Global: SAS MarTech Platform Enhances Marketing Capabilities with Generative AI Integration

SAS, a leading marketing solutions provider, is bringing the power of generative AI to its customers through an integration with SAS Customer Intelligence 360. This integration allows marketers to streamline their marketing planning, content creation, and journey design activities with the assistance of generative AI.

With generative AI capabilities now at their disposal, SAS customers can enhance the entire customer engagement lifecycle. This includes marketing planning, audience creation, journey design, channel-specific creative development, reporting, and measurement.

What sets SAS apart is its flexibility in generative AI integrations. Unlike other vendors, SAS does not lock users into a single generative AI model provider. Instead, customers have the freedom to choose their preferred generative AI models. They can opt to bring their own generative AI provider, select models from popular AI vendors like OpenAI, or even utilize open-source, privately hosted models.

Furthermore, customers can tailor their integrations based on their specific needs, configure them for training and use, and introduce them to marketing users through a customized integration framework.

Jonathan Moran, Head of Martech Solutions Marketing at SAS, emphasized the value of responsible generative AI usage in marketing. He stated, “Using this technology in a responsible manner empowers marketers to optimize time, resources, and marketing budgets. Gaining marketing and advertising efficiencies and effectiveness is what SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is all about, so it makes great sense to integrate generative AI with our solutions with responsible, trustworthy guardrails in place.”

Generative AI can assist marketers in various ways:

1. Marketing Plans: It can aid in creating marketing plans and identifying additional target segments and audiences.
2. Content Generation: Generative AI can suggest text for content, such as email or promotional copy.
3. Personalized Targeting: It provides recommendations on demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic variables for engagement activities.
4. Flexibility: If marketers are unsatisfied with AI-generated suggestions, they have the power to edit and refine the content.

Once content is created, approved, and activated, results can be measured, reported on, and shared across the organization.

Key custom integration capabilities include:

• SAS Connector Framework: Integration with large language model (LLM) providers for innovative campaign strategies.
• Natural Language: Building targeted audience segments.
• Content Acceleration: Speeding up content generation with custom models and knowledge bases.

Responsible AI usage is a core aspect of SAS’s approach. As highlighted by a recent Gartner report, CMOs are increasingly concerned about ethical AI in marketing. By 2025, 70% of enterprise CMOs will prioritize accountability for ethical AI in marketing. Moreover, by 2027, 80% of enterprise marketers will establish a dedicated function to ensure content authenticity and combat misinformation.

SAS places great emphasis on data privacy, ensuring sensitive company and customer data is not shared with AI models. Human oversight is maintained, as AI-generated content always undergoes human review and approval. Transparency is another pillar of SAS’s strategy, ensuring that marketers can understand how AI algorithms reach their conclusions and recommendations.

The development of SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is closely aligned with guidance from the SAS Data Ethics practice, reflecting a commitment to safely and responsibly introducing generative AI technology into marketing environments.