AI should make campaigns more effective – Tom Wozniak
Jeremy Micallef
The digital marketing space has grown rapidly in the past 40 years. Tom Wozniak from Optizmo Technologies gives us his two cents on the past, present and future of the industry!
AIBC & AGS UAE: Dubai was a cracking success for SiGMA Group, and indeed the same for its clients and followers! Throughout the event we touched base with several exhibitors, such as Optizmo Technologies, to see how they’re enjoying their time with us, as well as taking the opportunity to bring everyone up to speed on the latest changes in the industry.
Optizmo Technologies are leaders in email and SMS suppression list management, and we caught up with their Director of Marketing, Tom Wozniak, to pick at his brain and see what he believes to be the areas of interest in the digital marketing sphere.
Tom explained that they’re “really focused on the email compliance space”, where they help to empower advertisers and networks to ensure that all their mailers and affiliates are compliant with important email and privacy regulations, like CAN-SPAM in the US.
On Privacy, the natural enemy?
Privacy has been quite up there on people’s priority lists when online, after all, the data aggregated from spending time online could tell a very intimate story about any individual.
As the industry veteran noted, “Digital marketing has been around for more than 40 years now – email is actually the oldest form of digital marketing. Certainly, there are challenges. Regulation tends to limit what industries can do.”
“When it’s the right regulations and guidelines, they can actually empower industries in the long run, and I think email is a good example of that. It was really the wild-west in the late-1990s early 2000s – there just weren’t any rules.”
Tom also pointed out how certain regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM in the US, forced marketers to adopt certain best practices. This, he insisted, was both in the best interest of consumers and recipients, and also hasn’t really hampered marketers efforts.
“It just helped them to dial in and better engage with their audiences,” he said.
AI x Digital Marketing
Artificial Intelligence, more commonly referred to as “AI”, has been turning heads since the concept was first thought up. Nowadays, in spite of the many advances in the field, the mass adoption of the technology in various industries is not as widespread as you may think. The tech is still young and is being refined.
Tom explained how they haven’t gotten involved in it yet, but he does acknowledge that “it’s vitally important and long-term it’s going to be fascinating to see how that technology starts to replace some of the human element in making campaign decisions”.
“If you have an AI or extremely smart algorithm making decisions about what email should be sent out to what customer, at what time and with what offer. That should make campaigns more effective – whether that’s email or any other channel,” he said.
“Does it replace people or is it another powerful tool for marketers, and something else we need to learn, adapt and take advantage of?”
