Academy Xi Blog

How to leverage the power of AI in personalised marketing

By Academy Xi

Digital Marketing team discussing breakdown of ad spend in a meeting

82% of companies already using AI marketing personalisation see up to 8x more return on their marketing efforts.

How? By improving the customer experience with smart tools. 

Be part of that statistic. Use this article to explore how you can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create smarter, more personalised marketing that connects. You will find use cases, helpful practices, and challenges to watch out for when putting AI into action.

By the end of your read, you will be ready to drive better results, tailor every interaction, and build an AI-ready culture within your company to make your personalised marketing strategy more impactful.

 

Smart Ways To Put AI To Work In Your Personalised Marketing

Scan through each use case and pick one to test this week. See how AI-driven personalisation changes the way your brand connects with your audience.

 

I. Dynamic Content Optimisation

Swap out parts of your content, like headlines, images, or CTAs, so each visitor sees what speaks directly to them. Not what YOU think might work.

How does AI help with that?

It tracks behaviour, patterns, and context to understand customer preferences and serve up content that gets clicks.

Take Netflix, for example. Ever notice how your homepage looks different from someone else’s? It is no accident. That is dynamic content shaped by AI, tailored to keep you watching based on previous movies and series you played.

Here’s a sample homepage:

 

Netflix homepage - content recommendations

Now, check out your Netflix homepage and see the difference. 

 

II. Smarter Audience Segments

Smarter customer segmentation does not just group people; it reveals buying signals, timing, and intent hidden in plain sight. AI dives into behaviour, like clicks, time on page, replies, and connects those tiny data points to form rich, evolving segments.

The result? With this, your marketing team can stop sending one-size-fits-all campaigns. Instead, you send the right message to the right person when they need it.

For example, let’s say you are in the real estate space offering cost segregation services. Use AI to track behaviour like:

  • Replies to follow-up emails
  • Clicks on tax strategy articles
  • Time spent on your ROI calculator

It can connect these tiny data points to form evolving segments. Your marketing team then sends targeted content:

  • Those replying to emails get a consult invite.
  • Those clicking the tax content receive strategy guides.
  • Those using the calculator see personalised ROI results.

 

III. Score Leads Like A Pro

Lead scoring lets you rank prospects based on how likely they are to become customers, using signals from their actions, interest level, and fit with your offer.

The role of AI?

It makes the process sharper. It analyses real-time customer behaviour across channels and spots patterns your team would miss, then continuously refines scores as people engage.

With AI personalisation, your campaigns adjust automatically based on these scores, so warm leads get offers, cold ones get nurtured, and no one gets the wrong message at the wrong time.

For example, let’s say you are in the B2B niche selling these manufacturing rapid prototype materials to wholesale retailers. Here’s how your ranking can be:

 

IV. Content Generation & Optimisation

AI lets you create the right message faster without starting from scratch every time. With the help of AI tools and natural language processing, you can:

  • Build outlines in seconds
  • Write blog drafts or social posts
  • Adjust tone for different customer types
  • Find the best keywords for your audience
  • Optimise old content to boost performance

This saves time for your team and keeps your messaging fresh, focused, and personalised.

Suppose you have a service-based business like this YouTube video editing brand. Here’s a ChatGPT prompt you can use to create social media posts to promote your business:

  • I run a YouTube video editing service for content creators, influencers, and small businesses. Write 5 engaging social media posts that highlight the value of my service. Each post should be under 280 characters, include a hook, and speak directly to creators who want to save time, grow their channels, and post consistently. Make the tone friendly, confident, and helpful.

Here are the results, which you can still tweak or add graphics to:

ChatGPT results

 

Where Strategy Meets Tech: Create & Equip Your Personalisation System

There is more than one smart way to bring your personalisation strategies or the use cases to life, and both come with real advantages. Review the options below to see which path aligns best with your brand.

 

A. Design The AI That Works For You

Build a system tailored to your brand’s exact needs, not adapting your strategy to fit someone else’s software.

Why do this?

Creating your AI-powered system gives you full control over:

  • What triggers matter most
  • How your logic responds over time
  • How you collect and use customer data

You are not limited by pre-built rules, you define them.

How do you design your AI system?

You can use no-code platforms like Quickbase to speed up your build and connect it with existing workflows: 

 

 

If you do not have the technical experience, work with a machine learning expert to:

  • Map out key business goals.
  • Train the model using real performance data.
  • Fine-tune it based on how your audience behaves. 

Unlike plug-and-play tools, a custom setup lets you scale in a direction that matches your business model, your voice, and your plans.

This level of flexibility enables marketers to design truly customer-based systems, supported by accurate data collection, and powered by decision-making logic that evolves with your brand, not someone else’s roadmap.

 

B. Tap Into Ready-Made AI Solutions

You do not need to start from scratch to bring real AI value to your business. Ready-made AI sales and marketing tools help you move fast without sacrificing depth. They can:

  • Improve customer engagement at scale.
  • Launch highly targeted marketing campaigns.
  • Use real-time data and historical data to help you tailor messaging.

