Navigating the Future: Copilots Unveiled

The current state of the AI marketing tools landscape can only be described as a frenzy!  There is a growing demand for AI marketing automation tools.  One area set to have the biggest impact on marketing teams in the next few years is marketing copilots.

What are AI marketing copilots?

AI Marketing copilots are a new and rapidly evolving technology. The first marketing copilot was launched in 2017. The market has rapidly grown since then.

Marketing copilots are designed to assist human marketers, not replace them. They can help marketers be more productive, efficient, and creative, but they cannot make decisions or create strategies on their own.

AI marketing copilots are more complex than other AI marketing tools. They use machine learning, to analyse data from a variety of sources, such as customer data, website data, and social media data.  This data is then used to generate insights and recommendations that can help marketers, rather than simply automating tasks. So AI marketing copilots are both powerful and versatile.

Marketing copilots are typically being developed as either bolt-ons or stand-alone platforms.  

Marketing copilots built into marketing automation platforms are typically AI-powered features that can be used to enhance the capabilities of marketing automation platforms like Einstein for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.  

As stand-alone AI marketing tools such as the Persado Motivation AI Platform, they deliver value in their own right in specific areas of marketing, such as content generation, audience targeting, or personalisation, and integrate with other marketing tools, but they are not typically part of a marketing automation platform.

The benefits of using marketing copilots.

Marketing copilots are already having an impact across the martech stack.  

AI marketing copilots are helping marketers to:

• Increased productivity: AI marketing copilots can help marketers to be more productive by automating tasks and providing them with intelligent assistance.
• Improved efficiency: AI marketing copilots can help marketers improve their efficiency by helping them to make better decisions and avoid errors.
• Enhanced creativity: AI marketing copilots can help marketers to be more creative by generating new ideas and possibilities, and in turn delivering some of the creative outputs required.
• Better customer experience: AI marketing copilots can help marketers provide a better customer experience by understanding and responding to customer needs more effectively.

For example, an AI marketing copilot could be used to:

• Generate content ideas and write content that is tailored to specific audiences utilising data from your CRM to enhance the relevance of the topics and content.
• Target the right audience for marketing campaigns by identifying potential customers, their past behaviours and their interests.
• Personalise marketing campaigns by crunching your customer data to match the audience to the message and personalise beyond the superficial.
• Measure the results of marketing campaigns by tracking website traffic, leads, and sales.

Five of the best AI Marketing Copilots.

Although there are many copilots coming to market right now, these are five marketing copilots shaking up the market.  Which type of marketing copilot is right for you depends on your specific needs and budget. If you are looking for a marketing copilot focused on a specific area of marketing, then a stand-alone marketing copilot may be a good option for you. If you are already using a marketing automation platform, then consider using a marketing copilot that is built into your platform.

1. Persado increases conversions using AI language generation.  Operating within the marketing applications layer of the martech stack, Persado is an AI-powered marketing platform that helps marketers create more persuasive content. It also operates at the personalisation and engagement layer, delivering a dynamic online cart experience that speaks to your customers as if you knew them personally. Persado uses machine learning to analyse millions of data points to identify the words, phrases, and sentence structures that are most likely to resonate with specific audiences.
2. Adobe Sensei is Adobe’s AI copilot technology that operates across the Adobe platform, including Adobe Experience Cloud, Creative Cloud, and Document Cloud. It uses AI and ML to help users create, deliver, and personalise experiences across all Adobe products and services. It uses machine learning to analyse data from a variety of sources, including customer data, website data, and social media data.  From content creation and audience targeting to personalisation and measurement, Adobe Sensei is a powerful tool that can be used to improve the workflow and results of users across all Adobe products.
3. Beamer Copilot is an AI-powered assistant designed to help product marketers excel in their roles. Focused on playing a role in the product GTM cycle, Beamer helps product teams announce what’s new, prioritise what to build next and close the feedback loop. Say goodbye to writer’s block and miscommunication. Beamer integrates seamlessly with your current business workflow with over 3000 integrations available.  
4. Jasper feels like it has been around a long time before generative AI took over the world. Launched in February 2021, it’s an AI copilot that helps marketing teams of all types expand their creative potential to create better outcomes from their content. Predominantly a content-writing engine, this copilot helps marketing teams achieve speed and performance when writing copy.
5. Chatspot is a free AI-powered assistant that combines the power of ChatGPT with unique data sources, including the HubSpot CRM. It helps marketers through a series of tasks associated with prospecting and customer management.  ChatSpot’s strength is its purpose-built prompt templates.  This copilot really has been fun to use. Results from the templates such as understanding your prospect’s pre-existing tech stack, creating competitor analysis tables and creating subscriptions to news for any company, that creates email notifications as soon as that news is published, have been ultra useful.  With creative templates built in too like image or blog generation, Chatspot is almost the holly grail of AI-assisted marketing.  However, it really is in a league of its own if you use it in conjunction with Hubspot CRM.  It makes light work of everything from querying your deal or contact data to asking questions on campaign performance.

