketing automation solution. This means businesses of any size can start to organize and unify their data, create automated campaigns, and set themselves up for the future.

Decision making capability

Marketers are looking to autonomous marketing models, where machine learning will be able to make predictions on audience behavior, segmentation, creative messaging and more. These predictions will be based on browsing history, purchasing behavior, customer preference and customer support information. 

This collection of data will then be used to create an automated marketing response delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person. The tech won't be slowing down any time soon.

Benefits of autonomous marketing

As the autonomous marketing landscape continues to grow and evolve, let’s take a look at some of the real benefits marketers can expect from autonomous marketing.

Simplicity

The sheer volume of products required in the average marketing tech stack is out of control. Appropriately named the stackpocalypse, there is no current sign of the volume decreasing any time soon. For marketers to adopt and execute autonomous marketing, they have to be able to implement new products and tech seamlessly. Automation must be packaged as a core software feature, rather than an afterthought.

Native integration

Marketers are already using a suite of platforms to communicate with their audiences across multiple channels. CRM systems, social media accounts and analytics software are all critical considerations.  

To make autonomous marketing work across channels and devices, marketers need to integrate their platforms natively. Using a customer data platform as robust as Ortto, can allow for a range of data sources to all file into the platform, providing you with a unified look at your customer.

When autonomous marketing automation evolves, machine learning can take all your customer interactions and provide a flawless customer experience for them at their next touchpoint. For example, a known customer in the United States searches for a flight to Sydney, Australia. They can then be served up accommodation or rental car service recommendations in Sydney. And once they purchase the flight, they might receive extra offers on experiences like a walk across the Harbor Bridge.

Efficiency measures

There's no doubt that autonomous marketing will improve marketers' ability to handle time and resource intensive tasks. Once implemented, segmenting, data integration, customer journey mapping and analysis will all be more efficient.

The future of autonomous marketing automation

As mentioned previously, we have only touched on the surface of autonomous marketing automation. To reach its next milestone, the current marketing systems that are in place will need more artificial intelligence integration. Autonomous marketing automation needs to learn and grow using this AI, in order to essentially govern itself.

Currently, AI has the stigma of being incapable of creating any unique coherent creativity. AI systems are generally limited to tasks like finding patterns in data, predicting behaviors (based on data) and making rudimentary suggestions. This is changing fast. 

We’ve mentioned the AI used in, Ortto’s subject line suggestions, but there is also new technology  emerging where long form articles, ebooks, social media posts, and website copy, can all be created using AI. The copy will automatically optimize for SEO, plus can be translated into multiple languages in no time at all. Creative human minds are a critical part of the autonomous marketing landscape, and with the right technology, this subset of the marketing industry will only become stronger. 

Today, it is a marketer’s responsibility to interpret metrics and analytics, making the final decision to continue or stop a campaign. The future will see an autonomous marketing system be able to decipher those results and can automatically make the optimization itself.

Automated marketing solutions are going to be incredibly important as marketing intelligence evolves. Just look at the way marketing has changed in the past 5 years — everything is becoming more complex and segmented every day. Consumers have come to expect a level of personalization in digital marketing that is impossible without automation, and they are accustomed to their ads being catered to their interests. Marketers need automation to deliver on these expectations.

To continue to deliver a hyper-personalized experience, brands are getting more creative when targeting their ideal demographic.

With automated marketing and new technology, brands can tap into media opportunities that we never could have imagined even a decade ago. A recent example is the move to customize billboards in the background of TV shows.

Let’s say you are watching your new favorite Netflix show, and the main character is walking down Hollywood Boulevard. A billboard in the background is showing an ad for the new season of a TV show. But if the same episode is watched on another account, the billboard would change automatically based on the data Netflix has about the account holder.

This example would be impossible without unified data, automation and AI. Just imagine a human having to "place" all these ads. For brands, it's a demonstration of just how personalized advertising has become - and how crazy consumer expectations are becoming. We're just at the tip of the iceberg here. 

Marketers who focus on the customer journey, and manage it with automation, will have the edge. They'll find it easier to identify and meet objectives across a barrage of channels and touchpoints. Those relying on traditional marketing strategies and legacy software will be left behind — no doubt.

The truth is, marketing isn't what it used to be. It's better.

The final word

We've come to a crossroads where autonomous technology has met legitimate, real-world applications. Autonomous marketing is going to be a critical part of the marketplace.

Marketing teams need to deepen their understanding and start testing automation solutions that match market pacing. The future is coming whether you're ready for it or not.