How Conversational AI Helps Revenue Teams Hit Q4 Goals

As we get closer and closer to marking two years of COVID-19, the pandemic continues to affect how we all interact with each other, both in our personal lives and at work. That means Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success are again adapting methods of engaging with customers and potential customers. With the economy still recovering, businesses and people are generally more cautious about making purchases. That means revenue teams looking to hit their end-of-year goals will need to put more focus on working with existing customers and fostering those relationships—no easy task, as Customer Success and Sales teams know.

Whether you want to grow your customer base or further engage your current client base, AI is a trend that’s worth exploring. Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams are increasingly turning to Conversational AI technology to automate some of the mundane but critical tasks and fill the gaps in the buyer journey. Looking at Q3 and Q4, these are the four most promising trends we see for revenue teams.

Email Engagements
Email has long been a bread-and-butter channel for engaging customers, but blending a targeted AI approach with in-email purchases is breathing new life into the old standard. In-email purchases streamline the buying process, making it so that the customer doesn’t have to click links that could look like malware. The added convenience for the customer can make marketing campaigns considerably more successful.

The more customers you have, the more difficult it is to conduct a successful outreach program. It can be more of a challenge to engage customers over email, and phone calls only have a slightly higher success rate. Using AI to engage customers through these media means Sales and Marketing can focus their time and energy where they can make the greatest impact, rather than spending hours putting together low-engagement messages.

Conversational AI for a Customized Approach
People want to be treated like people, not a number. A personalized approach goes a long way towards making your customers feel like you’re working to genuinely improve their experience. With people feeling more isolated again, that customized approach also helps to create a greater sense of connectivity. Personalization in marketing campaigns can create a sense of camaraderie, which can ultimately boost your results.

Conversational AI offers an easy way of adding that customization and personalized connection. We’re not just talking about auto-filling the customer’s name at the beginning of an email. This technology can develop a personal message that focuses on products and services that could better serve the buyer’s individual needs. Conversational AI analyzes recent buyer behavior to target buyers and potential customers when they’re more likely to make a purchase or need something in addition to a product they’re actively considering.

AI trends for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success include an emphasis on a human-like, personalized touch that can help people feel like they’re connecting one-on-one, not getting hit with a spam cannon.

Defining an AI Strategy for Marketing and Sales
A growing number of Marketing teams are creating plans and defining the AI strategies to maximize performance. The AI needs to continue to learn to optimize its results, and the ability for AI to learn is expected to continue to improve. More companies are planning on implementing better-defined AI strategies that will continue to learn based on that strategy. This will not only help through the rest of the year, but a well-defined strategy is something that will continue to benefit the Sales and Marketing team well beyond the end of 2021, making a great long-term change.

Predicting Patterns over Different Geographic Regions
As people spend more time indoors (due as much to the transition into colder weather as to COVID restrictions), Marketing and Sales teams are looking for ways to better predict buying trends based on regions.

Geographical targeting has long been a staple of Marketing, but AI makes it considerably easier to use more real-time data to determine what works better for different locations. Machine learning is able to correlate how buyers are reacting to different brands, products, and services. This prevents companies from initiating campaigns in regions where they are less likely to be successful.

Looking to build resilience for your revenue teams? Explore our eBook: An Augmented Workforce for Surviving and Thriving in the New Normal.