I’ll also show you the ways enterprise users of WordPress are integrating Azure’s services in order to solve common business challenges and create seamless, easy-to-use content platforms that don’t come with extra hefty price tags like other modern content management systems.

Transforming marketing with AI

In the case of content marketing, the product is your content – the words, media, discoverability, and customer experience that you use to communicate.

First off, let’s have a look at how we can enhance the quality of your digital experience for your editors and website visitors alike.

Improve the quality of your written content with the Text Analytics API

The Text Analytics API cognitive service uses AI to ingest a block of content and returns a gaggle of useful insights to help improve your content and surface actionable insights for your business.

• Key phrases: These auto-suggest tags and give an insight into how a machine sees what is written. It is useful to quickly identify main points in large swathes of documents. Also, you can add the key phrases to your content as a ‘shadow taxonomy’ in the CMS for editorial use.
• Sentiment: Measures how positive or negative the content appears. This one is really nice when it comes to later analysis of content performance.
• Entity analysis – Azure has a Named Entity Recognition service which uses public sources like Wikipedia and Bing to recognise both an entity (e.g. Bill Gates) and the type of entity (e.g. Person). Again, this can be super useful for tagging; or to start adding structured data to your content. Once that structured data is there, you can start using it to drive visualisations or enhance the presentation of your knowledge to search engines.

Let the Computer Vision API maximise the power of your images

Alongside text analytics are a host of other cognitive services that are available through developer-friendly API web services. A simple one to use for almost immediate profit is the Computer Vision API. Passing an image through this service returns an incredible array of information that the machine recognises. This includes: faces, text, colours, objects, suggested tags, how ‘adult’ the image appears to be, and the image dimensions and format.

Much like text analytics, the structured data returned from the API can be integrated in a number of ways to improve editorial quality. It can automatically suggest images from a media library, auto-input image captions, meta-descriptions and tags (both for the image itself and for the main post).

Automatically adding this metadata will have some measurable and immediate benefits. Particularly better accessibility and SEO performance through the addition of higher quality image alt text, meta-description, and captions.

Four more ways to increase editorial quality using Azure services:

1. Auto-transcribe and analyse videos for better accessibility, search engine optimisation, and discovery.
2. Using document cracking to allow your editors and visitors to search your site’s media files (PDFs, Word docs, etc)
3. Use entity mapping to help your editors (and customers) explore your organisation’s content relationships and create richer related content suggestions
4. Embed PowerBI visualisations to add interactive graphics that let your visitors really explore the data behind your content.

Optimising operations

Teams are under constant pressure to be ever more productive and innovative in a competitive business world. Especially when you need to quickly adapt to changing needs or scale to an increase in demand. This can be very stressful position to be in. But using Azure’s cognitive services, you can boost team productivity while lowering stress.

Build a chatbot in minutes

First off – customer success. You probably already have a good knowledge base in the business – often exposed as FAQs on your website. Azure’s QnA Maker let’s anyone build an FAQ-style chatbot without any need to code quickly and easily by using your existing FAQs.

With chatbots able to save 30 percent in customer service costs, this could represent a huge productivity boost for your customer service team while reducing stress and pressure. While the chatbot takes over answering commonly asked questions, your customer service team will have more time to work on value-adding tasks and provide personalised experiences for customers.

Marketing automation

On the theme of connecting your back and front office digital estates for increased efficiency and customer response, here’s a great example: integrating your CRM directly with your WordPress site. It can retrieve inventory directly from CRM to ensure your website is always up to date. Or submit customer contact forms directly to your CRM for central processing.

There are tons of ways to integrate Dynamics CRM into your website: this WordPress plugin supports a good range.

Developer productivity

A computer science degree used to be a requirement it you wanted to host WordPress on Azure. Not anymore. With WordPress images available to install on a point-and-click basis, getting going with WordPress on Azure is easier than ever.

Moreover, you’re also covered from both DevOps and spend-management perspectives. Now Github is part of Microsoft, it’s super easy to connect your Github code repository to your hosting environment through Continuous Integration pipelines.

On the other side of hosting, Azure’s service insights help you to manage and optimise your spend.

Workflow productivity

Building on the editorial quality tips above, there are also productivity gains available through leveraging the same APIs and services. For example, finding appropriate images to illustrate content can be frustrating and time-consuming for editors. The Computer Vision API gives your media library a much richer search space, saving your editors time in finding images.

One step further would be to have WordPress and Azure work together to auto-suggest images from your media library or DAM based on the written content and taxonomies of the post itself.

This same principle applies for other media like video, social media embeds and for the taxonomic classification of content too. This means you can get information out to your customers at the right time, with the right context, and in the right place

Increase productivity and business value

In this article, we’ve looked at some highly achievable and straight-forward ways to start connecting WordPress and Azure to move towards the goals of transforming products, optimising operations, and more importantly, empowering employees and engaging customers.

These tools will save employees time by automating tasks that often take employees a lot time and focus. They are then free to focus on the tasks that deliver business value and drive innovation.

By having optimised content and marketing assets ready to-go, you can quickly respond to data insights or trends in a way that will add value to the business and increase employee productivity. This makes your marketing team more resilient and they can quickly adapt to changing customer requirements.

So the messages seems clear:

• Don’t let your back office and front office be disconnected. It’s so much more impactful and profitable for them to work together.
• It’s easy to leverage your existing Azure investment to augment your customers’ digital experiences.
• Combining WordPress with Azure gives you a best-of-breed architecture content marketing platform that’s on a par with market leaders. But without the huge license fees and with far more freedom and flexibility.

Get in touch if you’re interested to find out more about how to connect WordPress and Azure.

To optimise for resilient operations in digital marketing, take a look at Microsoft’s Supporting Resilient Operations Report:

Find out more

Discover how to integrate Azure and WordPress

Learn how to support resilient operations

5 barriers to AI adoption: learnings from Microsoft’s marketing team

Grow your skills and expertise at the UK Partner Skills Hub

About the author

David Lockie’s interests lie in WordPress, open source and future technology trends. He’s the founder and CEO of Pragmatic – a top-tier WordPress agency globally, which he started in 2012. David loves working with the team at Pragmatic in delivering websites that add real value to businesses, and in turn enjoys sharing his expertise on this topic at international conferences such as the B2B Marketing Expo, WooConf and WordCamp Europe. He’s also co-chair at the BIMA Blockchain Council, sits on the SE Advisory Board of BITC and is an advisor to several start-ups.

