10 Best AI Marketing Tools to Start Using for Your Online Business

Put simply, artificial intelligence (AI) is the process of computers simulating the kind of intelligence traditionally only seen in humans. This includes key cognitive abilities such as reasoning, self-correction, and learning.

AI systems acquire, aggregate, and analyze data en masse – then create rules for processing it. These rules – called algorithms – make AI-equipped tools capable of automation. Of removing the manual work, and producing mind-boggling feats that would take us humans months – nay, years – to achieve.

Predictably, that means AI has been seized on by all sectors and industries – website building and online marketing among them.

AI marketing tools are software applications that apply artificial intelligence to marketing.

By automating decisions and removing the manual work, AI marketing tools take away the guesswork – allowing your team of marketers to enjoy faster, more effective decision making.

You can apply AI tools to all aspects of your online business’ marketing strategy. Some of the most popular tools include:

For content marketing:

• Hubspot SEO
• Grammarly
• MarketMuse
• Acrolinx

For email marketing:

• Phrasee
• Seventh Sense
• Personalize

For marketing analytics:

• Crayon
• Albert AI
• Yotpo

And this merely scratches the surface. Dedicated AI marketing tools exist for social media marketing, competitor analysis, chatbots, influencer marketing, and ad optimization. We’ll go into more specific detail below!

Twenty years ago – when artificial intelligence was associated more with evil robots than with marketing – your business could be forgiven for not using it.

Now, AI marketing tools aren’t simply a ‘nice to have’ – they’re a must have. So what do AI digital marketing tools have to offer your online business?

Well for starters, they can:

• Help you tailor your email campaigns to the right audience
• Automate chat flows to reduce the load on your customer service team
• Generate ideas for (and even write) web content
• Retarget potential customers that have previously expressed an interest in your products
• Provide in-depth analyses of your marketing campaigns – across all channels and touchpoints

Ready to explore the 10 best marketing tools available for online businesses? Us too!

AI marketing tools for social media analyze how well your posts across platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are performing.

Sensai is one of these. If you’re struggling to figure out what to post, when to post it, and which material your audience is responding best to, Sensai can help. It’ll crunch the numbers behind your social content’s engagement rates and guide your social media strategy – all from an easy-to-use AI interface.

There are so many ways content marketers can apply AI.

AI marketing tools such as SEMrush help writers find keywords, assess the number of people who are searching for those keywords, and then track how well their content is performing in search engine results pages. Some – Surfer SEO, for instance – even instruct content creators on exactly how many times to integrate each keyword into the copy.

One notable example of a marketing AI tool for content is Grammarly. It utilizes AI to flag any issues with your copy’s spelling and grammar, and offers real-time suggestions to help you avoid typos and hidden errors.

Email marketing AI tools can help your online businesses achieve better open, click, and read rates, as well as optimize your subject lines. They’ll also ensure you’re following email marketing best practices, and – ultimately – boost the effectiveness and profitability of your campaigns.

Some – such as Seventh Sense – also take the hassle out of timing your email sends. With a mix of behavioral profiling and AI algorithms, Seventh Sense calculates the ideal time – and frequency – to send emails to each of your customers, based on their unique preferences. Incredible, huh?

If there’s one thing in marketing more important than getting it right, it’s knowing what you’re getting right – and what could be improved.

That’s why marketing AI tools for analytics are so crucial. They’ll help you dive deep into the data about your business’ marketing campaigns, crunching the numbers around your target market, competitors, and revenue.

Import.io is our favorite. It’ll help you extract data about your online brand’s campaigns at scale – ensuring you’re setting the right goals and KPIs, and delivering on your business’ marketing investment.

Find Out More

Learn more about how AI Analytics can help you improve your web analytics in our full guide.

For people aged 18-49, live chat is their preferred way of communicating with businesses – so it’s a no-brainer.

More of a no-brainer? Automating that live chat experience through chatbots. These conversational characters help answer the questions of anyone visiting your site with automated responses.

By filtering out the basic, easily answered inquiries, chatbots can relieve the burden on your service team’s shoulders – meaning they’re dealing only with the stuff they’re really required for.

Drift is a tool that allows you to build your own, customizable chatbot. We’d recommend it for any online business that wants to spend less time answering basic inquiries – and more time on growth!

What’s better than a fully-fledged AI marketing tool? One that’s tailored specifically to ecommerce businesses.

Take Yotpo, for example. It’s a platform that helps you:

• Harness subscriptions to deliver more recurring revenue
• Boost your conversion rates
• Engage your customers through loyalty and referral programs

Reinvigorate your business’ SMS marketing (for this, it’s the number one app on Shopify). Find out more about Shopify apps with our list of the best apps for clothing stores.

Influencers may be a relatively recent addition to the marketer’s toolkit, but it’s already an area AI is transforming.

One such platform is HypeAuditor. It’ll assist your business in finding the best influencers, managing your campaigns, and drilling down into your audience – and the competitive landscape at large. Boasting a database of over 50 million influencers and best-in-class AI fraud detection, HypeAuditor is a must for all discerning marketing teams.

In marketing, personalization is king. We’re not simply talking about adding your customer’s name into an email subject line, either. These days, consumers are more selective than ever – and want deals, discounts, and messaging tailored to their exact preferences.

Formation.ai is one AI marketing tool that can help you do just this. It’ll empower you to personalize your campaigns to your audience, all while automatically adapting to ever-evolving consumer behaviors. With specific solutions for retail, grocery, and ecommerce – yes, ecommerce – sectors, Formation.ai isn’t to be missed.

These days, simply creating ads isn’t enough. You have to audit them: to test, optimize, iterate, and keep refining them. Then, you have to do that process all again, in a perpetual loop of inquisition and implementation.

Unsurprisingly, all that’s a lot easier with a marketing tool doing it for you. Enter Sprinklr – a platform that combines social advertising, campaign planning, and content marketing. It also offers comprehensive marketing analytics across more than 30 channels – ensuring your ads are always performing at their peak.

Competitor analysis is one of a marketer’s most valuable lines of inquiry. What are your biggest rivals doing that you’re not? And, of course, what are they not doing – and how can your own offering plug those unserviced customer pain points?

Like most aspects of marketing, competitor analysis is easier with the right AI marketing tool at your disposal. To this end, we recommend giving Crayon a go. Its award-winning platform lets you get the jump on your competitors: tracking over 100 different data types across millions of sources.

You can even get started for free, with Crayon’s free competitive landscape report.

In this article, we’ve covered off the key what and why of AI marketing tools – and which options we recommend going for. Now, it’s up to you to figure out the how.

How can you go about implementing AI marketing tools into your business? And ensure you’re automating as many of your manual marketing processes as possible, while harnessing the swathes of invaluable information available?

That part is up to you. So let us know how you get on, and be sure to check out our range of articles. We can fill you in on AI trends in web design, help you grow your business with advice on conversational commerce, plus we have plenty more digital marketing tips.