I met Aman Naimat, Senior Vice President of Technology at Demandbase at their headquarters in San Francisco on my recent visit to California for Social Media Strategies Summit. Aman is working on leveraging the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science for marketing and sales platforms. On this podcast, episode 150, Aman and I discuss how AI functions in account-based marketing (ABM).
Image source: Demand Gen Report
Before working with Demandbase Aman was previously founder and CTO of Spiderbook, a data-driven sales engine for account-based targeting. Aman has been building CRM systems since he was 19 and was the architect for the Oracle CRM Applications. He has a Masters in Computer Science with research focused on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Understanding from Stanford University, a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Stanford, and is a Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Aman has many patents and scientific publications on Information Retrieval, CRM, and Databases.
AI is Changing the B2B Landscape
Demandbase found that among 500 B2B marketing executives 80% believe that AI will completely change B2B marketing in the next five years. Previous marketing automation focused on efficiency but lacks intimacy with buyers. AI can now help to build this intimacy between brands and their customers. An infinite number of rules are required to create a personalized experience, and the new generation of AI allows for a greater volume of rules. The first step is having knowledge and an understanding of your buyers and their interests to identify what actions are needed to create a highly personalized experience.
Aman noted that Artificial Intelligence is just getting started and there’s lots of excitement about it. He doesn’t recommend jumping all in with AI; instead, focus on problems that will generate revenue and that you already have data on and understand and is challenging to humans. For example, serving highly personalized content to website visitors is one way to utilize AI at scale. Aman says when you mingle structured and unstructured data, magic happens. A fully-customized experience requires 10 billion rules. A human cannot process this volume, but AI powered systems can!
In AI, deep learning builds on natural language generation, and chat bots allow for a personalized conversation. However, the whole buyer’s journey is a conversation according to Aman. The conversations are also happening outside of your website, in person, at conferences, on social media, on forums, etc. Aman suggests allowing AI to access the available unstructured data via the Internet, noting that it is the new source of truth.
The New Generation of AI
Aman notes a trust factor is needed with AI. When it works, it often does non-obvious things. AI powered systems should tell you why it’s doing something, and it should allow for feedback from humans. He says the low 10% adoption rate of AI is because there is a lack of viable systems with very few vertical industry solutions. Good AI products fit comfortably into day-to-day life, and people naturally understand how to use them. These programs are friendly and useful such as Netflix and Amazon.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is all about hyper-targeting accounts that will likely buy from your brand. Artificial Intelligence allows you to understand the accounts greater. It allows for increased intimacy, through knowledge of who to talk to, general research, and the creation of personalized messaging both online and offline.
“AI allows you to recreate intimacy between brands and buyers.”@aman_naimat #sbeshow
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On this episode, you’ll also hear from the Founder and CEO of Demandbase, Chris Golec. Chris explains how marketing needs a better understanding of how to use AI and how it will impact results. Listen to the full episode to hear Chris’ prediction of when AI will become mainstream in B2B marketing.
Featured On This Episode:
- Demandbase’s website
- Aman Naimat on LinkedIn and Twitter
- Chris Golec on LinkedIn and Twitter
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