Outside of work, David enjoys keeping fit, going downhill fast, alternative folk music, cooking delicious food, movies that involve running, jumping and shooting and spending time with family and friends, often involving a good walk and a pub.

The post How AI can help improve the digital customer experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Technology like AI, neural networks, deep learning, big data, and automation aren’t new to marketers – but how they’re incorporated into a business often is.

AI shaping the future of digital marketing and branding

Marketing without social media is unthinkable today. Adverts gain businesses significant revenue through channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter – and AI and machine learning can play a part in driving a business’s success here. Just think of online ads that ‘know’ relevant interests based on prior searches.

AI is also expanding in its intricate ways every day. Take visual searches, for instance. A customer snaps a picture of a shirt they want, and the machine ‘understands’ what it’s looking at, and provides both the exact shirt, as well as similar or relevant offers. Already we’re seeing this deployed in large retail stores – but expect to see this technology develop and transform the ecommerce and customer experience.

Creating the optimal customer experience

We live in the ‘age of instant’. We demand everything now, whether it’s online shopping, watching films, and even responses from customer services.

Chatbots are making the process of automated responses to potential buyers even easier. With natural language processing, keywords can be stored and resurfaced when used, allowing related answers to be surfaced to speed up the process.

Cortana is a great example of this. Voice recognition restricts the hassle of typing out questions and saves even more valuable time. It also allows for a level of personalisation that makes customers feel so much more welcome. Using face, voice, and fingerprint recognition to log in to your account also creates seamless access into your shopping experience. With the evolution of interactive technology, it’s a no-brainer to include this type of AI into the commercial sector.

Pattern recognition is another revolutionary part of the digital transformation. With analytics recorded and processed, it allows future recommendations that are relevant to the customer.

Imagine, a virtual machine that can offer you tailored fashion advice. Or receiving automatic notifications for price drops at your local store. All based on the data you’ve already supplied.

The future of social media marketing

I find it fascinating that careers can be made from the amount of following you have on social media. 8 weeks on a reality TV show can now equate to huge sponsorship deals that can set you for life – simply in exchange for a picture with a product.

While social media platforms are free to use, in the main, companies like YouTube are also capitalising on added features for revenue, such as monthly subscriptions. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see pay-as-you-go features added to these sort of social networks in the future. That is likely to become to pay off – paid-for premium services in exchange for fewer ads, higher quality media, and all-round a more personalised experience. That’s if every social media site doesn’t monopolise into one big brand first; a huge, single site for Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and the like.

Customer experience counts

With 95% of British people buying their items online, companies must adapt. The search pool for customers is massive, where billions of potential buyers are within reach. With a strong marketing campaign and smart usage of AI tools to assist this, any company or brand can achieve success.

AI is critical to expanding this incredible digital world we are all growing into. Brands will soon rely on these technologies to drive their sales, especially when shopping now lives on the internet.

There is a huge market within online marketing and branding, and whilst the majority of companies are taking advantage of this, there are many that could be doing more to boost business. As shopping becomes easier and more personalised, the response becomes more positive. And the happier the customer, the higher the revenue.

Find out more

Download the report: ‘Accelerating competitive advantage with AI’

Read our deep dive into the state of AI in the UK

Q&A panel: What will AI mean for retail in the next five years?

About the author

Tom Crawford is an Azure Specialist intern working on the Enterprise and Commercial sectors of the business. He has been with Microsoft for 3 months, on a year-long journey of continuous learning. Data and AI fascinate Tom, and chime well with his Computer Science studies at university. With that experience, he believes he’s beginning to see, first-hand, the digital transformation of the modern era.

The post Reimagining retail with AI appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In order for marketing teams to reach new customers, you need to connect what you want to say as a brand to achieve your commercial objectives, with what customers want and need to hear in order to address the challenges they are facing in their day to day business. We also need to empower the whole organisation to be storytellers and help tell your business story in an authentic way to connect directly with people. This propels digital selling using storytelling, too.

“People hear statistics,” digital analytics pro Brent Dykes once told us, “but they feel stories.” ​

So, how can you infuse storytelling into your content and drive a better connection with your customer base and in turn help your employees be digital sellers?

Tip 1 – Know what storytelling is

Storytelling is the idea of creating an emotional connection with your customer first; then using that to drive sales. Fundamentally, people don’t engage with brands. They engage with people. You need to make your customer the hero and think about how you can add value to them in a way that’s relevant to the challenges they are facing day to day.

Traditionally, marketing had one goal: support the sales team selling the product. Today, it’s no longer so clear-cut. According to one study, 71% of readers say they are turned off by content that seems like a sales pitch.​

Very few consumers feel loyal to faceless businesses who see them only as data on a spreadsheet at the quarterly shareholders meeting.

Storytelling offers the chance to create a personality for your business that fully bonds with its values. This is where you must consider…

• Who you are? What you do? Why you do it? What is at the core of your culture too and bring that out in your storytelling.

The answers to these questions form the foundation of your ‘brand personality’. But, more importantly, they should authentically mirror your workplace culture. That culture might be laid-back, like in many young start-up organisations, or it might be the sort of professional tone employed by, for instance, medical or legal organisations. Whatever it is, embrace it. Identifying and owning your brand story is  where your storytelling transformation begins.

With that determined, you can start telling that story; reinforcing your core values across every communication.

Tip 2 – Focus on the hero you deserve

What’s a hero? It’s not your business – it’s your customer, and they should be placed at the heart of all your storytelling outputs. Don’t tell them why you’re great; show them how your product or service makes them great.

It’s tempting to picture your business as the customer’s saviour. Your products and services help them, after all, which puts you front and centre. The problem with this line of thinking is that it’s really not too different to reiterating the same tired message: ‘we’re great, and that’s why you need us’.  It’s like a comedian telling people ‘I am funny, laugh’ rather than telling people humorous anecdotes.

