By AI-powered funnels are automated systems designed to enhance or complement existing sales funnels. They leverage predictive analytics and other innovations to improve lead generation and conversion rates.
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More than 75% of organizations use automation and AI in marketing, and those that do are more likely to say their strategies are successful (Exploding Topics). In this article, we’ll go through the various benefits and use cases of automating your sales funnels with the power of AI, and how it can help your agency save time and resources.
Benefits of an AI-powered sales funnel
Artificial intelligence helps with digital marketing and sales by optimizing customer journeys via personalization and other dynamic—and automated—choices, identifying potential leads based on consumer behaviors online, and creating efficiencies that help businesses get more bang for their marketing spend.
Some current benefits of using AI to power your sales funnel include:
- Increased efficiency and productivity. Lead generation is a critical task but also one full of tedious repeat work. From gathering and storing potential contacts to following up with leads, sales, and marketing staff spend a lot of time on routine tasks. AI tools can handle many of these tasks—or make these and other work easier—to drive efficiencies in your funnel.
- Enhanced customer experience through personalization. Knowing what your customer needs before they request it can help you stand out, and AI offers a way to sift through enormous amounts of data and make accurate predictions about those needs. Personalizing the customer experience with AI-driven segmenting and targeting increases your chance of closing deals or inspiring repeat and loyal clients.
- Improved sales forecasting. AI can gather, assess, and make predictions based on vast banks of data, and that can help you develop better sales forecasting. An in-depth understanding of your customers' behaviors, the market in general, and other aspects of your sales funnel can also help you make data-driven decisions in areas such as staffing, procurement, or business growth.
- Better customer engagement. AI tools such as chatbots and virtual assistants can support strong engagement for existing clients and enhance customer service offerings. This can lead to increased client satisfaction and better overall customer lifetime values.
Use cases for an AI-powered sales funnel
How you integrate AI sales and marketing tools into your sales funnel depends in part on your industry, the nature of your business, and what your sales goals are. The AI sales funnel use cases below illustrate how these tools can be leveraged for a variety of purposes:
E-commerce
AI helps online retailers of all types make dynamic product recommendations as people browse websites. Complex algorithms crunch the numbers instantly, taking into account a consumer's browsing behavior, past purchases, likely demographics, and other factors to show them what they might need or want. The impact on the sales funnel is an increased likelihood of conversion and a reduced time to conversion.
Another use case for e-commerce is in providing personalized shopping experiences. A simple example is that someone browsing a national retailer with physical and online stores often gets prompts about what's available at nearby stores for immediate pickup.
Image source: Walmart
Lead generation
A common struggle for many sales organizations is spending time on leads that aren't fully vetted and turn out to be unlikely to convert. In fact, almost a third of business-to-business marketers think lead quality is one of the most important factors in overall success due to those issues (Adam Connell).
AI can help with lead scoring and qualification, ensuring only highly qualified leads make it through automated processes and require effort from your staff. Alternatively, AI can rank leads to ensure you know where to put most of your effort without losing access to information about long-shot leads.
Customer support
Artificial intelligence helps businesses keep up with customer communication demands without burning through call center or chat center staff. Solutions such as chat bots support instant and accurate responses to routine questions, and AI’s growing natural language processing capability helps it evaluate scenarios to understand when a customer needs to speak to a human for additional assistance.
Email marketing
Using AI in your email marketing funnels can help you automate content and better target campaigns for increased open rates and click through. Some examples of AI use for email marketing include:
- Personalizing content beyond a mail-merge inclusion of someone’s name. For example, AI can assess past shopping behavior and include images of items each person is most likely to connect with.
- Retargeting via follow-up emails. AI can determine whether someone recently browsed the site, left something in a cart, or engaged on social media. It can then launch a timely email marketing campaign designed to build on that recent touchpoint.
- Creating more intelligent segmentation. AI’s access to and ability to understand your customer information and other data can result in better segmentation and targeting.
Sales forecasting
AI data analysis can lead to more effective sales forecasting. The predictive analysis capabilities of AI can uncover sales trends human analysts might miss when manually reviewing data. It can also help you predict customer behavior, so you can proactively approach new and existing clients with services and products they are likely to be interested in.
5 AI Tools to Build Your Marketing Funnels
Whether you’re ready to white label AI sales tools or you want to invest in the benefits of AI-powered funnels for your agency, the first step is researching tools. Get started below by learning more about five AI tools that can help you build and support strong marketing and sales funnels.
1. Vendasta
Vendasta offers a number of marketing integrations and AI tools that help you drive efficiencies in your funnel. That includes social media marketing campaigns and multi-channel approaches you can manage from a single dashboard.
You can start by using AI to create in-depth reports of potential client businesses, getting insights into pain points. Use that knowledge to enhance the efficacy of your marketing materials or reach out with a personalized offer that increases your chance of a conversion.
Vendasta’s automated tools also include features such as:
- Automated content generation and suggestions. Make fast work of social media posts and replies and generate on-page content that’s more likely to engage your audience.
- Deep dives into scaled campaigns to support segmenting, personalization, and understanding potential clients. Automate metrics and analytics that help you understand campaign performance at various levels, even when you’re sending to thousands of potential clients.
- 24/7 marketing and sales technology. Leverage tools such as chatbots and automated marketing campaigns to ensure your message works for you outside of normal business hours.
2. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels automates marketing processes designed to get your audience from outside channels to your website, typically by creating funnels based on social media and online ads. It also provides tools for building sites, automating shopping cart experiences, and managing existing customer lists. This includes automated reporting and real-time tracking of consumer behavior.
The idea of this AI and marketing tool is that it can replace other disparate tools to streamline the online marketing funnel for websites.
3. GetResponse
GetResponse concentrates on services related to engaging with your audience online. It offers list-building tools for email marketing and building site and landing pages. You can also leverage AI email generator and autoresponder tools to put some of your marketing tasks on autopilot with GetResponse.
For on-site sales, GetReponse offers marketing integrations that support automated product recommendations and conversion funnel tools such as notifications. You can also use this tool to automate some webinar and paid ad tasks in your funnel.
4. Postaga
Postaga is a more specific AI marketing funnel tool that helps you create new campaign ideas or find specific contacts.
You can use Postaga to generate high-value backlink opportunities based on your marketing campaigns. It also analyzes existing content, including webpage content, and presents information about potential emails, contact names, or personal needs to help you create winning sales emails or presentations.
Image source: Postaga
5. My AI Front Desk
My AI Front Desk is a great addition to many AI sales funnels because it supports consumer contact without the need to constantly man a human-powered reception desk. My AI Front Desk can provide basic information and scheduling to clients via phone or chat, and it's capable of handling some complex questions.
Machine learning allows this technology to learn about your business, making it more adept at answering questions. It can also send pertinent links via text to callers to prompt scheduling or other tasks.
Image source: My AI Front Desk
Leverage AI tools to power your sales funnels
AI-powered funnels don’t do everything for you, and you still need human intervention and expertise to drive optimal success. However, as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of understanding and responding to complex information and situations, it provides growing benefits for sales and marketing organizations.
If you’re not exploring and implementing tools such as AI social media management or AI-generated content—along with other options to enhance your sales funnel—you’re likely to fall behind in a market full of competitors who are.
