DMA HK: StanChart HK on how marketers can amplify the marketing funnel with AI

To stay relevant and keep up with the latest trends in the market, it is unavoidable for marketers to adopt new technologies such as AI to capture new customers. 

In fact, 81% of marketers have reported that their organisation is currently using GPT models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s AI Gemini, formerly Bard, according to CleverTap’s AI customer engagement report.  

While 82% of respondents have realised an increase in operational efficiency with AI by streamlining workflows and automating content generation, 54% of marketers have also used AI to achieve faster content generation and campaign rollout, said the report.  

In a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, a spokesperson from Standard Chartered Hong Kong said AI can help process billions of data in a split second from a brand's past campaigns and through external browsing or behavioural data.  

Furthermore, AI can work round the clock on delivering the right creatives to the right audience, said the spokesperson, “as long as you have fed it with sufficient data and established required tracking capabilities for it to chase the goals and targets, and prepared enough versioning of creatives, they will help increase the possibility of digital conversion.”  

Leveraging AI to craft a digital campaign 

For Standard Chartered, AI was adopted mainly on analysing billions of data points in first-party and third-party data pools in deriving the bank’s target customers’ profiles, understanding their demographics, interests and behaviours, so that the bank can craft the creative assets that can resonate the most with them and tying with its products and offers at the same time, said the spokesperson.  

“We also use AI to predict their purchase intention and locate the customers with the highest propensity in order to maximise our impact with the marketing spending,” added the spokesperson.  

Once the creative assets are launched on media platforms, such as Google DV360, YouTube, App campaigns, search, amongst others, real-time data would help AI optimise towards the best performing creative assets based on the bank’s preset goals for the campaign, according to the spokesperson. “We may also see the real-time performance and decide whether the earlier prediction is still valid.” 

“Marketers need to ensure that they can identify their target customers with the highest conversion rate based on the digital signals they acquire in the universe of data, and also deliver the right marketing assets that can trigger consumers' interests and in turn trigger the action that marketers desire,” the spokesperson added. 

Despite having to spend plenty of time and energy to understand AI’s limits, marketers can work with the experts in the AI marketing field and use the latest available tools offered by agencies and tech giants, said the spokesperson.  

“During the execution process, we need to evaluate what kind of data should be injected in the campaign, to fulfil the business objectives, data privacy expectation, customer experiences, amongst others, and formulate the best and balanced strategy that can achieve our business goals,” added the spokesperson. 

Marketers need to set up a framework for the campaign to determine which part requires input from AI and then facilitate AI to perform in its most effective manner in that area, said the spokesperson. “On top, we need to ensure how to make use of AI in a responsible way, and eliminate possible bias and flaws which currently may be found in AI.” 

To hear more, Eric Chan, director and head, growth and digital marketing, WRB marketing, Standard Chartered Hong Kong will be delivering a keynote presentation around amplifying the marketing funnel with AI and insights-driven campaigns, at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Digital Marketing Asia at Mira Hong Kong on 23 October.