That’s a ‘story’ customers, bombarded online by brands, are beginning to ignore.

You aren’t awesome. But you help make your customers awesome.

As business adviser Chris Brogan noted, “The key is, no matter what story you tell, make the buyer the hero.”​

Focus on how your product or service enriches the hero’s life. How do you help customers overcome challenges so they can rise, triumphant, at the end of the story? That’s how you create emotional connections. Potential customers also believe previous customers much more than simply hearing from the brand, all of us look at reviews these days on anything we buy or experience.

Tip 3 – Assess your current culture, connections, and commitments

Storytelling doesn’t start with ‘Once upon a time’, but with the way your company works, and what it stands for. Understanding this – and making changes where necessary – is what lets you put forward an authentic, relatable voice, no matter what industry you’re in.

Here at Microsoft, a core part of our story is the way that we empower our employees to come as they are and do what they love, embracing a ‘learn it all’ mentality. To make that story a reality, we’ve worked hard to instil a culture of empowerment within our own team. At every level of the business, we encourage our people to learn new skills and allow them to take ownership of their work. Now, because our team have the tools and autonomy needed to create great content, they’re able to empower others. It’s our culture that informs our core messaging.

Reflecting on your own company culture can help you define what your story should be.

Once you’re in an environment that nurtures you, excites you, and aligns with your own values, authentic stories write themselves. The culture lets you be yourself. And in the age of internet cynicism, honesty is a valuable asset.

A fantastic example of authenticity is our Microsoft Blogger Series. We’ve been working to transform our people into storytellers, leveraging their expertise to help us tell our brand story in a more resonant and engaging way.

Our champions aren’t trying to be anything but themselves. They come to us with an idea, or first-hand experience, and an experience no-one else can tell, and create stories that are authentic and accessible to all readers.

This forms part of our wider digital selling efforts where we’ve pulled together a full training programme to get our employees to transform their digital presence.

Tip 4 – It takes an army of many

Communicating your company’s story isn’t a solo task. One author may write a single book, but there are thousands of books on the shelf, each one written by a different person with something to say. The same goes for your business: it takes an army of many.

If our Blogger Series and digital selling programme shows us anything, it’s this: with the right support, everyone in your company can be a gifted storyteller and digital seller.

Once you’ve defined your values and your voice, you open up an opportunity for your workforce to help build your brand through employee advocacy. They all have unique stories, ideas, expertise and views that provide a truly human connection with your audience.

Content marketing is one of your strongest assets. Encourage employees to learn the skills of digital storytelling. It’s critical in making your brand stand out in today’s digitally dominant world where all successful brands are easily accessible, humanised, and personal.

Tip 5 – Dig into data

Introducing storytelling elements into your marketing doesn’t mean sacrificing data. We now live in a world dominated by data. During his Corenote speech at Microsoft Inspire, our CEO Satya Nadella mentioned that 90 percent of the data we have today was created in the last two years. Make use of it – just be sure to give it relevance and soul.

While we recognise the power of stories – a power that’s existed for as long as we’ve roamed the planet – that doesn’t mean there’s no space for it within your digital marketing strategy.

Effective content marketing balances the two. Each element complements and informs the other, and the content plans we produce here at Microsoft. This is achieved through our content resonance study (CRS) – a quarterly report which gives us real insight into what our customers are searching for and engaging with in digital spaces.

It guides us in understanding the types of content and language that resonates with them. It studies how they talk, what they’re talking about, and what they aren’t. This lets us better create and position our content, aligning commercial goals accordingly and really thinking about how we can add value to connect with our customers on a more human level.

By focusing on resonant content over irrelevant content, we find that golden spot between what we want to tell people and what they want to hear.

All businesses are here to empower customers. What the CRS prevents us doing is wasting time on content that doesn’t ignite their passion and curiosity. Instead, the data lets us speak to them on an honest, emotional level, with the help of our employee advocates, just like every good story.

I truly believe that every person and every business, has a story to tell. How will you tell yours?

Find out more

Download the Little Book of Storytelling

Tune in to our Art of Storytelling podcast series

Hear from the experts: explore our Microsoft Blogger Series

We’d love to hear how you approach storytelling in your business and to share some of our learnings. Join in the discussion and comment below.

About the author

Great stories demand heroes, emotions, and insight. As Storytelling & Digital Destinations Lead at Microsoft UK, Victoria Oakes places these principles at the heart of Microsoft UK’s content output. In this role, she’s driven to unify messaging and content across Microsoft using insights at the heart. Through her passion for engaging copy, visual storytelling, and data-driven insights, she truly cares about content being useful, interesting and easy to digest.

The post 5 ways storytelling can fuel your digital marketing appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

A blog by Tom Light, focusing on apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships at Microsoft and his experience in Microsoft’s Early in Career community.

I owe a lot to the Microsoft apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships programme. Driving past the Microsoft sign and into the Reading campus on a Monday morning in September 2017, I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement and achievement. I was a tech-savvy 23-year-old, and this moment felt almost like a dream. Having not yet received my employee badge, I did briefly have to explain to security that it was my first day. But that didn’t bother me one bit – I was proud to be one of the newest members of the Microsoft family.

It wasn’t my first time visiting Microsoft UK headquarters, but it was my first time arriving as an employee – and if I’m honest, I almost took my little hatchback off-roading towards the campus lake because I was so absorbed in that slightly surreal moment. They say it’s always important to make an immediate impression. I don’t think tyre tracks over the immaculately-cut grass would have been the best stamp to leave on day one.

I had been working in a sales team at a professional football club since leaving school after completing my A-Levels when I was 18. University never felt like the right path for me. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve always been hardworking and driven, but at that time in my life that drive had steered me down a path towards starting my career as soon as possible, to have an impact on a business, to earn money, and – as I saw it – to be ‘an adult’.

Have I ever reflected on where I’d be now if I’d taken an alternative route? Most definitely. Do I regret the choice I made back in 2012? Absolutely not.

