Persado now generates emotionally-targeted marketing messages for individuals

Persado is the kind of tool that can make copywriters and other creatives nervous.

Founded in 2012, it employs artificial intelligence to generate emotionally-targeted marketing text for emails, snail mail, Facebook newsfeed ads, landing pages, display ads, and even messages on receipts from checkout counters in stores. It’s not too difficult to imagine a time when most or all marketing text is written this way.

Today, the New York City-based company is giving a finer tip to its virtual pen. It is launching Persado One, which allows the text to be generated for individual users. Previously, the company’s system created text personalized for a given segment of users, like regular credit card users who might be interested in gold cards.

CEO Alex Vratskides told me that Persado is the only company that offers this kind of personalized emotional engagement at scale.

The system uses machine learning and people’s reactions to previous campaigns to determine users’ emotional profiles. A person might have responded to two emails with a certain emotional flavor, for instance, but not to three others with different orientations. Purchase patterns, demographics and other behaviors do not impact the emotional characterization of that individual.

As with auto-generated text for segments, the text for individuals is generated using words, phrases and sentences that have been previously approved by the brand, based on the brand’s preferred choices and Persado’s suggested additions.

The language is characterized according to 15 different emotions, such as anxiety or excitement, and three intensity levels. Here is a Persado slide showing examples of emotionally connected phrases:

Each message is generated on the fly, such as when an email campaign is going out. It can also be created in real time for a display ad, if the data management platform used by the ad platform recognizes a user’s login or cookie so that it can be immediately matched with an existing Persado profile. Here’s an example of the same ad, directed with different phrasing at two individuals:

The software assigns an accompanying image from a database of approved images, which are sorted for the corresponding emotion and intensity. Available for 23 languages, Persado delivers its personalized message to the email provider, ad platform or other implementation tool.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.