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From advertising and promotion to selling and feedback, marketing chatbots are reducing the cost for companies, saving time, increasing efficiency and creating larger awareness for brands. Here are five reasons why chatbots are a perfect companion for marketing : 1. Personalized Advertising Chatbots get rid of the biggest hurdle that advertising faces — unwanted promotional emails. In a 2017 survey conducted by Adobe Digital Insights, a little more than two-thirds of respondents preferred personalized ads. Personalized chatbots ensure a high level of accuracy for personalizing offerings according to customers’ needs. Established brands like eBay and 1–800-Flowers were early adopters of personalized marketing system but with IBM Watson, more and more companies are adopting similarRead More →

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At the Mobile World Congress, Mastercard recently announced that it was teaming up with Facebook to provide small businesses in Africa and Asia with an affordable and simple on-ramp for accepting mobile payments. The partnership will help unbanked retailers and merchants in the regions open bank accounts through Facebook Messenger. At the launch, Kahina Van Dyke, director of Payments and Financial Services Partnerships at Facebook, said, “Brands and developers around the world are turning to messaging to connect with the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger each month. We are pleased that Mastercard is developing a service on the Messenger platform to help small merchants use messagingRead More →

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Originally Published on Digitalist Magazine With the advent of robo-advisors, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual assistants, the next wave of the financial technology revolution could arrive sooner than anticipated. A report by EY, “Unleashing the Potential of Fintech in Banking,” highlights that collaborations with startups (and not competition) can provide fresh tech solutions for banks. Shared services and knowledge will improve product offerings through data analytics tools like predictive analytics, offering deeper engagements with customers. How are banks currently leveraging fintech? Albeit independently, banks are building in-house technology in response to the growing fintech challenge. In 2017, JPMorgan appointed a new team for the automation ofRead More →

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Chatbots may soon be your personal stylist. A recent report by MasterCard and Mercator research shows that 66% of US adults use voice assistants or chatbots, and 87% are aware of the technologies. With a growing demand for chatbots, fashion brands are introducing ways to keep the in-shop customers engaged offline too — in an organic manner that does not look automated. With the advent of chatbots, fashion brands are racing to embrace virtual stylists, ensuring that shopping experience for customers goes beyond the usual traditional experience. So far, automation for the fashion industry has meant browsing through styles that relied heavily on previous search history thatRead More →

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Apple Inc.’s next breakthrough may be powered by Augmented Reality (AR). A recent report by Bloomberg outlines Apple’s ‘big step’ towards the AR space through talented hires and acquisitions in the related field. According to the report, with the goal of making smart glasses, in the short term, Apple’s AR features may first show up on the iPhone. Bloomberg’s report comes after its November story published last year, which highlighted Apple’s wearable expansion into ‘digital glasses’. The AR industry is gaining momentum and could be a huge global market worth $90 million by 2020. For Apple, an AR adoption could mean a new dimension to its existing products, possibly resulting inRead More →

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Big Data tools not only simplify lengthy analytical procedures in any industry, but they also provide a competitive advantage to banks. With new regulations, banks are looking at ways to make compliance procedures more effective and accurate. Big data in banking is slowly gaining momentum and becoming an inevitable necessity across the banking industry. As traditional data management structures become obsolete, the community banks struggle to comply with external competitive and regulatory pressures. The need to execute analytics tools in the community banking system is gradually becoming more of a compulsion than an option. Gartner’s 2014 CIO survey shows that financial firms encourage investing inRead More →

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Alibaba is a Chinese multinational tech, e-commerce and artificial intelligence conglomerate that was founded in 1999 and has since become one of the ten largest companies in the world. Alibaba’s plan to end poverty in China stems from corporate social responsibility as an integral part of its business model. In 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province in China prompted huge individual donations to charities, which accounted for 54 percent of total giving. The earthquake was the second highest in absolute numbers in history, and led to a huge death toll and significant economic losses and brought many corporations closer to philanthropy. Alibaba is one such firm. Over the courseRead More →