The way consumers discover and shop for products is changing quickly as AI becomes part of the process. For marketers, that puts even more importance on having a clear view of the customer and using that information across the entire experience, not just email and SMS.
Today’s guest is Ross Kramer, Co-Founder and CEO of Listrak, a digital marketing platform for retailers and brands. A unified customer profile is necessary for creating better personalization, but Ross also breaks down how AI agents are changing product discovery, and why being discoverable now goes beyond traditional SEO. As Ross puts it, “computers have eyes,” which means if AI is doing the shopping, brands have some new rules to learn about getting found.
Five Key Takeaways
1. A unified customer profile is only valuable if you can do something with it
Marketers may not wake up worried about whether they have a “single view of the customer,” but they do worry about conversion rates, revenue and hitting their numbers. Ross argues that understanding the customer across touchpoints gives brands the information they need to personalize experiences around the outcomes that actually matter.
2. Personalization needs to continue when the customer reaches your website
Brands have spent years personalizing email and SMS, only to send everyone who clicks through to essentially the same website. Ross sees individualized websites as the next step, using what a brand knows about a customer to determine everything from the products they see to whether they should be offered free shipping, loyalty benefits, or a subscription.
3. AI agents are becoming part of the customer relationship
As consumers give AI tools more context about their preferences, sizes, tastes, and purchasing requirements, those agents can increasingly search and make decisions on their behalf. That means marketing platforms may eventually need to communicate not just with consumers, but directly with the agents representing them.
4. Product discoverability is no longer just about words
SEO has traditionally focused on text, keywords and product descriptions. But AI can now interpret images at a much higher level, allowing someone to show an agent a picture of an outfit or product and ask it to find something similar. For retailers, that makes visual discoverability an increasingly important part of making sure products can be found by AI both in text but now in images.
5. AI is putting more building power into the hands of the people who understand the problem
Ross is also seeing AI change who can create software. At Listrak, designers and other non-coders are using agentic development tools to build proofs of concept and even ship software, while developers concentrate on APIs, infrastructure, and security. That can shorten the distance between the person who understands the customer problem and the solution that ultimately gets built.
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