X
Business

IBM launches Watson cognitive marketing service

IBM Watson Marketing Insights will use behavioral analytics to give marketers an edge in targeted campaigns.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

VIDEO- Watson Marketing Insights: IBM's heavy artillery for personalized campaigns


IBM has announced a new service for marketers hoping to tap into behavioral analytics to increase the success of targeted, personalized campaigns.

Big Blue announced IBM Watson Marketing Insights on Sunday. In the announcement, the Armonk, New York-based firm said the new service is designed to assist marketers in understanding the behavior of customers and how they might impact the success of a business.

"With this insight, marketers can launch targeted campaigns designed to cultivate customer advocates and enable long-term business success," IBM said.

IBM Watson Marketing Insights utilizes Watson supercomputing capabilities to uncover key patterns and common behaviors in customers.

By examining their interaction with an enterprise player and assessing email communications, digital and social media as well as stored information, the cloud-based service extracts key business predictors and ways to improve the success of targeted marketing campaigns.

As consumer and client trends are far from static, the service's cognitive computing abilities, together with continually changing data sets, will update key patterns and trends over time.

The new service combines Watson with marketing, commerce, and supply chain knowledge as an end-to-end system delivered through the cloud. However, the marketing solution can be introduced through individual components depending on where there is a business need, according to the company.

For example, Watson Marketing Insights can be used to predict a customer's potential response to a new ad campaign based on their previous behavior and purchases. If a customer frequently abandons their online shopping basket, then marketers can try to find out why -- and tailor personalized offers to close the sale.

"While every customer journey is different, each involves multiple touch points before the purchase is made," said Maria Winans, Chief Marketing Officer of IBM Watson Customer Engagement. "It's up to the brands to make every one of these journeys is seamless and end with a satisfied customer."

In related news, IBM revealed how its cognitive computing facilities were being put to use in the fight against eye disease. By using deep learning and visual analytics, IBM researchers were able to quickly diagnose and classify diabetic retinopathy (DR) in patients without the need for extensive tests.

The most exciting, innovative MIT projects in 2016

Editorial standards