Oracle unveils AI-powered apps for cross-channel marketing, chatbots and content cloud

Artificial intelligence-based apps that blend first and third-party data for better customer engagement interactions, real-time chatbots, and mobile enhancements are among the raft of new capabilities launched by Oracle for its Marketing Cloud platform this week.

Announced at this week’s Oracle Modern Customer Experience summit in Las Vegas, the vendor’s answer to artificial intelligence in CX, its new Adaptive Intelligent Apps, extend AI capabilities across key Oracle Customer Experience Cloud offerings, including Marketing, Service, Sales and Commerce.

Each of the four apps is being offered as a plug-in for execution platforms within each cloud and designed for servicing a particular need of each user. The apps take advantage of third-party audience data housed in the Oracle Data Cloud and sourced from BlueKai, as well as an end customer’s first-party data sets, and is designed to improve customer experience across the customer lifecycle in real-time, the vendor said.

For marketers, for example, the apps are aimed at helping with improving cross-channel experiences by helping marketers decide on the most relevant, personalised content for each customer, but at scale.

“What AI offer for the first time is a recommendation system that works with what data you already have, plus it can pull data about your customers from the Oracle Data Cloud, putting more signal into the recommender, thus drive better recommendations,”Oracle group VP product management, Steve Krause, told attendees.

Read more: CMO's exclusive interview with Steve Krause on where Oracle is going with artificial intelligence

“That’s a big difference because recommendations aren’t just based on what you know about your customer, but also what the Data Cloud knows.

“It doesn’t bring data back to you, it just gives you recommendation. That’s important because it’s privacy safe. Bringing in more data makes your recommendations better.”

The BlueKai big data cloud has billions of anonymous B2B consumer profiles, along with 50,000 data category attributes reflecting the preferences, demographics, context and behaviours of consumers from hundreds of different sources. It’s one of several acquisitions Oracle has made over recent years to shore up its data offering. Last week, the vendor took another big step forward with its acquisition of ad verification firm, Moat.

In the customer service space, adaptive intelligence offers are designed to deliver predictive product failure, account health and recommendation capabilities, again with the aim of improving service experiences.

Oracle’s other big product news for marketers is the launch of its Chatbots platform, allowing marketers, service and commerce teams to tap into text and voice-based interaction platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Amazon Alexa, to respond to customer questions.

“In a world where not everyone will download your mobile app but are using Facebook Messenger and Alexa-driven devices, chatbots are a way for you to play in these new conversational media,” Krause claimed. “The reason this matters is because of things like Messenger, Alexa, Google home – these are starting to happen and we’re only at the beginning of this trend. This is about enabling you to be there as a brand as interaction happens.”

Another announcement was the Oracle Content and Experience Cloud, a separate cloud-based content portal for creating, managing and delivering content to different digital channels. The cloud sits under the umbrella of the Oracle Cloud platform, and alongside the Customer Experience cloud, and includes features such as content collaboration, a centralised content hub, the ability to manage content from within enterprise applications, and APIs to ensure cross-channel integration.

A number of enhancements were also unveiled by Oracle during its Marketing Cloud keynote, including a new BlueKai cross-channel audience builder capability and responsive email designer linked to mobile push notifications, part of an ongoing series of mobile product advancements.

In its B2B Eloqua offering specifically, the vendor took the wrappers of its new Content portal, and said a new user designer interface is on its way.

For sales, Oracle is now providing Eloqua Engage and Profiler functionality directly in Outlook as a plug-in, better integrating the sales team’s email clients with marketing automation and campaign management.

• Nadia Cameron travelled to Oracle Modern Customer Experience summit as a guest of Oracle.

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