The Intersection of Generative AI and Personalization
Personalizing messages increases conversion rates. Every marketer knows this.
Yet B2B personalization is woefully behind what we see in B2C. In my experience, there are five distinct levels of personalization -- and reaching the top requires making full use of generative AI.
Level 1: Location-Aware Personalization
At the base of the pyramid sits location awareness. You know a user is in a foreign country, so you localize content to their geography. You know they sit in a region covered by a specific AE, so you send messages from that rep.
This type of personalization is table stakes.
Level 2: UI-Based Personalization
One level up is UI-based personalization. You adjust the formatting of content based on the user's device -- mobile layouts differ from desktop layouts, for example.
Still basic, but a step beyond raw geography.
Level 3: Identity-Driven Personalization
Next comes identity-driven personalization. You greet leads by name and reference their title or company. Sadly, this is where most B2B companies stop. They merge a few tokens into a template and call it "personalized."
Level 4: Interest-Based AI Personalization
AI makes the next level far more interesting. I call it interest-based personalization.
Here you use AI to scan an individual's social media content and understand their personal likes and dislikes. You do the same with news about their company to surface key corporate priorities. Then you combine the two to generate what feels like a personalized email.
This approach is highly effective, and a new crop of AI companies is building products to do exactly this for SDRs. The catch: these emails, while personalized, are not truly personal. I wrote about this distinction in my earlier post on the AI B2B marketing personalization myth.
Level 5: Generative AI Predictive Personalization
The final level -- and the future of B2B marketing -- is predictive personalization.
Just because I like tennis and my company is hiring does not mean I want your solution. Interest-based signals alone are insufficient. You need to understand my motivations. That is where generative AI and predictive personalization intersect.
To get there, look at digital behavior. What pages has a prospect viewed on your website? What whitepapers or webinars have they consumed? What actions have they taken inside your product? Compare those actions with the journeys of customers in similar situations. What did those customers do next?
You can then use generative AI to send messages that genuinely help the prospect along their buyer journey. Think of it as "because you looked at this, we thought you would find these pieces of content valuable." Netflix and Amazon already operate this way. B2B companies, by and large, do not.
Maximizing Impact in B2B Marketing
Better personalization drives better conversions. Better conversions drive more pipeline. And higher-quality pipeline translates to more revenue.
The question is not whether to invest in generative AI for personalization -- it is how quickly you can climb the pyramid.
