Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) continue to be top of mind as marketers are leveraging AI and ML in a variety of ways to improve their customer loyalty programs and strategies. Integration of these technologies into day-to-day workflows is a challenge for many brands, especially when considering potential roadblocks from limited budgets, internal resources, and the ability for these innovative technologies to complement brands’ existing marketing technology stacks.
Loyalty360 CEO Mark Johnson recently spoke with Monique De La Rosa. VP, Data Science and Analytics at Ansira, about the opportunities AI and ML present to elevate customer loyalty programs with more seamless and personalized experiences.
How does Ansira define AI and its use in customer loyalty?
We look at AI as more of assisted intelligence and it's an extension of our collective intellect and we leverage it to look across not only our internal data and operations, from people, processes and platforms, but for our clients as well.
An example of that can be how we leverage it to identify what's the best offer, how much people are leveraging the rewards and the programs that they have access to and how do we optimize how we communicate to them with those different programs.
How are the brands you work alongside successfully leveraging AI and ML to elevate that experience?
Looking at the signals in a way that is a lot quicker than we've done ever before, being able to immediately, in real time, look at a customer standing point-of-sale and identify what their rewards are or where they stand in terms of what they're buying and even make immediate recommendations right there as they're making a purchase standing in line in one of our retail locations.
How are your clients exploring and ensuring empathy when bringing AI into their loyalty programs?
AI kind of reminds me of that very smart and precocious preteen. You have to help to not only understand their intellect, but how to navigate as they communicate with others. It's one of those things where being able to leverage AI is the ability to have human intervention still, to rely on it to be an extension of the intellect, but still have safeguards in place which allow human touch to QA and make sure that how we're communicating what we're trying to do from a brand perspective is in alignment with what our goals and objectives are.
How can brands leverage the opportunity GenAI offers when crafting those messages, but also ensure quality control and that ethical considerations are being met?
We spoke about a little bit earlier having human intervention, always making sure that we have effective guidance and guardrails or governance around how we leverage it from an employee perspective, but also how we train our models to be able to identify biases. Today at Ansira, we have a compliance engine which we run our AI through.
What are some of the pitfalls brands can avoid when incorporating AI and ML technologies into existing martech stacks?
Not overestimating the capacity of what they're trying to do.
It's really being attuned to what it is that we're trying to achieve and then looking at the systems that we're employing, and their efficacy around how do we make sure that we are moving forward in a way that supports our objective with that tool and technology.
Brands are leveraging AI and ML in data analysis and modeling to gain insights for improving their customer loyalty programs. When working with brands using AI/ML in this way, what have you observed?
Hyper-personalization has increased a great deal. Being able to get a more real time feel on insights that are happening that we may not have looked at in previous years. I come from an advanced analytics background. So being able to leverage AI to look across the vast amount of data we have. To be able to draw conclusions that we couldn't get at before. I think that's one of the ways that we've been able to do it.
How is GenAI adoption perceived among the brand teams you work with today? How do you see perceptions evolving?
I think for the most part there is a great deal of excitement in the industry, whether it's internally or with clients around the capabilities across all the ways that we can use AI today. I do think that there's still some trepidation, especially as it relates to data and data privacy and how we are able to engage data so fully and holistically today, which we couldn't do before. I think it's really around making sure our excitement is measured and that we're able to make sure we have the right protocols and guardrails in place as we move forward with leveraging it.
Looking toward the future, how do you see brands employing AI/ML in support of customer loyalty programs and efforts?
The sky is the limit. I think as we continue to evolve programs and the way we interact with clients, we spoke earlier about empathy and AI, which is really about making sure we understand the feature signals and how those things overlay with some of our psychographic knowledge of our customers. And how those psychographics sometimes interact with the behavioral presentation of what clients or customers may do.
What is the biggest opportunity or one thing that brands could do to leverage artificial intelligence or machine learning to the benefit of that brand?
Looking at some of the traditional advanced analytics that they've done in their organizations and seeing how that can translate into a more of a real time algorithmic perspective. It's taking those models that we once used to build like “most likely to open our direct mail” and transforming that into an algorithm that can do that work in seconds.
Do you have any closing advice or thoughts? What’s next for Ansira as we move toward fall?
Ansira recently acquired both Brain Muscle and Sprout Loud. I think what's going to be wonderful about the future is bringing together the power of all of that technology into one place and being able to leverage those tools. The advanced tools that we have today are just amazing and we do a lot of beta testing from a machine learning and AI perspective internally from chat bots to all types of things that we do to test ourselves and with our business initially. I think rolling out some of those things in the future, as we continue to bring together this best-in-class technology, is going to be really exciting.
Quick-fire questions
1. What word or short phrase do you use to inspire others?
We can do anything we put our minds to
2. What is your least favorite word that others use?
I don't know
3. What excites you at work?
Solving
4. What do you find tiresome—at home or work?
Never seems to be enough time
5. What book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
Ego is the Enemy
6. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Chef
7. What do you enjoy doing that you don’t get to do often?
Travel more
8. Who inspired you to become the person you are today?
My parents
9. What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
What I'm going to feed my children
10. How do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
As someone who was radically objective, was fair, someone who made a point to learn, someone who was kind and led with kindness