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Almost all small business marketers believe they need to adopt AI, judging by The Future Of AI Marketing Isn’t Added On—It’s Built In, a study by Intuit Mailchimp, with a survey conducted by Forrester.
Of the SMBs polled, 88% believe they must increase their use of automation and AI to meet customer expectations and stay competitive.
What’s more, 68% say that strategically boosting their adoption of marketing automation is important or very important to their organization.
But many are unable to leverage these advanced tools. The following issues are holding them back from achieving their goals:
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Here’s one more problem: 70% lack data-driven recommendations to improve performance compared to their peers. Many have to manually pull data.
Still, the need is there, and growing ever more urgent: 88% of marketers say customer expectations are at an all-time high.
Why are they so high? “There are three key factors that explain these elevated expectations,” says Michelle Taite, chief marketing officer, Intuit Mailchimp. “First, customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and want a more personalized experience from the brands they interact with.”
“Second, customers crave connected journeys with consistent interactions across all of their marketing channels. And third, customers have a strong desire to see more innovation from the companies they support— including better products and newer ways to access those products,” Taite adds.
Small businesses seem to know this, and they also realize there are risks to not doing a good job of deploying automation and AI technology:
Forrester surveyed 313 small business marketers in North America, Australia and the UK in March 2023.
Ray Schultz is the former editor of DM News, Chief Marketer, Direct, Circulation Management and other marketing titles.
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