How to use AI marketing tools and marketing copilots to generate content ideas and write content.

Consistently generating fresh, engaging content can be a daunting task. Fortunately, the advent of AI-powered marketing tools and marketing copilots has revolutionised content creation for marketers.

AI marketing tools like HubSpot’s Content Strategy Tool and MarketMuse excel at identifying trending topics and generating content ideas tailored to your target audience. These tools analyse vast amounts of data, including social media trends, industry publications, and competitor content, to uncover relevant topics that resonate with your audience. (Disclosure: I am a Hubspot affiliate. If you make a purchase, I receive a commission). 

You can also use AI marketing tools to analyse your competitors’ content to see what they are writing about and what is resonating with their audience. Tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs can help you to identify your competitors’ most popular content and the keywords they are targeting.

Marketing copilots are now your content creation sidekick.  Marketing copilots like Jasper and Copysmith take content creation to the next level. These AI-powered assistants can transform your content ideas into well-structured, engaging copy.

AI marketing tools and marketing copilots are invaluable assets for marketers seeking to streamline their content creation process. By leveraging these tools, marketers can focus on strategy and creativity, while AI handles the heavy lifting of idea generation and content production. This powerful combination empowers marketers to produce high-quality, engaging content that resonates with their target audience and drives successful marketing campaigns.

How to use AI marketing tools and marketing copilots to personalise marketing campaigns.

Mass-marketing is a pre-AI era term that has little place in today’s marketing strategy.  Mass marketing is wasteful and unsustainable and customers no longer want it or respond to it like they once did.  Consumers today want relevance of messages and creatives which the industry generally refers to as ‘personalisation’. So personalisation is the key to marketing success.

Customers expect brands to understand their needs and preferences, and deliver tailored experiences that meet them where they are. AI marketing tools and marketing copilots can help marketers achieve this goal by providing the insights and capabilities needed to personalise marketing campaigns at scale.

AI Marketing Tools unlock customer insights. AI copilots like Salesforce Einstein and Adobe Sensei Marketing Cloud use machine learning to analyse customer data from a variety of sources, including website analytics, email engagement, and social media interactions. This data is used to identify customer segments, segment behaviours, and individual customer preferences. These insights can then be used to personalise marketing campaigns, such as targeted email sequences, personalised product recommendations, and dynamic website content.  Let’s look at these three applications in more detail.

Targeted email campaigns: AI can be used to segment your email list based on customer data, such as purchase history, website behaviour, and email engagement. You can then send targeted email campaigns to each segment with personalised content that is relevant to their needs and interests.

Personalised product recommendations: AI can be used to analyse customer data to identify patterns and trends. You can then use this information to generate personalised product recommendations for each customer on your website and in your email campaigns.  For example, Netflix uses AI copilots to generate personalised recommendations for its users. This helps Netflix users discover new content that they are likely to enjoy and keeps them engaged with the platform.

Dynamic website content: AI can be used to create dynamic website content that changes based on the customer’s browsing behaviour and interests. For example, you could display different products or product categories to customers based on their past purchases or the pages they have visited on your website.

To make any of these use cases sing, you’ll need the help of marketing copilots like Persado and Phrasee that make it easy to personalise marketing campaigns at scale. These AI-powered copilots use natural language processing and machine learning to generate personalised copy for a variety of marketing materials, including email subject lines, ad copy, and landing page content. Marketing copilots can also be used to test different variations of marketing copy to see what resonates best with different customer segments.

If you’re taking your personalisation to the next level, then you’ll start to utilise AI Customer Intelligence platforms.  These platforms have the ability to crunch billions of data points at scale.  Using customer records, transaction data, past campaign data and third-party CRM enrichments, you can start to personalise next best action in live customer care call centre scenarios, improve churn models with customer intention insights, and trigger right-time, right-channel, right messaging interactions via mobile app engagement, outbound calling or programmatic advertising.

How can marketers push the boundaries of copilots and drive differentiated value for their companies?

