Using ChatGPT for Marketing Automation

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene at the end of 2022, it changed the way organizations thought about artificial intelligence (AI). Here was an accessible tool — which goes beyond voice assistants and data analytics — to allow marketers to change the way they work. 

The AI market is booming. According to McKinsey, the number of AI capabilities that companies employ has doubled over the last four years, while global corporate investment has increased sixfold. What’s interesting is where investors place their focus because it indicates what the next “big thing” will be. From 2020 to 2022, global investment in AI startups increased by $5 billion with an emphasis on machine learning (ML) and chatbot companies. Therefore, it looks like the era of generative AI has just begun.

Since its humble beginnings with handwriting and speech recognition in 1998, AI has come a long way. Think back just 10 years, and the technology didn’t exist to reliably recognize language or images. Therefore, when OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, it really was revolutionary — and became the fastest-growing app of all time. Two months after its launch, ChatGPT had 100 million active users, a milestone that took the social media platform TikTok nine months and the ill-fated Google+ 14 months to achieve. Even though ChatGPT is still in its research and feedback-collection phase, the demand is so high that on February 1, 2023, it launched a subscription version (priced at $20/month) to allow users to secure access.

In this article, we explore ChatGPT in depth and discover how it can be used to best effect within marketing today, as well as where the technology will lead to customer success efforts next.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is AI technology that uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand context, intent, and word associations, so it can respond to users in a way that mimics human speech and writing.

Using large language models (LLMs) to create a deep neural network (DNN), ChatGPT is built on similar structures to the human brain. This enables the software to process, interpret, and learn from information, rather than adhere to preprogrammed rules. With fast, accurate responses, organizations can take advantage of ChatGPT to enhance their internal capabilities and evolve existing processes.

ChatGPT Use Cases for Marketing

With the initial excitement of ChatGPT subsiding, attention can now be placed on where the technology can best support marketers to help (rather than hinder!) their operations. Therefore, before we consider the best use cases, it’s important to understand the limitations of ChatGPT.

By OpenAI’s own admission, ChatGPT struggles with:

• Accuracy: The software was developed to generate plausible-sounding content. It was also trained on 300 billion words taken from books, online texts, and Wikipedia articles in 2021. And it doesn’t cite sources, so users can’t check where the information came from.
• Ethics: AI is only ever as good as the data it’s trained on, which can suffer from both conscious and unconscious bias. This has led ChatGPT to exhibit biased behavior. 
• Arrogance: ChatGPT is also known to have a bit of an ego, being excessively verbose and believing it knows best, rather than asking the user clarifying questions.

However, even with its limitations, ChatGPT still offers a wealth of valuable use cases, which we explore in our full post on the Bloomreach Blog. Check it out!

Using AI for Marketing Automation

Immediately after the release of ChatGPT, there was a mad rush of marketers who wanted to get their hands on intelligent technology. However, even though generative AI is transformational technology, we’re now reaching the point where having experimented with the tool, they’re realizing its limitations and are starting to consider how to best adapt the tool to augment their internal capabilities.

This is where Bloomreach can help. With AI-driven product discovery and omnichannel marketing automation in a single easy-to-use platform, you can take advantage of AI to create truly personalized experiences that drive faster ROI and greater customer loyalty. The best part? You can do this at scale and without the need to involve IT or dev teams. 

Ready to start your journey to effective AI integration? Check out the Bloomreach Blog today to get started!