During the last years, the retail landscape in Africa has seen a significant change with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into business and marketing processes.
The advent of generative AI and data-driven insights has enabled retailers to optimize customer interactions, drive loyalty, drive revenue, and improve employee productivity.
Let’s take a look at the informative details of several AI-powered tools designed to reshape the retail experience.
Latest AI Innovations from Salesforce
Selling powera leading AI customer relationship management (CRM) provider, has unveiled a range of AI-powered data and tools aimed at revolutionizing the shopping experience.
By integrating generative AI into Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud, retailers and marketers gain access to real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences.
These tools promise to improve customer interactions, increase loyalty, and increase overall employee productivity.
Improving Retail Efficiency with AI
According to recent data from Salesforce, 83% of global retailers have seen improvements in operational efficiency through AI adoption.
Reliable customer data is crucial for implementing generative AI, with 63% of marketers highlighting its importance.
The need for a unified platform to bring together diverse customer data and effective AI-driven retail experiences is more evident than ever.
New tools for retail merchants
1. Generative Page Designer
Generative Page Designer uses AI-powered natural language prompts to quickly create, customize, and design e-commerce sites and pages. Merchandisers can enter prompts to create campaigns, landing pages or product layouts, streamlining the design process and ensuring brand consistency.
2. Returns information in order management
This tool analyzes return patterns using AI, prompting retailers to make changes to product displays to minimize future returns. Sentiment analysis on product reviews helps identify potential issues, allowing retailers to take quick corrective action.
3. Stock information
Digital retailers can now have a clear view of available inventory in near real time. This tool facilitates effective inventory management, helping retailers anticipate demand, manage product reserves and provide personalized recommendations to customers.
4. Customer and Product Insights Dashboards
These dashboards use data from Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Data Cloud to provide merchandisers with valuable insights. Visualizing trends, such as top-selling product bundles and engaged buyer demographics, helps create targeted commerce experiences.
Tools for Retail Marketers
1. Global promotion management
This tool helps retailers forecast potential revenue from promotions by integrating customer marketing and promotions data with predictive insights. Marketers can coordinate pricing and rewards initiatives for loyal members and non-loyal customers, ensuring a comprehensive and strategic approach.
2. Referral marketing
With pre-built templates and a Likely to Refer AI tool, brands can effectively launch referral programs and improve conversions. Trend analysis allows marketers to refine promotions, creating connected experiences across different channels.
3. Creating segments
Generative AI prompts, combined with reliable Data Cloud data, enable retailers to create targeted segments in minutes. These segments can be activated across marketing, commerce and service touchpoints for tailored journeys, offers and recommendations.
4. Creating Content for Marketing Cloud Engagement
Solving content bottlenecks, this tool allows retail marketers to automatically create personalized visual content, email subject lines, and personalized body copy at scale. Built on first-party data within the Einstein Trust Layer, this feature improves customer satisfaction and conversion rates.
The injection of AI into African retail is reshaping the sector by providing retailers with powerful tools to optimize every aspect of the customer journey.
As AI continues to evolve, these innovative tools are poised to redefine customer engagement, loyalty and overall retail success across the continent.