An opportunity presents itself

It had often crossed my mind that my aspiration of working for a tech giant could have passed me by. I’d always had a keen interest in Microsoft in particular, having been brought up surrounded and empowered by their everyday applications like Office and having gone through the education system immersed in a Windows ecosystem. And the fact that the main Microsoft UK offices are pretty much on my doorstep only sharpened my interest. I’m extremely lucky to have a 10-minute commute to the Thames Valley Park campus here in Reading, but I’d have travelled countless miles and sat in endless traffic for this opportunity.

That’s exactly what I saw one day – an opportunity. Looking at the Microsoft careers website, I spotted the advert for apprenticeships within the UK. At first, I clicked it more out of curiosity than anything else, but that single click was the moment that completely transformed my career.

Five years before, when I was preparing to leave school, there was a stigma attached to apprenticeships. The range of industries that offered them were limited, and they were broadly viewed as an option for people who ‘didn’t have the grades’ for university or a job that was seen as a ‘proper career path’. Sadly, my sixth form wasn’t particularly helpful for those of us who weren’t applying to universities – there was a definite feeling of isolation and a lack of support there.

The evolving apprenticeship path

I was surprised at what I found online five years later in 2012. The scope of apprenticeships had clearly evolved, and Microsoft offered a range of roles in both business and technical environments, while affording the chance to work towards Level 3, 4 or 6 (degree) qualifications.

For a while, I’d wanted to get into marketing, but the majority of roles out there were understandably aimed at university graduates. I knew I didn’t want to go back to being a full-time student, but further digging led me to the discovery that Microsoft offered a number of marketing positions as part of their apprenticeship scheme – tick!

I had recently turned 23, and the scheme was open to applicants aged between 16 and 24 (this has since been made completely open) – tick! I took a punt…

My application journey

Within a few days, I received an email thanking me for my application. As I read further, it became apparent that my application had in fact been unsuccessful as I was ‘underqualified’, despite having the relevant GCSE grades required.

Naturally I queried this, and it turned out I had submitted my four A-Levels into the GCSEs box. Microsoft kindly rectified my administrative error. They must have thought “We’ve got a right one here!” – but despite this, I was delighted to be offered a video interview. Just thought I’d throw that little story in. We all make mistakes, but we’re only human and people get that. It’s how we rectify them and learn from them that really counts.

After completing the video interview, I was thrilled to be offered a place at an assessment centre held at the UK headquarters in Reading. I was one of 10 individuals and the eldest, as I expected, but that didn’t bother me. I was part of a group of young, hungry individuals – myself in more sense than one as I’d been too nervous to eat breakfast – and we were all there for the same reason. We all knew what an incredible opportunity we had to make a positive impression and earn a role at one of the world’s largest companies.

One of the key parts of the day was an individual interview. There were a variety of hiring managers there, but it just so happened that I was interviewed by Danielle Crayton. Danielle was a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Surface product portfolio. Although I was open to marketing opportunities anywhere within the very broad Microsoft business, being a hardware lover, my dream role would have been working in the devices team. This was my opportunity to show my passion and knowledge to an influential person within that field – and the rest, as they say, is history.

The following week, Danielle offered me a role within her team. To say I was ecstatic would be a huge understatement. After further discussions with her following the assessment centre, it became even more apparent that the stereotypical view of apprenticeships was sorely outdated. Apprentices are not tea and coffee makers. They are not assistants. They are real members of real teams with even realer responsibilities and unimaginable opportunities ahead of them.

My role at Microsoft

Over the past 18 months, I have represented Microsoft and told our Surface and Modern Workplace story to both existing and new customers at huge events like Future Decoded and BETT, as well as at many smaller first- and third-party events. I’ve also led our internal communication and readiness streams, focusing on how we can further empower our internal sales teams and partner community.

My favourite part of my position has been playing an important role in the preparation and execution surrounding new product launches. The trust and faith put in me, as an apprentice, to know things such as our product roadmap and to be able to be a part of launch planning months in advance of announcements – well, it’s most certainly not the vision of an apprentice role that I had in my head beforehand. It’s overwhelmingly beyond that.

Add all of the above and more to the fact that Microsoft have invested in my development with marketing-centric qualifications (including a Level 4 Award from the Chartered Institute of Marketing) to complement my day job. I am unbelievably grateful for everything this company has allowed me to achieve. If I had any words of advice for somebody thinking about applying to become a Microsoft apprentice, I’d limit myself to four: Just go for it!

Taking this path has been the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve built a great network, both internally and externally; become more qualified than I was 18 months ago; and am now stepping off of my apprentice programme to join our UK Public Relations team as a Communications Manager.

When I was 23 and thought a career in marketing within the technology industry was starting to appear to be beyond me, I had no idea that it was just around the corner, ready and waiting for me.

Apprenticeships at Microsoft

Please find more information below on the types of apprenticeships we are offering, based in Reading and London, from October 2019:

• Level 6 Degree Apprenticeship – Digital Solutions Technology

4.5-year programme designed for those looking to start their careers in technology.

Digital Technology Solutions Degree Apprentice (Cloud Solutions Engineer)

Digital Technology Degree Apprentice with (Cyber)

• Level 4 Commercial Supply

2-year programme designed for those looking to start their careers in procurement in our online Microsoft Stores. You will be learning with a team of industry experts who will nurture and support you every step of the way.

Commercial Supply and Procurement Apprentice

• Level 4 Data Analyst

2-year programme designed for those who are looking to start their careers in the world of data, as part of the dynamic online Microsoft Store.

Data Analyst Apprentice (EMEA Planner)

• Level 4 Junior Management Consultant

2-year programme designed for those looking to start their careers working in a fast-paced project environment supporting, consulting and delivering projects.

Junior Management Consultant Apprentice (Customer Evidence & Advocacy)

Junior Management Consultant Apprentice (Worldwide Learning Business Management)

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About the author

Tom is a Product Marketing Manager for Surface for Business at Microsoft UK where he focusses on digital content and customer journey strategies, as well as internal communications and readiness. He is passionate about empowering others to learn and grow, using modern workplace devices as a catalyst. In 2018, Tom also received the Microsoft Early in Career Award for Marketing.

