The Kings Coronation will take place this Saturday and will see Charles, after decades of preparation as Prince, take the throne as our new King.

 
We also know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t a new topic. It’s been a part of everything we do for quite a while. But with the rise of ChatGPT getting so much mainstream press, is it now time for AI to truly shine and take the throne of the future of marketing?
 

But what actually is Generative AI?

 
The definition from Mc Kinsey describes it as ‘algorithms (such as ChatGPT) that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos.
 
So for the marketer – doesn’t this all sound great?
 
We posed this question to three experts at RedEye – Andrew Stockwell, Chief Commercial Officer, Mark McGrath, Head of Product and Andy Gilhooley, Product Marketing Manager – who have been keeping an eye on the growth of AI for quite some time, their thoughts on where we are now, as well as how RedEye is innovating to help marketers get the true value from generative AI.

What do you think about the explosion of generative AI?

 
It’s safe to say all three of our experts were very excited about the topic and Andrew Stockwell recognises how this is very important for the Marketers’.
 

“Personally, I love it. We have been using it at RedEye for a long time already, it will revolutionise everything that we do. Marketing will be especially transformed by fully embracing AI more than any other function of business. Consider how much time we have all spent analysing reports, data, content and information, then consider how AI will be able to that in much higher volume in a fraction of the time!”

 
Mark McGrath agrees with Andrew in terms of how this can be of great help to enable the Marketer to become more efficient with certain tasks.
 

“While the Terminator fan inside me has some reservations, the short answer is I love it. I’m genuinely amazed by how quickly it seems to be evolving both in terms of capability and market presence. Time is such a scarce commodity and I firmly believe that we should always be exploring ways to make the most of it, particularly when it comes to streamlining some of the more mundane tasks. If I can save a few minutes here and there prompting AI to answer (or even do!) something for me, I really don’t see why I wouldn’t.”

 
As well as its impressive speed to the mainstream market, Andy Gilhooley is equally impressed with some of the example use cases of generative AI.
 
“Explosion is definitely the right word. It’s all anyone on LinkedIn is talking about at the moment. However, thanks to OpenAI, this year has seen AI become mainstream. I’ve been impressed with the output that ChatGTP provides, it’s large language model, hits the spot more than not. The ability to tweak and adapt its suggestions based on new prompts is where it excels compared against AI chatbots of previous years.
 
Marketers are now pivoting to become prompt engineers. What I find most impressive of all is generative AI’s ability to create photographs, art and audio. That blows my mind. The historical figures taking selfies art (including the last supper and battle of Waterloo) that went viral springs to mind!”

How is RedEye leveraging AI currently, and its plan for the future?

 
Even though RedEye has been innovating with AI for years, Andy Gilhooley feels it’s still untapped with marketers.
 
“RedEye has been using AI for years. We’ve always been an innovative company, being the first to send a behavioural based email. We started using AI and machine learning 6 or 7 years ago to help marketers create the most personalised experience for their customers based on their stage in the customer lifecycle.
 
We created predictive models for VIP customers, customers about to churn or unsubscribe and more. When first launched, adoption was low, at this time I believe marketers were sceptical about AI and believed it was more smoke and mirrors. However, those that did adopt predictive models saw incredible results. Now that AI is mainstream, I believe adoption of predictive models will now skyrocket.”
 
Andrew Stockwell also highlights how RedEye sees AI as a key tool in helping marketers drive better customer communications.
 

“We have been using AI in our platform for many years to help clients better communicate with their customers throughout their lifecycle. We have a range of models which can be deployed across multiple channels to help make marketing more effective. We have a lot of lab work underway deploying AI across many more features including our template editor, subject line generator, AB testing tool, reporting and of course further enhancements to how it will be used in our segmentation tool.”

 
With exciting innovations currently underway, Mark McGrath shares what’s coming next for RedEye.
 
“In my role, this is where I have to fight the urge of diving straight in and be a bit more reserved. We must consider all the possible scenarios of using AI in our platform and weigh them up against the benefits. We’re just in the process of launching our first trial feature which will be a subject line generator. AI will scrape your email’s html and body text and devise 5 relevant subject lines for you to choose from – I can’t wait to start running A/B tests against my own hand-crafted subject lines to see who wins!
 
Beyond that we’re looking at larger generative opportunities such as text body content and royalty-free image generation. Once some of the compliance and data access rules become clearer, we’ve got big plans for AI, starting with an in-platform chat bot that will answer questions and help you get the most value out of the RedEye platform.”
 
Taking AI one step further from content creation is where Andy Gilhooley is also excited about the RedEye platform developing its AI capabilities and how using it to help uncover new opportunities could be a game-changer.
 

“I’m looking forward to the RedEye platform developing it’s generative AI capabilities. We’re soon to launch a subject line generator based on the content of the email. Recommending hooks, titles and body copy for emails and SMS messages seems like the next step. Where generative AI has the most potential is the AI Chat Assistant – hooking AI APIs into the platform so you can query any aspect of the tool and it’ll bring the answer, such as “how many customers have purchased online today” would be a game changer for reporting and segmentation.”

Is AI now the King of marketing?

 
Even though generative AI has exploded and there are numerous benefits for the marketer, all our experts can see the partnership humans still have in ensuring it provides the right value. Andrew Stockwell believes people will be the key to taking this to the next level.
 

“AI will become the king of marketing; it will revolutionise what we are able to do as marketers but my view is that it will also help transform the role of the human in marketing who will need to provide that all important context, humour and push the boundaries more than ever before. Every time there has been a paradigm shift in marketing people have always raised to the challenge to take it to another level and I have full faith we will do that again!.”

 
Andy Gilhooley explains this further, he believes that AI is not here to take over the marketing world but be the true assistant to greater marketing.
 
“AI is certainly now king in terms of attention and focus from the marketing industry. But is it the king? It’s more like the perfect Butler or Concierge. AI is there to assist the marketer rather than marketers serve AI. I make the comparison to when the calculator was invented. It made accountants life easier and so much faster.
 
Generative AI does that for marketers, whether it be helping to write new articles, emails and SMS messages or helping to answer queries from your reporting dashboards. For me, the king of marketer will always be the product. The first of the 4Ps. Focus on the product to meet customer expectations and needs and everything else will naturally fall into place.”
 
Finally, Mark McGrath summarises it perfectly to share that, overall Content is still – and will always be King. AI is part of the delivery.
 
“I think we’re a while off that personally. Until some of the self-learning elements improve, AI remains only as good as the prompt engineer using it and frankly, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. For me, content remains King and AI forms a part of its delivery. It’s worth keeping in mind that relatively new innovations like Auto and ChatGPT are widely seen as the flag bearers of AI, but it’s been around marketing in other guises for years – predictive analytics, product recommendations, ad targeting etc. are all driven by AI and Machine Learning.
 
Ethics and personal experiences are big differentiators for me between AI and a human operator – as it stands today the former has neither. So, in the context of the question, until these things move forward then I can’t see a world where AI becomes the King of marketing. Prince in waiting, perhaps. When it comes to mass adoption and a general reluctance to accept AI as ‘the norm’, I quite like referring to the quote by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.”
 
 

Enjoyed this article? Sign-up to receive updates