It’s here—IBM’s newly sold Watson Marketing stand-alone company, Acoustic. 

In April of this year, IBM announced the sale of Watson Marketing to private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. During that time it was reported that Centerbridge Partners would form a stand-alone company that would offer marketing automation tools, marketing analytics software, an AI-powered content management system, and an open ecosystems connector along with microservices. IBM, which launched Watson Solutions for Marketing in 2016, is separating its marketing capabilities to refocus on its core business offerings. IBM still owns the Watson Advertising division, which uses artificial intelligence to provide three solutions: media, data, and technology. 

Acoustic, the new stand-alone company, encompasses eight separate products: 

1. Campaign (formerly Campaign Automation)
2. Acoustic Analytics (formerly Customer Experience Analytics)
3. Acoustic Experience Analytics (formerly Tealeaf) 
4. Acoustic Content (formerly Content Hub) 
5. Acoustic Lifecycle Pricing (formerly DemandTec Pricing) 
6. Acoustic Personalization (formerly Real-Time Personalization) 
7. Acoustic Exchange (formerly Universal Behavior Exchange) 
8. Acoustic Lifecycle Promotion (formerly DemandTec Promotion) 

AI and marketing

While AI continues to transform businesses, it’s not a new concept. An increasing number of marketers use AI to collect and optimize data to glean better insights about their customers and prospects. AI assists marketers in automating more and more routine tasks, improving workflows, and creating personalized content. Additionally, businesses can leverage AI to visualize and form the entire customer journey to then subsequently improve customer engagement and influence purchasing decisions. 

The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute breaks this concept down into the 5Ps of marketing artificial intelligence: planning, production, personalization, promotion, and performance. These "Ps" laid out by the Institute delve into how marketers can use AI to build intelligent strategies, create intelligent content, power intelligent customer experiences, manage intelligent cross-channel and cross-device promotions, and turn data into intelligence. All of these concepts touch on the entire marketing process, but highlight how AI can be leveraged at every stage. 

MarTech that leverages AI (and where Acoustic products fit in) 

Acoustic and its AI-powered products allow customers to utilize an open technology system that easily connects their data and provides a deeper understanding of their customers. Campaign, formerly Campaign Automation, is an AI-powered marketing automation platform to assist marketers in designing more effective campaigns across email, web, mobile push, SMS, social, group messaging, and others. Marketing automation software can take advantage of AI through data enrichment, predictive analysis, and personalization. For example, with the use of AI-powered marketing automation, predictive lead scoring uncovers the absolute best leads for sales teams to follow-up with by creating a custom model that scores contacts in your database and predicts who is most likely to buy. More and more marketing automation software are utilizing AI; examples include HubSpot, Marketo, and Optimove. 

Acoustic Analytics, formerly Customer Experience Analytics, is a bundle of AI-powered products that create differentiated customer experiences based on insights into behavior across touchpoints and channels. Marketing analytics software powered by AI will allow marketers to evaluate complex customer data and predict future behaviors. Acoustic Analytics, for example, leverages replays, heat maps, and form analytics to uncover usability flaws that cause customers confusion. Other marketing analytics software powered by AI includes Datorama and Pathmatics.

Acoustic Experience Analytics, formerly Tealeaf, is an AI-powered behavioral analytics product that helps marketers and application owners analyze customer behavior and optimize digital channels by visualizing web and mobile interactions. Session replay software enables a company to record and visually play back a user’s session on its website to better understand the user’s experiences. AI can help marketers discover opportunities and struggles that customers experience on their website, which can help, for example, understand why some customers quickly abandon a site and others don’t. Dynatrace is another session replay software provider that leverages AI to uncover user intent and analysis of support problems.  

For one last example, Acoustic Personalization, formerly Real-Time Personalization, is an AI-powered personalization product that learns through each interaction and delivers the right content and offer to each visitor within the context of their previous brand interactions. AI can improve content marketing by streamlining the content creation processes by creating a content profile and automating content recommendations. For example, it can pick up on a website visitor’s preferences and intent and tailor the content to their unique preferences. Uberflip and Curata are other examples of content creation software and content experience software that are powered by AI. Additionally, SEO software MarketMuse, utilizes AI to optimize content to rank higher for more keywords and improve audience engagement. 

According to Forbes and its 10 charts that will change your perspective of AI in marketing, 82% of marketing leaders say improving customer experience is the leading factor in their decision to adopt AI. Moving forward, marketers can optimize customer experiences with AI, like empowering self-service, providing personalized product recommendations, and much more. 

To learn more, you can read our post about AI marketing and 3 ways to enhance your marketing strategy.