There are three game-changing themes that are reshaping the martech industry: AI that truly enhances human capabilities, customer service that’s genuinely strategic, and data flexibility that turns information into action. Cordial is challenging the status quo with these themes and creating a fundamental shift in how brands understand and engage with customers. The future of marketing is here, and it’s more exciting – and more human – than you ever imagined.

Data flexibility: The foundation of personalization

The dream of true 1:1 marketing has been around for decades, but legacy marketing clouds and data silos have kept it out of reach. Data flexibility is the cornerstone of effective marketing. It’s not just about having access to data from any source; it’s about being able to collect, integrate, transform, and use that data in real-time across all your marketing efforts. This is where Cordial shines, with our advanced data collection capabilities, built-in data transformations and universal connector that simplify integrations with any source. “Reference customers love that Cordial integrates so easily with other technologies,” noted The Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q3 2024. 

The era of isolated point solutions is over. Forward-thinking brands are seeking consolidated solutions around integrated data, orchestrated multi-channel messaging, and customer identity resolution – all while flexibly adapting to each brand’s unique tech stack.

AI: Beyond content creation

While many vendors are touting AI capabilities, it’s crucial to understand that AI’s true potential in marketing goes far beyond mere content generation. At Cordial, we believe that AI should enhance marketers’ productivity and drive tangible business value.

As noted in The Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q3 2024, “Cordial’s AI outshines other vendors’ by enhancing marketer productivity and email value, not just creating content.” Our top-rated vision and AI approach focuses on empowering marketers to work smarter, not just automate tasks or generate content. By leveraging AI to analyze vast amounts of message and customer data, we enable marketers to uncover deep insights and deliver truly personalized experiences at scale. This isn’t about replacing human creativity – it’s about augmenting it with data-driven intelligence.

Moreover, we’re using Cordial AI to understand – understanding your customers, your messages, and you, the marketer to drive better results. This human-centric approach to AI empowers platforms to engage marketers in more meaningful ways, fostering a connection that goes beyond traditional data points to enhance user experience and achieve business objectives effectively. This level of sophistication is what sets apart truly effective AI implementations in marketing.

Strategic services: The human touch in an automated world

In a world of automation, we believe that AI cannot replace the human expertise, strategic guidance, nuanced understanding and relationship-building capabilities of a seasoned professional services team.

Cordial’s approach to customer service goes beyond traditional support. We provide a full spectrum of professional services, with cross-functional experts driving rapid and precise implementations, offering strategic consultation, and proactively anticipating needs. This white-glove service is not just a nice-to-have – it’s essential for enterprises focused on driving real business results.

Our commitment to service excellence, in our opinion, has not gone unnoticed. As Forrester Research shared in the Forrester Wave, “Cordial’s values, transparent pricing, flexible technology, professional services model, and customer-informed development roadmap deliver…” This human-centric approach has earned us top scores in customer satisfaction and made us the preferred choice for enterprises seeking true partnership.

Cordial’s industry-leading services team builds loyal partnerships through human conversations that AI simply can’t match. They tailor strategic guidance forged from experience, understanding each brand’s unique objectives and context. 

In the coming months and years, it’s clear that success will hinge on the ability to harness AI intelligently, provide strategic human guidance, and maintain ultimate flexibility with data. At Cordial, our dedication to these principles is unwavering. We believe this is reflected in The Forrester Wave, which recognizes ‘Cordial’s strongest current offerings are its integration, AI, and agency services.’ We are committed to maintaining our leadership in these areas, helping brands build strong customer relationships and send a better message.”    

As you evaluate your marketing technology stack and strategy, consider how these three pillars – AI, strategic services, and data flexibility – align with your goals. The future of marketing is here, and it’s more personalized, more intelligent, and more human than ever before.

Get instant, form-free access here to The Forrester Wave: EMSPs and discover why Cordial was named a Strong Performer.

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As I discussed in a recent webinar , Large Language Models (LLMs) enable intuitive questioning against data using everyday language. Sophisticated SQL then translates these natural language queries into accessible insights without the need for specialized technical skills.

Cordial delivers such capabilities for marketers through an intuitive technology designed for natural conversation. Without technical expertise, marketers can explore campaign metrics, audiences, and other key data through everyday language—as effortless as speaking to another marketer.

Natural language: The key to unlocking marketing data

At Cordial, the seamless connection of natural language and data analytics democratizes marketing data, making it accessible to all marketers, no matter their technical level. Marketers can ask questions or provide instructions in plain language, transcending the need for specialized knowledge in SQL or reliance on technical analysts. This paradigm shift enables marketers from diverse backgrounds to access and analyze data, enhancing the reach and utility of data analytics.

