Generative marketing platform

What is a generative marketing platform?

A generative marketing platform (genMP) is a type of composable customer data platform (CDP) that employs generative AI capabilities. The generative marketing platform uses generative AI (genAI) to support marketers as they create and segment audiences and orchestrate journeys within the composable CDP. 

With a generative marketing platform, genAI capabilities sit on top of a single source of truth — customer data stored in the data cloud. The platform then pulls from this data to suggest audiences and customer journeys based on specific marketing goals.

The history of generative marketing platforms

Generative marketing platforms are relatively new to the martech space. They emerged from the generative marketing concept, which is the process of applying generative AI tools to marketing workflows. 

Generative marketing evolved from three major pain points marketers face today:

• Activating customer data from the data cloud in an efficient, effective way
• Meeting demand for customers’ desire for omnichannel personalization
• Supporting increased campaign creation, testing, and iteration 

As more marketers use the data cloud as their single source of truth for customer data, they can activate more personalized experiences and journeys to meet the expectations of today’s consumers. However, meeting these expectations requires more refined segmentation and personalization, which takes time and is difficult to scale. Employing generative AI capabilities with a generative marketing platform can support marketers as they create, test, and iterate on their customer messaging.

Generative marketing platform (genMP) vs. composable CDP

A composable CDP is a marketing technology infrastructure built upon different, interchangeable components (also called composability). It unifies and activates an organization’s existing customer data across multiple sources. The composable CDP sits on top of customer data stored in a company’s data cloud or warehouse. It then activates the data across the company’s existing marketing, sales, and customer service channels, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, email tool, or social media channels.

When teams use generative marketing capabilities within their composable CDP, it becomes a genMP. Essentially, it’s a composable CDP that applies generative AI to data activation. For example, a composable CDP that uses AI to suggest and generate customer journeys based on specific audience goals. 

Generative marketing platform features and use cases 

A generative marketing platform helps marketing teams launch more personalized campaigns faster. With generative AI suggesting audiences, journeys, and creativity, marketers can iterate and test on a larger scale. 

It’s crucial to note that marketers remain in the driver’s seat with a genMP — it’s a collaborative AI model that allows marketers to refine, adjust, and approve the AI suggestions. 

Generative vs. adaptive capabilities

Generative marketing platforms typically combine generative and adaptive capabilities.

• Generative capabilities are those powered by generative AI engines and large language models (LLMs). This can include suggested audiences, suggested journeys, and AI-generated content creation. 
• Adaptive capabilities allow marketers to edit and modify the generative AI-suggested audiences, journeys, and content. This process also includes continuous learning functionality — meaning that the generative marketing platform uses results from the journeys and campaigns to inform future suggestions.

Insight-based audiences

With a generative AI engine pulling from customer data in the data cloud, a generative marketing platform helps marketers develop goal-based audience segments. 

For example, a marketer can tell the generative marketing platform that the goal is to win back customers. From there, the marketer can refine the audience — such as churned customers who are likely to respond to push notifications and emails — and the generative marketing platform can use AI to suggest audiences using customer data from the marketer’s data cloud.

Goal-based journeys

Similar to creating goal-based audiences, a generative marketing platform also helps marketers orchestrate goal-based journeys across different channels. 

Returning to the winback campaign for churned customers who respond to push and email notifications, the marketer can work with the generative marketing platform to describe their goals for the audience segment and desired channels for the journey. The generative marketing platform suggests a journey using Braze (push notifications) and Iterable (email). 

Because of the collaborative nature of the generative marketing platform, the marketer can review the suggestions, make adjustments, and add more channel-specific A/B tests if needed.

Tailored creative for journeys

A generative marketing platform typically has genAI tools that suggest content and visual creative assets for different channels or steps within the customer journey.  

For example, the genMP can suggest the email copy and header images a marketer can use for the winback campaign mentioned earlier. The marketer can then edit the copy and images before deploying to Iterable.  

What are the benefits of a generative marketing platform?

Generative marketing platforms help marketers create, test, and iterate faster. With that in mind, the primary benefits include:

• More personalized campaigns - Using genAI, marketers can collaborate with the generative marketing platform to pull more specific audiences from the data cloud. This allows for a higher level of personalization, which can ultimately increase engagement and conversions. 
• Increased efficiency and productivity - The generative marketing platform can save time by curating audiences and omnichannel customer journeys. 
• Faster optimization - By collaborating with genAI to produce audiences and customer journeys, marketers have more time to create A/B tests or creative variations. Applying learnings from these experimentations helps optimize results for future campaigns. 
• Access to comprehensive data - Since a generative marketing platform sits on top of the data cloud, marketers can access their organization’s unified customer data source. That means audiences and customer journeys pull from more accurate data, leading to more successful campaigns. 

How can marketing teams implement a genMP? 

If you’re looking to implement a generative marketing platform, start with these steps:

Pull together key stakeholders in data and marketing

While the marketing team may be the most active users on a generative marketing platform, it’s ultimately a tool built on data. That means data stakeholders must be involved when onboarding the tool. These individuals can help ensure you’re pulling comprehensive and accurate customer data into your data cloud, which will be the source of the generative AI functionality in the generative marketing platform.

Ensure your data cloud is ready for activation

Because the generative marketing platform pulls data from the data cloud, data must be accurate and organized. Marketers must work with data teams to ensure they’re collecting and ingesting data and organizing it appropriately with identity resolution and data models. 

Once the data is ready for activation, marketers can connect the data to a generative marketing platform. 

Find a composable CDP that employs generative AI capabilities

At its core, a generative marketing platform is a composable CDP with generative AI capabilities that help develop audiences and cross-channel journeys. Marketers seeking a generative marketing platform should vet composable CDP vendors for generative AI-enabled tools that help optimize and accelerate their marketing efforts. Once the marketing team decides on a vendor, they can work with that vendor to connect to their customer data in the cloud.