AI is revolutionizing the way businesses approach marketing. From automating content creation to personalizing customer experiences, artificial intelligence is proving to be a game-changer in the digital landscape. In this blog post, we'll explore five compelling case studies that showcase how companies across various industries are harnessing the power of AI to drive marketing success. These real-world examples demonstrate the tangible impact AI can have on key metrics such as website traffic, customer engagement, revenue, and churn reduction. Check out the innovative ways these companies are leveraging AI to stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional results.
How Best Places saw an 800% Surge in Web Traffic
The Challenge:
BestPlaces, a website that provides location-based information to find the best places to live, work, and visit, experienced a significant decline in traffic after a Google algorithm update. The algorithm change hurt its reach, engagement, and reputation.
The Solution:
To address this issue, BestPlaces integrated Jasper's API into their content platform. This allowed them to automate the creation of 80,000 unique header paragraphs, each describing a different US location. By streamlining content creation while maintaining authenticity, BestPlaces aimed to recover and strengthen its online presence.
The Result:
BestPlaces saw an 800% increase in traffic. It regained its footing in the competitive market and freed up the marketing team to focus on creating engaging feature articles. This, in turn, drove further growth. By harnessing the power of AI to generate unique content, BestPlaces has managed to outperform some of its long-standing competitors.
Google’s algorithm changes causes every marketing team some major stress. But BestPlaces’ turnaround demonstrates that with the right tools and a willingness to adapt, it is possible to overcome challenges in the ever-changing digital landscape.
Source: https://www.jasper.ai/case-studies/bestplaces
How Michael’s Drove $63M Revenue with SMS
The Challenge:
Michaels, the largest arts and crafts retail chain in North America, faced challenges in removing friction for shoppers and expanding their online presence.
The company needed to utilize their brick-and-mortar stores as fulfilment centers to develop seamless customer experiences and translate the most appealing aspects of their in-store experience into equally unforgettable online ones. Michaels' objective was to make shopping effortless and enjoyable for consumers, regardless of where they decided to visit.
The Solution:
SMS might seem like it belongs in the era of the brick-like Nokia phones, but it’s making a comeback.
To address the challenge, Michaels launched their SMS marketing channel in partnership with Attentive. By integrating SMS with their loyalty program and collecting opt-ins at point of sale, Michaels created highly personalized experiences that foster discovery and drive immediate traffic to their website and physical locations. Using Attentive's A/B testing, geo-targeting, and segmentation capabilities, Michaels tailored text messages to shoppers' preferences, telling quick, focused stories that resonate with each of their audiences. The retailer also implemented buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pick up shopping options to remove friction for shoppers.
The Result:
Since launching with Attentive in 2019, Michaels has driven over $63.2 million in revenue from SMS, with a steady increase in SMS-attributed traffic to their e-commerce site.
The retailer has over 8.5 million active subscribers, grew their list by over 51% in 2021, and their welcome journey (a series of highly personalised messages) drive a 139x ROI.
By tailoring their SMS campaigns to subscribers' interests, Michaels has been able to drive engagement around company-wide goals, such as increased registration for classes. The retailer plans to further optimize their program by testing browse and cart abandonment messages and building SMS journeys based on subscribers' engagement with their loyalty program, educational materials, and in-store experiences.
How Marks & Spencer got a 20% Conversion Uplift
The Challenge:
Marks and Spencer (M&S), a renowned British retailer, had set ambitious personalization targets to enhance customer engagement - it wanted to achief 5 billion personalised customer interactions. Despite having a successful loyalty scheme, Sparks, which provided rich customer data, and a willingness to use this data across multiple channels, M&S needed to understand customer motivations and translate them into personalized messages that resonated on an emotional level.
The Solution:
M&S partnered with Persado, an AI-powered language optimization platform. Persado's Motivation AI platform uncovered better-performing content through language experimentation, building a bank of insights that revealed the most effective messages for specific customer segments. The collaboration began on high-value channels to build confidence within M&S that Motivation AI not only works but also wins. Persado worked on hero campaign copy, static website copy, and email subject lines to drive greater customer engagement, increase loyalty, and grow incremental orders.