You reach the right customer segments with personalised messages, at the right time, without overwhelming your team.

Here are the tools you can start with:

a. HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading CRM and customer platform designed to help you attract, engage, and convert leads with ease. It packs powerful AI technologies like:

  • Email writer
  • AI assistant
  • Lead scoring
  • Reporting assistant
  • Web builder assistant

Here’s a preview of its AI-powered web builder:

HubSpot AI web builder

 

With these, you can personalise touchpoints while streamlining your day-to-day marketing tasks.

Also, one of HubSpot’s biggest strengths is its wide ecosystem of marketing automation tools, which gives you everything from email campaigns to customer workflows in one connected space. If you want a smart, unified system that grows with your business. 

b. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset that helps you grow traffic and visibility. It understands what your audience searches for and how to outperform your competitors

It is built for marketers whose focus is to analyse data, optimise pages, and create relevant content that answers real customer queries. Its key AI features include:

  • Content Helper: Suggests how to improve or expand your content to rank better.
  • Backlink Analysis: Scans backlink profiles and identifies valuable links, new opportunities, and potential threats.
  • Keyword Suggestions: Recommends high-value keywords with ranking potential.
  • Search Intent Detection: Identifies why someone searches so you can match content to customer needs.

Here’s an example of its Ask AI feature at work:

 

Together, these features help you match keywords to distinct customer segments, craft content that reflects their goals or pain points, and build links from sources they already engage with. Each visitor sees content tailored to their intent, stage in the funnel, and search behaviour. 

c. Peak

Peak is an AI-powered customer intelligence platform that lets you understand, segment, and activate your audience with precision. It uses over 35 customisable AI-driven attributes to organise customers by behaviour, preferences, and engagement level.

It includes key features like:

  • Segment maps
  • Smart segments
  • Predictive modeling

 

With these, you can predict customer behaviour and uncover growth opportunities across the customer journey.

How does this tool help your personalisation plans?

It turns raw data into clear, actionable segments. This helps you target each group with relevant marketing based on what they actually care about. That means no pushing product recommendations to users who showed zero interest in that category.

d. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management platform that uses AI to streamline content creation, optimise posting, and improve engagement across all your channels. Its AI features include:

  • Trend discovery
  • Caption generation
  • Sentiment analysis 
  • Optimal send times
  • Content suggestions

 

How do they help you deliver personalised interactions?

It analyses audience behaviour and aligns content with individual preferences, so your team can respond faster, post smarter, and make each message count. Instead of guessing what works, Sprout uses data-driven marketing insights to shape the conversation and increase customer satisfaction at every touchpoint.

 

5 Best Practices To Turn AI Into Your Competitive Advantage In Personalisation

Review each best practice below and choose one to apply now. Start with the one that moves you closer to your personalisation goals.

 

1. Close The Gap Between Talent & Technology

Your marketing technology is only as strong as the people using it

So, if your team does not know how to use generative AI tools or analyse what happens at each customer touchpoint, you will end up with flashy features and flat results.

Meanwhile, when your team knows how AI works, they will not just follow the personalisation process; they will drive it. They can spot opportunities, adjust strategies in real time, and build smarter, highly-targeted campaigns that perform.

What To Do

Enrol them in Academy Xi to build strong AI fundamentals from the ground up. Here are the learning options you can choose from to fix your team’s skills gap:

 

 

Here are more ways you can train your team effectively:

  • Host monthly hands-on workshops focused on specific tools or tasks.
  • Assign tool champions who stay updated and help others on the team.
  • Create AI playbooks with real workflows your team can test and adapt.
  • Use poll makers to quickly uncover which AI tools or tasks your team finds most confusing, then tailor training around those gaps.
  • Give short quizzes after each training session to reinforce key concepts and track how well your team understands the AI tools.

 

2. Localise Content With AI

Localisation is more than about translating words; it is about adapting the message to match the mindset. When you use AI to localise content, you show people you get them, no matter where they are.

The result of that kind of effort?

  • Makes your ad targeting sharper
  • Strengthens customer relationships
  • Helps your future campaigns perform better across markets

AI spots patterns in user behaviour and turns that into dynamic website content that speaks the local language, literally and culturally.

What To Do

Here are ways you can use AI to localise your content:

  • Adjust CTAs based on cultural norms and expectations.
  • Translate at scale with context-aware language models.
  • Adapt tone and formality based on local communication styles.
  • Auto-generate region-based email variations with AI copy tools.
  • Use AI to rewrite headlines that resonate better with local markets.
  • Detect user location and deliver region-specific product info or prices.
  • Analyse engagement by region to refine content for stronger connections.

 

3. Blend AI With Human Oversight

AI gets you speed, scale, and insights, but without human input, it can miss the mark.

On the other hand, blending AI with real people helps fix blind spots and shape content that feels human. It helps you humanise AI content, catch off-tone messages, and notice what data alone cannot, like cultural fit, emotional timing, or the deeper meaning behind your performance metrics.

