We’ve posted a variety of AI-related posts over the past few months, and although you may be getting sick of the topic, AI is only continuing to develop and expand. In this post, I’m not going to talk about Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT in any real detail, but instead share some alternative AI tools that can be helpful for brands and marketers.
ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm, and although it may seem like a great assistance in a variety of situations, the reality is that it is currently quite limited. It’s a chatbot designed to answer questions and assist with tasks, but it does not specialise in any particular field. The tools I’m going to share are all designed and optimised to assist you within specific areas.
Copywriting – Grammarly
Grammarly is nothing new – it was utilising AI technology before most of the other AI tools that I’ll be mentioning. If you write anything within your job role, from emails to social posts to blog posts and articles, Grammarly can help you.
You can install Grammarly for free and it immediately gets to work, highlighting any spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and misused or missing punctuation. It can even suggest new sentence formations to assist the overall clarity of your work. The free version of Grammarly goes a long way by itself, but there is also a Premium option available that can suggest full sentence rewrites, vocabulary suggestions, formatting tips, tone suggestions and more! This tool is a must for any marketer.
Brand consistency – Acrolinx
Acrolinx is designed to govern and improve your content, in line with your brand guidelines. This content can be from any source, staff, agency or even AI-generated. Acrolinx will review all content and align it to the guidelines that your business has set, including style, tone, grammar preferences and even set company wording. This is especially helpful for larger companies who want to ensure that all of their content fits within their brand guidelines, or businesses that perhaps get their content from a wide variety of sources.
Acrolinx has a big list of integrating applications, including Adobe programs, Google Workspace, Microsoft applications, WordPress and more. The price of Acrolinx is determined as a personal quote – get in contact via the website to learn more.
Email marketing – Seventh Sense
Seventh Sense is an email marketing campaign tool, designed to work with HubSpot and Marketo. Email marketing is one of the most oversaturated digital marketing channels, and it is becoming increasingly harder to catch your consumer’s attention in their inbox.
Seventh Sense uses AI to determine a personalised delivery time for every individual, only sending emails at their optimum engagement time. It can also optimise the frequency of emails for each individual on your mailing list using automatic engagement-based segmentation. Seventh Sense allows marketers to spend more time on the email’s content, and less time managing deliverability. You can sign up for a free demo, then plans are payable monthly or annually.
Customer service – Chatfuel
Chatfuel is an AI chatbot, similar to ChatGPT, but Chatfuel is optimised for customer service purposes. Chatfuel is compatible with your website, Facebook and Instagram, and is coming soon to WhatsApp too. You can choose from a range of pre-made chat templates, as well as suggest new templates if you can’t find one that suits your exact needs.
Chatfuel is partnered with Stripe, so customers can make purchases directly from the chat. With a variety of other functions to help attract new customers, support customers throughout their entire journey and reengage with older customers, Chatfuel is ideal for any business with a live chat service. Test it with a free trial, then pay monthly.
Social media – Flick
Flick is an AI Social Media Assistant. It provides a visual way to plan out your social efforts ahead of time, with a variety of inbuilt analytics to make your social media journey much smoother. Flick’s Scheduler tool uses your Instagram account’s audience analytics to determine the best times of day to post content for optimum engagement. Utilising Flick’s hashtag tools can help you reach your intended audience with minimal prior research, highlighting more niche hashtags that you may have never considered.
Flick can also assist with content aspects of your social posts too: it can brainstorm ideas, create social media plans and write content. This can include personalised captions, repurposing long-form content into social snippets and organising and scheduling plans. You can try Flick for free, then pay either monthly or annually.
Online reputation – Brand24
Brand24 describes itself as a ‘Social Listening Tool’, designed to help companies track all feedback, both positive and negative, across the entire web. The AI analyses any conversation about your brand, products and competitors, compiling them into PDF reports for easy exporting. Brand24 can highlight key metrics to show you just how your company’s reputation on the internet is doing.
You can customise what is most important to you in order to filter out irrelevant data, as well as set up alerts with a variety of parameters. Brand24’s service is entirely personalisable to your business needs. You can try Brand24 with a 14-day free trial, then choose from a variety of plans to suit your circumstances.
Automation – Zapier
Zapier is a really interesting AI tool and it can provide value to a wide variety of businesses for a range of purposes. Zapier provides ‘no-code automation’ processes, assisting lead management, customer communications, internal processes and data management. You can create ‘zaps’, which are groups of automated tasks. You can then create a ‘path’, which combines multiple zaps using ‘if’ and ‘when’ parameters. You can also filter zaps to only run under certain conditions, or schedule them to run at specific times.
The above image (right) shows the creation of a zap that responds to incoming emails by automatically prompting OpenAI GPT-3 to write a relevant response that can then be sent as a reply to the sender. Zapier has over 5000 app integrations, so it’s likely that your business uses at least a couple on the list, and you can really get creative with what you choose to automate. To use very basic automation, you can utilise Zapier for free, but to create more complicated zaps, choose from a variety of pricing plans to suit your circumstances.
There are a wide range of AI tools that can be very beneficial to marketers for a variety of reasons, depending on your business structure and your task load. There are many tasks that you likely shouldn’t be leaning on an AI to complete on your behalf, but there are also many that AI can easily help cut down. AI is only improving from here, so it’s likely that in a year’s time, there’ll be even more tools like these available. Keep an eye out on developments, because the ideal tool may well be coming your way!
