How can brands better leverage AI automation to drive digital transformation?

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) automation is no longer an option, but a necessary “must-have” for companies to stay competitive in the digital age, said Elvis Yan (pictured), chief marketing officer, UA Finance at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's inaugural Digital Marketing Asia Hong Kong conference.  

AI automation plays a crucial role in boosting usage and improving efficiency in marketing campaigns. “By leveraging AI, brands can deliver the right message at the right time through channels such as EDM and SMS,” said Yan, “AI-powered chatbots can also effectively handle sudden surges in traffic and provide instant support, reducing costs and meeting customer preferences.” 

That’s why UA Finance has implemented a three-layered model where AI plays a central role. The storage layer enables real-time collection of customer data, including transactional and behavioral information from various channels.  

“Then we feed the data to the customer data platform, which utilises AI to segment customers based on their preferences and interests,” Yan said. Moreover, the model incorporates AI-driven marketing automation to effectively communicate with customers through their preferred channels. 

To improve customer journey and streamline UA Finance’s operation efficiency, UA Finance has unveiled an AI chatbot on its app and website to provide human-like support instantly for customers. “The generative AI chatbot can also be connected to the internal system. So, the service is no longer limited to general and primary inquiries, but also some more different surfaces,” Yan said. 

For example, the chatbot will require customers to input their personal information such as HKID numbers to get the latest credit card statement, he added.  

Potential challenges of adopting AI automation 

Despite the efficiency of AI automation tools in enhancing users’ digital experience, marketers may face different challenges when adopting them.  

“Choosing the right solution is not easy because we are not born to be IT guys,” Yan said. As such, marketers should talk to vendors and agencies to understand what new products are available, as well as understand new market trends and knowledge, said Yan.  

“We have to improve the performance, we have to streamline the operations, we go to set a KPI at what is the deliverable for every dollar we spend to invest in the project,” Yan added. 

Given that people are the assets of each company, Yan said it is crucially important to skill the traditional marketer to become a digital marketer. “We provide internal training, we transfer offline to online, we have to conduct internal training, ask the agencies and solution vendors to provide hard skill training for them. We also hire talents who have marketing automation skills,” Yan said.  

Conducting A/B test is also important as practice makes perfect. Yan said companies may advocate a culture of trial and error to conduct A/B tests to allow the marketing team to study, learn and optimise. 

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