The post Microsoft Apprenticeships and Degree Apprenticeships: My Story appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Name: Sophie Marriott

University: Loughborough University – Communications & Media studies

Role: Marketing Communications Intern

I sit within the Central Marketing Organisation of Microsoft which is the hub of all the main marketing activities that occur for Microsoft’s products like Office 365, Azure and Surface. Our marketing campaigns can either be targeted towards consumers, commercial businesses, or technical audiences. I focus mainly on commercial marketing which includes targeting various business decision makers within the technology industry to help them understand how they can leverage technology to deliver better business outcomes. I work with my manager to plan, create and execute various campaigns that will help people see how Microsoft can help them achieve their business objectives. This involves working with a wide variety of stakeholders from creative agencies to our social media team and events managers. I also work with the analytics teams to report back on the success and engagement of the campaigns to see how we can optimise our campaigns for success.

What does an average week look like in marketing communications?

For me, every week looks different to the last. This is something that I really enjoy about the role because you never know what exciting project may come up that you can get stuck into. Most of the time I will be working with various stakeholders within the business and external marketing agencies to get the campaigns briefed and executed. I am mainly based in Reading, but also attend events relating to the projects I am working on all around the country. It’s a great way to network and meet customers. Alongside this, I like to keep on top of my learning with the endless amount of resources available to us at Microsoft, for example doing my Microsoft Office Specialist exams.

Could you tell us about one of your highlights of the role?

A highlight of my role was working on Bett in January 2019. Bett is the largest education tradeshow event in the UK and we were the head sponsors at the event. I had the opportunity to help with the planning of Microsoft’s presence at the event, and got to attend for 4 days. Being given the responsibility to help organise such a large event was very rewarding because I could see the impact that my hard work had on the successful running of the event. I also had the opportunity to network with a wide variety of people within different jobs, opening my eyes to the diverse career paths that people have taken. To top it all off, I even got to meet Cindy Rose, Microsoft UK’s CEO, at one of the breakout sessions that I helped host!

What has the transition from University to Microsoft been like?

The transition to working life from university was initially quite difficult as your working hours increase quite dramatically. Considering this, I enjoy the routine that working at Microsoft gives me and it didn’t take long to adjust. I am looking forward to going back to university and implementing what I have learnt this year working in a fast-paced and corporate environment to make the most of my last year in education.

What has been your personal highlight of the year?

One of my personal highlights of the year has been partaking in DigiGirlz, an intern led programme that brings Year 8 girls together at the Microsoft offices and exposes them to STEM subjects and coding. It is so important today to get young girls into technology. Volunteering for DigiGirlz made me feel like I was really having an impact and making a difference to their future. To see the students’ budding passion for technology, along with the excitement while taking part in the coding activity, was inspiring. It was an experience that I won’t forget, and I am grateful that I took the opportunity to volunteer.

Find out more

Discover what it’s like to be a Technical Account Manager

Develop your digital skills to prepare for the future of work 

Inspiring young girls to pursue STEM careers

About the author

Sophie Marriott is a Marketing Communications intern at Microsoft. She attends Loughborough University doing a Communications and Media Studies degree. At Microsoft she enjoys working in marketing, attending events and helping to create campaigns that show the value technology can have across various industries.

The post A day in the life of a Marketing Communications Intern appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

AI isn’t the future. It’s the now. It’s already around us – from the auto-complete in our search engines to our sat navs helping us avoid that Monday morning traffic. And it’s more than just robots and self-driving cars. AI can help us improve our business value and respond to customers’ needs quicker too.

Digital marketing and AI are a natural fit. Marketers are leveraging the technology to help steer business decisions, improve customer experiences, and understand their audience better. Best of all, they’re saving money and time whilst they do it.

So, what are the main opportunities that AI could offer for a digital marketing team?

1. Make sense of huge amounts of data

By 2020, it’s estimated that for every person on earth, 1.7 MB of data will be created every second[1]. That’s a whole heap of data for your organisation to collect, analyse, and plan with. Too much, in fact. And this is where AI comes into play.

AI provides advanced analytics to optimise operations, deliver insights, and drive innovation in an organisation. Best of all, AI and machine learning are readily available. Microsoft’s AI platform makes it easy to innovate and accelerate solutions with pre-built or customisable options.

Try: Get hands on with AI to see what amazing capabilities you can draw from your data.

2. Understand your audience for better targeting

AI can analyse data to quickly understand your audience demographic and their buying behaviours. This means AI can help you predict their future actions and decisions. Imagine what impact this could have on your marketing campaigns.

If you were looking for organisations at the forefront of data-driven marketing, you’d find Ignition Ai. They have self-learning predictive marketing algorithms that integrate the emotion and psychology of shopping with real-time data to predict trends.

“Our machine learning writes its own rules. We’re not telling it what to do; we’re telling it the outcome we need, and it will go away and write its own logic,” says Ignition Ai CEO, James Harrison.

Running in Azure, the algorithm identifies consumers across devices and analyses their web browsing. Machine learning builds an understanding of the consumer, which lets Ignition Ai bid for advertising space and display highly targeted copy that matches each unique person. This results in more accurate ad placement, more ‘human’ conversations, and ultimately, increased profit.

“All this happens in less than 50 milliseconds and we’re able to scale the weight of advertising in a matter of minutes,” says Harrison. “It’s getting to the point where our chairman tells us to ‘tone it down a bit’.

“A ten percent improvement would be great, but we’re seeing halving of budgets and doubling of effectiveness. The results are astounding.”
– James Harrison, Ignition AI CEO

3. Employ chatbots to create a better customer experience

While 29 percent of companies use AI for predictive analytics, 31 percent are using it for virtual assistants. These assistants, or chatbots, help customers with routine questions and tasks, making it easier for them to find what they’re looking for. Chatbots are also available 24/7 so your customers are never kept waiting. This frees employees up to handle more complex tasks, and provide more hands-on service. 73 percent of customers are open to businesses using AI if it makes their life easier.

Dixon’s Carphone research found that around 90 percent of customers start their journey online, and 65 percent use their mobiles phones to assist them in-store[2]. To capitalise on the opportunity they built Cami on the Microsoft Bot Framework using Cognitive Services. She understands text and images, meaning she’ll respond to common questions. She’ll even look at pictures of items taken in-store and see if they’re in stock.