Example: A marketer asks, “Create a segment of active customers in my premier loyalty segment who haven’t purchased in the last 30 days.” On legacy platforms, this query would require proficiency in SQL. However, Cordial’s natural language interface translates this request into an SQL query, not only yielding straightforward answers but also automatically creating the segment for immediate use in your marketing campaigns, all without the need for complex technical skills.

A platform that understands marketers

Cordial AI is not another complex platform for you to learn. We believe that marketers should get to focus on what they do best—creating impactful strategies and compelling content. Cordial’s focus on enabling marketers allows the platform to deliver unique advantages, including:

1. Pre-built models: Unlike generic query tools, Cordial provides pre-built models tailored to common marketing questions and KPIs. This enables marketers to leverage natural language immediately, without the need for extensive setup or customization.
2. Cross-channel view: Cordial’s strength in data unification ensures that analysis isn’t siloed. Natural language queries can seamlessly consider email engagement alongside social interactions or website behavior, providing a holistic view of customer interactions.
3. Actionable results: Insights are directly integrated with Cordial’s Orchestration Builder. Upon identifying a high-potential segment, marketers can build and launch targeted campaigns with just a few clicks, streamlining the process from insights to execution. This means you can go from asking a question to executing a targeted campaign in minutes, not days or weeks.

The integration of natural language processing and SQL in Cordial AI represents a paradigm shift in the way marketers leverage and understand data. By combining the power of natural language processing with the structured data capabilities of SQL, Cordial is enabling marketers to unlock unprecedented insights, optimize campaigns, and achieve measurable results through human understanding at scale. Learn more about Cordial AI.

Where natural language and marketing converge

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By harnessing AI’s potential, retailers can build stronger connections through highly relevant recommendations, customized promotions, and tailored communication. Brands that fail to adapt risk losing customer mindshare as shoppers come to expect experiences attuned to their individual preferences. Brands that embrace this AI-powered approach will thrive in an increasingly personalized retail landscape. 

Tailored messaging that resonates

Generative AI unlocks the ability to produce customized content attuned to individual interests, needs, and contexts. Retailers can leverage these capabilities to deliver tailored promotions, recommendations, and messages that feel relevant to each customer’s lifestyle. While generative AI will allow marketers to tailor messages to customer cohorts without writing endless copy, predictive AI will facilitate granular audience segmentation of those customer cohorts and targeting to ensure communication aligns with the preferences.

Predictive intelligence informs timely intervention

Leading retailers have tapped into AI’s predictive powers for some time now, forecasting key behaviors like purchase affinity, churn risk, and more. But predictive intelligence allows more than just forecasting. It enables prescription too. Retailers can surface insights on customers likely to churn and prescribe relevant retention offers or other timely interventions.

Combining predictive analytics with the synthesis capabilities that generative AI enables a whole new approach to marketing. Instead of defining every element of every message in every campaign, the marketer can be the conductor or the orchestrator defining the broad strokes of the campaign but letting generative models interlace with predictive analytics to create 1:1 symphonies—hitting the right notes for the right customer at the right time.

AI-powered personal shopping

LLMS like Claude and GPT-4 foreshadow the next phase of AI-driven retail engagement. Customers will soon interact with trusted digital advisors intimately aware of their preferences thanks to full histories of their online behavior. These AI-powered personal shoppers will provide tailored advice as though they had years of experience catering to each individual; with full knowledge of every aspect of the retailers’ operational environment. Allowing merchants to serve customers’ needs while also maximizing the business outcomes they are looking for. 

And, if we want to play this out even further, we’re already seeing agents acting on behalf of customers: one day a merchant’s AI-powered personal shoppers will interface with a customer’s agent representative to deliver true autonomous serendipity.

The bottomless potential across retail

We’ve only scratched the surface of AI’s potential. We’re already seeing diffusion-based models generate lifestyle product images, and AI-based modeling agencies, but we haven’t seen these tightly coupled with optimized outcomes and deep knowledge about individual customers. Creating ensembles of models with business-oriented optimization functions is the near future.

AI will redefine brand loyalty

As AI transforms personalized engagement, it will also redefine brand loyalty. Retailers that leverage AI to create consistently delightful, hyper-relevant experiences will earn enduring customer allegiance. We’ve already seen this with onsite merchandising companies like constructor.io. And, shoppers will come to see AI-powered assistants as trusted advisors that understand their needs better than anyone else. Forming these intimate digital relationships through AI will foster brand loyalty that transcends fleeting discounts or promotions.

The future of retail will be defined by the depth of each brand’s relationship with its customers. AI represents the key to unlocking truly personal connections at scale. Retailers need to start testing AI capabilities now to prepare for the hyper-personalized future ahead.

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