Reimagine Campaigns With These 5 AI Marketing Strategies in Distribution
One significant pain point for sales reps in distribution is not having the bandwidth to focus on selling and building relationships with customers because they’re spending too much time on manual tasks. Technology is helping lift some of this busy work off their plates with automation tools and templates. Now more than ever, sales teams can start tapping into the potential of artificial intelligence to uncover their best opportunities and have more meaningful interactions.
Distributors can leverage AI marketing strategies, too, as part of their revenue-generating ecosystems. We all know breaking down silos between sales and marketing is the dream, but is not always the easiest to achieve. Inside sales, outside sales reps, marketing teams, and stakeholders in leadership can all benefit from the increased efficiency and instant data analysis AI provides while building bridges between sales and marketing teams that foster better conversations with customers and drive profits.
The Current State of AI Tools for Distribution Businesses
Artificial intelligence isn’t the standard in distribution as in other sectors yet; research from Modern Distribution Management shows that only about one-third of distributors currently use AI.
Yet, there is a clear interest in how AI can help distributors overcome common challenges: 55 percent of distributors recognize AI’s potential to offer them a competitive edge, according to recent research from Distribution Strategy Group.
Of distributors using AI, about 25 percent have only implemented it for one specific function. Some are dipping their toes into using generic machine-learning and natural language processing tools to help with customer engagement, data entry, and more. AI’s potential for distributors goes beyond improving operational efficiency; it can be a significant driver of revenue growth when tailored for distributors and infused with a distributor’s own sales and performance data.
Artificial intelligence works best not as a replacement for existing software systems like your CRM or BI tools but complementing those tools, offering deeper insights and prescriptive actions based on the data they provide. Equipped with AI-powered insights to identify their next best actions when analyzing customer data, distributors can know exactly when and how to optimize sales and accelerate profitability.
General AI Solutions for Effective Distribution
With the ability to analyze customer data, provide deep intelligence on consumer purchase behavior, optimize upsell opportunities, and offer real-time product performance data, AI isn’t a fad or even a shiny new tool; it’s an opportunity to transform how distributors work.
If you’ve ever made an online grocery purchase, you’re probably familiar with the feature to resubmit the same order the following week.
AI enables distributors to make similar predictions about consumer buying habits, anticipating their needs before they tell you. AI can also provide intuitive alerts to sales reps when customer purchasing patterns deviate from the norm. This helps sales reps strengthen customer relationships by gaining greater insights into customer behavior and knowing when and how to take action to spark meaningful interactions.
Another valuable use case is AI’s predictive sales forecasting, which leverages historical data and predictive analytics to foresee future sales trends and customer queries with greater accuracy. AI can elevate your customer engagement and enhance the sales process to win more deals.
Now Is the Time for AI-Driven Marketing Campaigns
Distributors and their customers produce billions of points of data per day in transactions. AI equips distributors with complete access to customer, product, and transaction data. It can provide actionable insights for developing targeted marketing strategies and automate execution. And because AI learns and improves independently, it can refine and finesse marketing campaigns over time to optimize performance.
Distributors able to look past the hype of AI-powered tools and identify practical applications for their business will be at an advantage. From analyzing customer data to creating targeted marketing campaigns, now is the time to implement AI to gain a competitive edge, maximize customer relationships, and future-proof your business.
5 AI-Powered Solutions for Effective Distribution Marketing
AI isn’t just a behind-the-scenes tool anymore; top distributors are leveraging it as a strategic asset for customer-facing teams. In an industry with shrinking margins and fierce competition, AI offers a pathway for distributors to not just survive but thrive.
Dying Stock Campaigns
Need to get slow-moving stock off your balance sheet? White Cup’s AI-powered tools turn inventory liabilities into revenue opportunities with targeted marketing campaigns to those most likely to purchase that product by analyzing customer preferences.
AI-Enhanced Email Marketing
Using AI in marketing can help distribution businesses optimize, refine, and personalize the customer experience — from using artificial intelligence to draft emails that remind customers to place their next order at the optimal time to using data-driven customer info for emails with an AI model that integrates customer order data and is visible within your CRM. This helps your team reach out to customers at the right time, every time.
Enhance Marketing Campaign ROI
AI can also help distributors craft compelling website copy and sales collateral more quickly, develop more enticing offers, better personalize customer experiences, and match the right message with the right customer using CRM data.
Retargeting With Personalized Marketing Automation
By now, we’re all familiar with seeing ads and recommendations for similar products based on our recent browsing history. This type is known as retargeting, and AI models can enhance retargeting by drawing conclusions from large volumes of data in a fraction of the time it would take an experienced analyst and then further analyzing data and making those recommendations easily accessible to sales reps as they engage with customers.
AI for Sales Optimization, Personalization, and Marketing Collaboration
Anticipate what your customers might need before they tell you with top related products that appear right in your CRM or BI dashboard. You’ll see product and price recommendations based on a customer’s purchase history to enhance your pitch to customers, making their experience more personal while maximizing your value per order.
Optimize Distribution With AI Technology — Discover Your Next Best Action
AI models are most impactful when they’re trained on your company’s own data and tailored for your company’s business. That’s why White Cup developed solutions for analyzing user data from your existing ERP, business intelligence software, and CRM.
White Cup’s AI-powered features work with your CRM and BI to turn customer data into decisive action with clear direction on which tasks will be most impactful. Data is refreshed monthly to ensure your AI-generated forecasts remain as accurate as possible. And what’s more, White Cup AI removes the need for users to prompt AI by knowing and asking the right questions – it jumps straight into prescriptive action with a deep understanding of distributors’ specific needs. After all, we come from distribution, and have tailored White Cup exactly to this industry.
So get ready to take action, optimize every move, bridge your sales and marketing teams, and win more with White Cup AI. Book a consultation today to get a closer look at how it can enhance your distribution business.