“We didn’t create any new information, we just pulled it together in a different way. And with Cami, we’ve giving customers the ability to search through it using natural language,”  says Antonia Colin-Jones, Strategic Partnership Program Manager. “The biggest thing Cami will do is help strengthen our relationship with customers. We’ll also improve our in-store operations by supporting our store colleagues to do their jobs more efficiently.”

Consumers expect a more omni-channel experience – 59 percent of customers in our 2018 Global Customer Service Report say they engage with five channels, and 75 percent expect employees to know their previous interactions[3]. Cami bridges that gap between online and in-store. Employees can look at what the customer has searched for online or added to their wishlist and improve their in-store experience. Employees can also use Cami to answer stock questions.

Try: Meet LUIS, a service that interprets normal language and understands the outcomes. A fast learner, LUIS needs little training, and gains insights based on real user-inputs.

4. Offer a personalised service

With AI on hand to help to understand your data, you can offer a more personalised service than ever before – in real time. An e-commerce store can now easily show recommendations in real-time based on the customer’s past purchases or habits. But it’s not limited to the online experience. AI can also be used in physical stores, giving suggestions that make it easier for the customer to find what they need or to help reduce traffic in aisles, giving customers a faster checkout experience. Data collected from a mobile banking app can predict when a customer needs help and a customer agent can reach out before an issue arises.

5. Take the hard work out of email marketing

AI takes all the hard work out of email marketing. Analysing vast amounts of data, it can understand the best time to contact a customer, how often they should be contacted, and the topics they’re interested in to create the ultimate personalised communication. CRM powered with AI gives you a 360° view of a customer. You can use these powerful insights to drive better email marketing campaigns to the right people at the right time.

Learn: How to reduce customer churn on Microsoft AI School.

Adopt AI responsibly to improve employee engagement

AI has the power to do some incredible things for your customer experience, but it also offers huge potential for impacting your most valuable asset too – your employees. Two-thirds of key business decision makers believe AI will bring out the best in their people. AI is here to stay – and those who use AI with an ethical approach are already outperforming those who do not by 9 percent in productivity, performance, and business outcomes.

Tip: It’s important to ensure that any concerns about AI are addressed in the early stages of planning and adoption in order to get a good return on AI investment. One way to do this is to get your employees involved in the process, listen to feedback, and be transparent with the organisation’s goals and values.

It’s clear to see the benefits AI can provide for digital marketing, from providing fast, personalised omni-channel engagement and real-time analytics, to freeing up employees to spend more time with customers or being more creative and innovative in their work.

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[1]Data Never Sleeps 6.0

[2] Dixons Carphone case study

[3] State of Global Customer Service Report

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That’s great news, especially in light of what’s recently happened to household names such as Toys’R’Us, Maplin[2], Joe Bloggs, and East[3]. The only question  is – how can UK retail seize all this opportunity? One way is AI or, as many call it, intelligent technology.

The stakes have got higher

For many years, retail has relied on data management and database analysis to see exactly what’s happened, and what’s going on in the big wide world.

Intelligent technology, on the other hand, ups the ante. It tells you what happened. But it does a whole lot more. It strengthens your ability to work out what’s going to happen, and why, by using parts of apparently unrelated data. Everyone knows, for example, that ice cream sales increase as it gets hotter. But did you know, for example, that they peak at 25°C? – or that fizzy drinks sell more during rainy and snowy winters?[4]

If intelligent tech isn’t just blue-sky thinking and is actually possible, it could prove to be a god-send for retail. For example, Next places much of the blame for its slump in profits on “self-inflicted product ranging errors and omissions”.[5] Researchers at the University of California[6] have come up with some predictive fashion algorithms – so could these help iron out Next’s problems?

It’s amazing what human ingenuity can do with the right tools. Here are a few other ideas for you:

Dynamic pricing – Give customers the best prices, affordable rates and occasional special offers for a range of producrs and services – not just for a few items such as airline fares and hotels. It’s a great way to create loyalty.

Personalisation – Benefit the brand and the customer by offering an experience that is right, timely and tailored to the individual.

Advanced retail planning (ARP) – ARP isn’t just about being smarter with planograms. It also includes making sure you’re not faced with massive physical and financial stock overheads. And it helps keep the competition at bay. It uses analytics to understand what customers want, when they want it, and how much they want to pay.

What’s possible could kickstart the incredible

Wondering how companies are using AI? Here are a few examples.

Fashion
With 32 quarters in a row of double-digit online growth behind it, one international fashion brand used Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI solution for customer service to add a virtual agent to its website. Within a month, the virtual agent was already providing improved customer experiences. Answering more than one quarter of customer queries. Giving the right offer discounts. Suggesting products. Checking local stock. And passing calls over to live agents if necessary. Unsurprisingly, the brand now plans to expand it to additional shopping channels.

Electricals
Cami’s the latest recruit at a popular electricals company. She’s a bot based on the Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Cognitive Services, and she answers questions through the brand’s website and Facebook Messenger. Customers and store colleagues can find products, check stock, and discover important information to make every experience a better one.

Furniture
This online furniture retailer has around 10,000 products on its site. And each has a host of options that allow shoppers to customise their purchases. That’s a lot of choices. So, to stop customers from being scared away, the company looked at Microsoft AI solutions. The website now makes customisation recommendations attached to each product, as well as ones based on a visitor’s browsing history. Conversions have trebled as a result.

Want some more inspiration?

You can find a lot more information about intelligent technology here:

The Future is Cognitive: Using AI in retail to meet new hurdles

How retailers can improve the customer experience with AI

[1] https://www.worldretailcongress.com/session/fireside-chat-survival-guide-new-retail-world?search_id=103656

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/uk-high-street-store-closures-retail-job-losses-2018-next-toys-r-us-new-look-maplin-a8270506.html

[3] http://www.retailresearch.org/whosegonebust.php

[4] https://www.inma.org/blogs/conference/post.cfm/how-weather-company-uses-consumer-behaviour-data-for-targeted-advertising

[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/uk-high-street-store-closures-retail-job-losses-2018-next-toys-r-us-new-look-maplin-a8270506.html

[6] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609469/this-ai-learns-your-fashion-sense-and-invents-your-next-outfit/

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While this seems outlandish it’s entirely possible – Mt Everest has 4G for all your mobile browsing needs, and retailers are now using big data, AI, and new technology to stay ahead of the pack.