The Result:
Through the language personalization, M&S saw an average conversion rate lift of 20% through email between June and December 2021, with the number reaching as high as 34% in December 2021. The initiative also uncovered what M&S customers respond to and don’t respond to. While many retailers might think that scarcity works in their favour, M&S realised that their customers don’t respond well to scarcity messaging like “only x left”
How FarFetch Increased Click Rates by 38%
The Challenge:
Farfetch, an online luxury marketplace, wanted to improve user engagement by optimizing the language in its email marketing campaigns and create a more personalized experience for its millions of covers.
The Solution:
Farfetch partnered with Phrasee, an AI-powered content optimization platform, and experimented with various styles, tones, words, and phrases to identify the language that most effectively engaged its audience.
Farfetch also used Phrasee to optimize subject lines for different email campaigns, like abandoned browse, basket, and wish list scenarios. Farfetch promotes women, men, kids, and beauty products from a wide range of luxury labels, and optimizing across this wide range communications has helped make the customer lifecycle seamless and engaging.
The Result:
The AI solution captured Farfetch’s distinct brand voice, ensuring that the millions of personalized messages aligned with the company’s brand.
Across its trigger campaigns, such as abandoned basket and browse, the brand experienced an average click rate uplift of 38% and an average open rate uplift of 31%. In its promotional broadcast campaigns, including sales and offers, Farfetch saw an average click rate uplift of 25% and an average open rate uplift of 7%. These optimizations played a crucial role in attracting record numbers of new customers, driving increased year-over-year transactions, and generating more opens, clicks, and conversions throughout the customer journey.
Source: https://phrasee.co/resources/farfetch-finds-a-perfect-fit-with-ai-content/
How ActiveCampaign Slashes its First 90 Day Churn Rate from 25% to 6%
The Challenge:
ActiveCampaign, a SaaS company offering email marketing, automation, and CRM functionality, faced a significant challenge with customer retention. Despite having a successful one-on-one onboarding program, the company struggled to scale its efforts to accommodate the growing number of new users, which reached up to 180,000 per year. As a result, approximately 25% of new customers who didn't receive personalized onboarding attention churned within the first 90 days. The Global Onboarding Services team recognized the need to provide a welcoming onboarding experience to all new customers, as research showed that 76% of customers who had a positive onboarding experience were likely to continue using the service or product.
The Solution:
To address the scalability issue, ActiveCampaign's Global Onboarding Services team developed a innovative solution called Accelerated Onboarding. This live webinar series presented similar content from the one-on-one sessions to any new paying customer, making it a "one-to-many" approach. However, despite the positive impact on adoption and retention, attendance remained low, with only 3-5% of new monthly customers participating.
The team decided to implement automation to auto-enroll all new users in the onboarding webinar. The process, powered by Zapier, seamlessly transferred user information from ActiveCampaign to Demio, the webinar software, based on the user's preferred language. The team also sent personalized emails to explain the auto-enrollment process and provide opt-out options to maintain transparency and avoid appearing spammy.
The Result:
The implementation of the auto-enrollment strategy yielded remarkable results for ActiveCampaign. Webinar attendance skyrocketed by 440%, increasing from an average of 500 to 2,700 attendees per month. This surge in participation led to a doubling of product adoption within the first 30 days of a new user's journey. Most importantly, the average churn rate for customers in their first 90 days dropped significantly, from 25% to 10%, even reaching as low as 6% in some months.
The success of the Accelerated Onboarding program has inspired the ActiveCampaign team to apply the lessons learned to workshops at other touchpoints in the customer journey. By being prescriptive and proactively guiding customers through experiences that positively impact their journey, ActiveCampaign has demonstrated the power of a thoughtful and seamless onboarding experience in driving adoption and retention.
Source: https://zapier.com/customer-stories/activecampaign