Two-thirds of marketers (65 per cent) in the UK use AI within their experimentation approach, with almost half (45 per cent) having adopted the technology within the past year. That’s according to a new report, released by Optimizely, which reveals how marketers are implementing AI to level up their approach to A/B testing and experimentation.
The Tested to Perfection report, based on a study of 100 marketers and 1,000 consumers in the UK, examines the current state of experimentation practices, and how marketers are using, and planning to use, AI to address rapidly changing business and consumer expectations.
Nearly nine in 10 marketers (87 per cent) believe experimentation is important for achieving their goals in 2024, yet one in five (20 per cent) feel their current web experimentation approach is not effective. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) would go as far as to describe their current approach as ‘unsophisticated.’
When asked what has been preventing marketers from experimenting effectively, Optimizely’s report identifies several recurring themes.
Lack of budget is a challenge for almost half of marketers (43 per cent), while a lack of resources, time and focus is also a barrier for 39 per cent of respondents. Other challenges include a lack of effective tools or technology (25 per cent), silos between relevant teams (25 per cent), and the small scale of experiments (18 per cent).
However, 89 per cent of marketers believe AI will be the answer to overcoming these barriers.
Almost half (48 per cent) of the marketers surveyed plan to use AI to create more targeted and personalised content in the future. Forty-one per cent have their sights set on generating headlines, images and CTAs at scale. Over a third (37 per cent) plan to use AI to dynamically allocate traffic between test variations. And three in 10 (32 per cent) will turn to AI to create hypotheses for experiments.
Over two-thirds (70 per cent) of marketers in the UK believe that AI will help make experimentation faster, and 62 per cent believe AI will make experimentation more accurate.
In an age where every business decision is scrutinised, many organisations have yet to perfect their experimentation practices to improve personalisation and drive more conversions. By combining the power of AI and experimentation, marketers can see with certainty what type of content resonates with specific customer profiles and adapt as needed to take digital experiences to entirely new levels.
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