Find out below how companies are using some of the top marketing trends to innovate and stay competitive.

Personalising the customer experience

There is more choice than ever before. Customers now have the power to go where the search button takes them. In a world where retailers are struggling to stay open on the high-street, some companies are surprisingly expanding their services from online-only to both e-commerce and brick and mortar stores.

By harnessing data from both online and in-store, you can learn more about your customer’s choices and personalise their experience while ensuring you preserve your brand.

This is what The Fragrance Shop has done to develop a stronger understanding of its customers and provide a wonderful experience for all. By using Microsoft Azure and partner OmniCX, they are harnessing cloud technology to innovate their sales techniques in-store.

“Customer centricity is a massive part of our business, so the technology we invest in is all about collecting the right data. Joining this all together means creating a seamless experience and a connected customer,” says Sanjay Vadera, CEO at The Fragrance Shop.

All stores collect live data including visits and conversions transforming the information staff have access to and the way the business functions. For example, sales staff instore can immediately input customer feedback into the system, meaning The Fragrance Shop now responds quickly and proactively to constantly improve the customer experience.

“We gather information in stores, online, and through customer service, which all feeds into Microsoft Azure. With the right computing power, we can now get the results that we want in the timescales we need,” says Julian Holt, Chief Technical Officer.

High quality service across all channels

As customers are adjusting their shopping habits to include instore, web, and mobile purchases, retailers must effectively support the customer journey through all these platforms, moving seamlessly from one channel to another.

To create an omnichannel experience you need technology that can access data from multiple systems and present it in a comprehensive, user-friendly way.

House of Fraser uses Microsoft Azure to enrich the customer experience across all channels while helping bring data all together in a single platform and enable its employees to have a complete view of the business to facilitate a stellar customer experience.

“For 169 years House of Fraser stood as a premium, fashion centric, department store but we found that our customers were changing how they shop and the market was evolving. We needed to do something different. So we devised a bold and creative strategy to bolster our established brand with data driven, multi-channel retail, supported by Azure cloud technology,” says Paul Mason, Director of Architecture and Assurance.

By having a single platform, they ensure they have quality and consistency across all channels, seamless integration and scalability on demand. With one of the largest implementations of its kind on Azure in Europe, House of Fraser is now highly data-driven, improving performance metrics and reducing loading time online.

“The greatest test of the platform’s performance came on Black Friday 2017, which turned out to be the biggest Black Friday event in our history. We had 1.7 million visitors and 10 million page views – something our previous platform would not have coped with. Our team turned up for work, braced for a highly charged day, then we watched in awe as the new platform absorbed the unyielding traffic, providing capacity on demand from the cloud and performing capably for both our customers and for our in-house team without a glitch. For me, sailing through that Black Friday with flying colours was a career defining moment,” Mason says.

The assistants of the future

Creating a smooth and easy experience online or instore is key to customer retention. In brick-and-mortar companies this is the task of sales assistants, however traditionally this is done via an FAQ or Knowledge Centre link on the webpage. With the advent of AI and machine learning, you can leverage these tools to create better, smoother experiences, like what

We’re trying to give our customers a consistent, world-class experience across all the channels they use to interact with us,” says Antonia Colin-Jones, Strategic Partnership Program Manager for Dixons Carphone. “To do that, we need to understand what the future of retail looks like and how technology can help us provide a better experience.”

They enlisted the help of Microsoft Services who used the Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Cognitive Services to create Cami, their geeky and confident online bot.

“Through the research, we determined that artificial intelligence could be the key to offering our customers the differentiated, personalised service and cohesive customer journey we are aiming for,” says Colin-Jones.

Cami can answer text-based questions through chat, and even analyses pictures of in-store shelf labels to check stock. She’s so good at her job that staff even use her for quick stock checks as well. Cami will also remember customer’s wishlists and searches, so when they go instore for help, staff can view this and direct them to that product or suggest another.

“The biggest thing Cami will do is to help strengthen our relationship with customers,” says Colin-Jones. “We’ll also improve our in-store operations by supporting our store colleagues to do their jobs more efficiently.”

Responsive and flexible campaigns

One of Ukraine’s top retail destinations They wanted to ensure their marketing campaigns and business decisions matched the fast-moving environment of today’s digital world.

“We had very inflexible and simplistic applications that were not meeting our business requirements. A particular problem for us at MOYO was that we found it too hard to mount timely outreach campaigns, and we were too often setting price points too much at variance with our competitors,” says Head of PMO, Dmitrij Samarskij.

By working with Microsoft partner E-consulting to build a new CRM platform on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure, they were able to improve customer loyalty and brand appeal via highly-targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.

“Our market activity has become much more effective, as we can create programs quickly that we know will be of interest to our customers,” he says. “We also like the way that we can identify and sell to very specific demographics now, which our older systems simply never let us do.” MOYO estimates they’re enrolling more than double the number of new customers daily and have had a 30% increase in online transactions.

Mobile shopping whenever, wherever

Now armed with the power of mobile browsing, customers are purchasing wherever they are, whenever they want. 70 percent of website traffic for comes from mobile devices, so their mobile-first strategy was central in transforming their business with Azure.

“We needed a platform that would be flexible so that we could try new things in the presentation layer, in the way that consumers interact with us,” says Bob Strudwick, Chief Technology Officer at ASOS. “Currently, that means a mobile-first strategy, and in the future, it will mean conversational commerce and augmented reality. It will mean integration with social platforms.”

ASOS is now easily able to personalise its front-end services without modifying the back-end infrastructure, allowing greater flexibility and personalisation. Moving to the cloud also meant that ASOS would no longer be at risk of a single point of failure, protected by Azure’s automated resiliency.

By switching to this strategy, they more than doubled the volume of Black Friday orders from the previous year as well as accelerated the development of innovative features to target new markets and stay at the top of trends.