At this point, you are now clear on the value of AI copilots to marketers in generating new and innovative content, personalising content at scale, and automating tasks to free up time for more strategic work.  However, if you want to drive differentiated value, you will need to outsmart your competition and think smarter.  Some other ways in which to push the boundaries of AI copilots include:

• Experimenting with new content formats that resonate with your target audience and help you stand out from the competition
• Be creative with your use of AI copilots. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different ways to use AI copilots to generate content, personalise campaigns, and automate tasks.
• Use AI copilots to collaborate with other teams. Collaborating with other teams, such as sales and product development, to create more cohesive and effective marketing campaigns. For example, AI copilots can be used to generate personalised sales pitches or to create marketing content that is aligned with the product development roadmap
• Track your results and measure the impact of AI copilots. It’s important to track your results and measure the impact of AI copilots so that you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you to optimise your use of AI copilots over time.
• Understand the basics of machine learning. If you can upskill in this area, you will be better able to use marketing copilots effectively. For example, marketers should understand how to choose the right machine-learning algorithm for their specific needs, and they should understand how to interpret the results of machine-learning algorithms. Machine learning is a powerful technology that is being used to improve the capabilities of marketing copilots.

The challenges associated with using AI marketing copilots.

There are also some challenges associated with using AI marketing copilots as you’d expect:

• Cost: AI marketing copilots can be expensive, especially for small businesses.
• Complexity: AI marketing copilots can be complex to use, and marketers may need to undergo training in order to use them effectively.
• Transparency: It can be difficult to understand how AI marketing copilots make their decisions, which can lead to concerns about bias and transparency.

AI marketing copilots have the potential to revolutionise the way that marketing is done. It is important to understand your commitment and weigh the benefits and challenges before deciding whether or not to use an AI marketing copilot.

Tips for choosing and using AI marketing copilots.

Here are some tips for choosing and using an AI marketing copilot.  Choose an AI marketing copilot that is tailored to your specific needs. There are AI marketing copilots available for a variety of tasks, such as content generation, audience targeting, personalisation, and measurement.  

Make sure that you have the budget and the expertise to use the AI marketing copilot effectively.  One of the biggest challenges for companies in this new era of AI marketing is going to be acquiring the skills within the marketing team to operate, execute and drive differentiated value compared to the competition using similar AI marketing tools.

Which type of marketing copilot is right for you will depend on your specific needs and budget. If you are looking for a marketing copilot focused on a specific area of marketing, then a stand-alone marketing copilot may be a good option for you. If you are already using a marketing automation platform, then you may want to consider using a marketing copilot that is built into your platform.

The benefits of using a stand-alone marketing copilot include:

• Stand-alone marketing copilots are typically focused on a specific area of marketing, such as content generation or audience targeting. This means that they may be more effective.
• Stand-alone marketing copilots provide flexibility and can be integrated with a variety of marketing tools, which gives you more flexibility in how you use them.

The benefits of using a marketing copilot built into a marketing automation platform include:

• Convenience: Marketing copilots built into marketing automation platforms are convenient to use because they are already integrated with the platform. This means that you do not need to switch between different systems to use the marketing copilot.
• Integration: Marketing copilots built into marketing automation platforms are typically tightly integrated with the platform. This means that they can share data with the platform and work together to improve the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Marketing copilots built into marketing automation platforms are typically included in the price of the platform. This can save you money if you are already using the platform.

Ultimately, the best way to choose a marketing copilot is to consider your specific needs and budget. If you are not sure which type of marketing copilot is right for you, then you should consult with a marketing expert.

Future potential of AI marketing copilots and how they are likely to impact the marketing industry.

Marketing copilots will become increasingly sophisticated and capable in the coming years. As machine learning technology advances, marketing copilots will be able to understand and analyse more complex data sets, and they will be able to generate more accurate and actionable insights and recommendations.

Marketing copilots will become more integrated with other marketing tools. This will make it easier for marketers to use marketing copilots to improve their marketing campaigns.  They will also become more affordable as the cost of machine learning technology decreases.

Forecasts that will shape, surprise, or influence the market for marketing copilots in the next 6 months include:

• Google AI will be developing and releasing new marketing copilot products that will be able to automate a wider range of repetitive marketing tasks such as keyword research, content research, and social media scheduling.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts a new ‘age of AI copilots’.  Copilots will fundamentally transform our relationship with technology.  For example, Microsoft’s advertising platform will benefit from its copilot to help answer questions, provide content recommendations and enable other features. New AI features within Copilot and Bing will help advertisers create user profiles for targeted advertising.

Marketing copilots have the potential to revolutionise the way that marketing is done and as the market for marketing copilots continues to grow, we can expect to see even more innovative and powerful productivity, efficiency, and creativity hacks.