This best practice is one of the smartest ways to overcome AI personalisation challenges while keeping your messaging clear, empathetic, and useful. With the right balance, you boost operational efficiency without losing the human touch.

What To Do

  • Add human QA to AI decision trees to reduce automation errors.
  • Collect and apply direct customer feedback to train better AI models.
  • Analyse AI-generated reports manually to spot insights that algorithms miss.
  • Let humans handle sensitive user interactions that need empathy or nuance.
  • Use human editors to polish AI blog drafts and guarantee brand consistency.
  • Review AI-generated emails or headlines before launch for tone and accuracy.
  • Set up clear content guidelines so your team knows when to trust AI and when to step in.

 

4. Set Clear Personalisation Rules

Define exactly how and when AI adjusts content, offers, or messaging based on user data. When you set those rules upfront, you build consistency and trust across every interaction.

Plus, clear rules help you:

  • Improve marketing efficiency and reduce noise.
  • Guarantee content personalisation feels intentional, not random.
  • Align personalisation strategies with your goals and brand voice.
  • Avoid AI going rogue with awkward subject lines or mismatched recommendations.

With structure in place, AI becomes an extension of your strategy, not just another tool reacting to consumer behaviour in real time.

What To Do

  • Document your rules so the whole team stays on the same page.
  • Set boundaries for tone and language based on your brand voice.
  • Create if-this-then-that scenarios for content placement and timing.
  • Review rule performance monthly and adjust based on real results.
  • Define which data triggers each personalisation, like clicks or purchase history.
  • Use rule-based logic in your email marketing platform for predictable content swaps.

 

5. No Silos, Just Smarter Syncing

A customer’s browsing history, email clicks, purchase patterns, and even their unstructured data from chat, only mean something when you connect them all.

Syncing consistently gives your AI the full story, so your content feels cohesive, timely, and relevant. You avoid disconnects like promoting a webinar someone already attended or sending a welcome discount to a long-time customer.

With this, you can also protect your data quality and let AI deliver personal experiences that make sense.

What To Do

  • Monitor for sync failures and fix them quickly.
  • Use APIs to connect tools that do not natively integrate.
  • Tag all data sources clearly so AI knows where it came from.
  • Set regular sync intervals across platforms (e.g., hourly, daily, or real-time).
  • Use a centralised customer data platform (CDP) to collect and organise everything.

 

3 AI Challenges That Disrupt Personalised Marketing

Scan the list below to spot the AI issues holding you back. Then, use the actionable points here to fix them fast and sharpen your personalised customer experiences where it matters most.

 

i. Too Much Data, Too Little Permission

AI thrives on data, but if you are feeding it information gathered without permission, you create a bigger problem. Your AI starts making decisions based on inputs it should not be using, and suddenly, your personalisation efforts feel invasive instead of helpful.

That is when data privacy concerns start to build, and trust starts to fall apart. Even the smartest algorithms cannot fix broken customer relationships. If people feel you are crossing the line, they stop engaging, no matter how “personalised” your message looks.

Here are ways to avoid this:

  • Ask for permission clearly and early.
  • Give users control over their data settings.
  • Collect only what you need for each touchpoint.
  • Explain how you use the data in plain language.

To get you started, here’s what should be in your data privacy policy:

 

ii. Biased Training Data

When your AI learns from limited or one-sided data, it builds narrow assumptions. Bias in training sets means your predictive analytics will not predict much for the customers you want to reach. 

You might also over-target one group while completely missing others who can convert. Worse, biased personalisation can feel off, even offensive, which hurts your brand and skews your performance tracking.

Here are ways to avoid this:

  • Rotate in fresh data to avoid overfitting.
  • Include diverse sources and demographics.
  • Audit your training data consistently for gaps.
  • Avoid relying solely on historical data if your past campaigns excluded certain audiences.
  • Document every data source used in training so you can trace back issues when needed. 

 

iii. Missing Micro-Moments

Micro-moments happen fast, like when someone searches “best CRM tools” late at night, revisits your pricing page for the third time, or pauses with a full cart. 

These are not just signals; they are decision points. If your AI is not built to catch them in real time, those moments slip through the cracks.

The delay waters down your relevance, your timing feels off, and your personalisation loses its power.

Here are ways to avoid this:

  • Use real-time data feeds, not batch updates.
  • Run consistent audits on delayed or missed AI responses.
  • Set AI triggers for high-intent actions like cart adds or repeat visits.
  • Integrate AI with live chat tools to offer real-time support during intent-heavy actions.

 

Conclusion

Take what you learned and start simple. Choose one use case that aligns with your biggest opportunity, then apply a best practice that can help bring it to life.

You do not need a full AI overhaul to see impact. You just need to take one clear step that sharpens how you connect. The faster you act on AI marketing personalisation, the faster your message starts working harder for you.

Need to make sure your team can carry out those plans?

Partner with Academy Xi. Our AI training solutions can give your team the fundamentals they need to confidently leverage AI in delivering more personalised content and customer experiences. Get in touch now and start building a team that knows how to turn smart tools into real results.