Find out more

Read about the future of retail

Find out how you can improve customer experience with AI

The top retail marketing plans infographic

The post Top 5 retail marketing trends appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

James Knowles, Acting Head of Commercial Content Operations at Retail Week, presented at Microsoft Future Decoded 2017, giving the results of research around retailers, data and the single customer view. After surveying 70 chief marketing officers, Retail Week found that only 8.6% of respondents said they have achieved a single view of the customer, while 15.7% think they’ll get there in a year. However, one in five said they’ll never achieve this.

When a single customer view is deemed so important, why are this many CMOs saying it’s never going to happen? Well, it all comes down to data. How you gather it, how you manage it, how you handle privacy needs and regulations, and how much your customers are willing to give you.

Better data – not just more

61% of the respondents to Retail Week’s research said that better quality data would help improve retention and loyalty. And then retailers can use this better data to underpin strategic decisions and improve market performance.

At this year’s Microsoft Future Decoded, we heard how better data solved many problems for one customer, retailer N Brown Group. With roots as a mail-order company, N Brown Group is now a successful e-commerce company – all thanks to data. Using the Celebrus data collection tool from Microsoft partner D4t4 Solutions, N Brown Group understands its customers in an advanced way. Celebrus collects a rich set of data from a variety of sources. Across all digital channels, it collects everything that shoppers do on a website, from the tabs they open to the clicks they make.

Consumers are driving a lot of the innovation in retail. They’re now more value conscious, they’re always-on, they’re socially engaged, and they’re channel agnostic. And this is making it increasingly difficult for retailers to differentiate on the traditional factors of price and location. The competition now lies in knowing the customer better than other retailers do. In having the ability to make business decisions at the speed of light. In understanding customer behaviour, desire, intent, preference, and lifecycle. In having a single customer view.

And this is exactly what Celebrus enables N Brown Group to do. If, for example, a customer views a pair of jeans, N Brown Group can send an email that’s timely and relevant, with the right content and context. And when using a combination of transactional and web data – rather than just traditional emails – N Brown Group sees sales per email increase by 25%.

The better use of data has meant that N Brown Group can not only react to customer wants and desires, but also predict what they’ll want next. They already used a predictive model, scoring around 75% accuracy. But after using web data to bolster this, the retailer increased accuracy to 93%. This predictive modelling – machine learning – also shows them who to market to, showing who responds well and who doesn’t, saving them from wasting money on those who never engage. The team removed the bottom 10% of targets, and improved return per contact by 8%.

Seizing the data gives retailers like N Brown Group the power to understand their customers even better and interact with them in a way which delights them.

Data, Black Friday and the Golden Quarter

With Black Friday and the Golden Quarter on the way, we spoke to James Knowles at Retail Week about how important data is at this time of year. It’s key to have robust data management and insight, as it could be the differentiating factor between a customer buying from your store – or your competitor’s. if retailers aren’t using data insight in the right way to target their customers appropriately, they could miss out on the sales. Retailers should be using data insight to do everything from personalisation to stock management.

Retail Week asked 70 business leaders about the sort of data they’re collecting, and what they’d like to collect. And while the data they’re capturing – names, ages, addresses – helps retailers build demographic profiles, it’s still basic. It doesn’t tell them what their behaviour is, or what their attitudes are towards the business. So, the next stage for retailers is to look at how they can get data about attitudes, behaviours and lifestyles.

During the Black Friday and Golden Quarter period, Retail Week emphasise how important it is to use data to have a single view of your customer, and a single view of your stock. Putting both views together lets you target customers with appropriate messaging, then offer them products that you know they can buy. This comprehensive view of your stock and your customer will let you deliver the best possible customer experience.

While this year’s Black Friday and Golden Quarter are coming up too quickly to make major changes now, there’s a number of things you can do for next year. James recommends that retailers should look at how you can drive data management throughout your entire business. Some retailers are doing this by appointing a director of customer insight, a CIO, or a Chief Customer Officer, to help drive the message from board level down through head office and into stores. But it must involve putting data at the heart of strategy, and then giving it the resource to function properly.

Putting data and technology first

So, the data is there. It’s available and it’s ready for retailers to use. The question is, will you get there first, or will your competitors? Knowing and understanding your customers is key to staying ahead. You need to know them across every channel and in any store, you need to know how they like to shop, when and how they want to talk, and what sort of goods they’re interested in.

To make this single customer view happen, retailers need to put data at the heart of their strategies. This may be through a cultural change, or appointing a chief data officer. It’s likely going to involve technology investments, and an update to processes and policy.

At Microsoft Future Decoded, we heard from Andy Foley, Head of Retail Business Systems at Specsavers, who showed us how the global company has put technology and data first. Specsavers works with Microsoft partner, MPP Global, to enhance and upgrade the company’s subscription services.

Andy confirmed that customers are now driving the need for change, saying they expect a next day/same day Amazon experience. Doing nothing was simply not an option. Specsavers must grow to maintain their market leader status, and system change is an enabler in growing a business.  His advice was to be inquisitive and don’t be afraid of the start-up. To speed up change of this nature takes time, but it’s crucial to drive momentum.

Another of our partners, Blue Yonder, emphasised the importance of data in aiding decision-making around merchandising and supply chain. Working with a leading supermarket chain, Blue Yonder implemented an impressive supply chain solution, using AI and cloud technology, that has improved a key business metric: on-shelf availability. The system is in all 500 stores, with daily decisions for over 26,000 SKUs, based on store-specific historic sales data incorporating seasonality, events, weather data and promotions. It has resulted in a 30% reduction of shelf gaps in stores, without increasing waste and mark-down. As well as increased workforce efficiency, reduction of missed sales, and an automated manual ordering process, the solution has meant less stockholding in stores and a YoY increase in sales.

With the right technology and a rich data set, retailers can create digital engagements that are personal, contextual and relevant. They can base their understanding on purchase history, demographic information, location, time of day, preferred channel, product information, and other data sources. With this, retailers can:

• connect with customers at the right time, via the right channel, with the right offers.
• give sales associates the customer data they need to deliver personalised in-store experiences.
• predict what customers want before they act on it, using predictive analytic solutions.
• let customers add items to a cart from any digital touchpoint in the shopping journey.
• improve, shorten and transform the customer journey.

Watch this on-demand webinar to hear more about what you can do in retail with the right data

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