I’ve been with Listrak over 17 years, from the very early days of digital marketing. In that time, I’ve seen it all and done it all - from a technology and marketing perspective.
The recent surge of terms, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics, on the popular scene has me interested. And I’ve heard a lot of questions - do people talking about it truly understand what it is? Are companies in Silicon Valley realizing the dreams and nightmares of so many science-fiction authors? Are there huge teams of PhDs using supercomputers?
The answer to all of these questions is the same: not really.
I wanted to explore what these terms really mean, how they exist in marketing today and how humans can support the usefulness of AI.
First, we should define the terms:
Listrak has developed several applications of these technologies in products, including
The good news is that none of these programs will enslave the human race (we think). Usage of things like a random forest helps Listrak identify hundreds of millions of product recommendation candidates every single day. Natural language processing to identify likely keywords across a library of blog articles allows us to better provide relevant content to your readers and shoppers.
Predictive analytics are a key component to several of our solutions like: replenishment, send time optimization and propensity-to-buy modeling for our LifeCycle Grid.
What does the future hold for AI at Listrak? Humans. Wait, what? Yes, humans are a crucial component to artificial intelligence although it feels very counterintuitive to say so. You may have heard of the freestyle chess tournament incepted by grandmaster, Gary Kasparov. In it, two amateur men with 3 laptops beat the entire field to win the championship. Supervised learning and training data sets present algorithms with much needed human support to kick off the potential of an AI application. Personalization is going to get a lot more intelligent as we incorporate neural networks alongside a feedback loop to make great recommendations from the start rather than waiting for the system to learn. Simply stated, humans and computers working together will be able to achieve results not possible by either alone.
Stay tuned for more on artificial intelligence and applications in marketing here on the Listrak blog as well as in our product release notes. We predict that you’ll be very interested in what is coming next.