The future of AI personalization is inclusive, part 2: Reimagining audience engagement with emotional intelligence

Does your advertising truly resonate with your audience?

This is a common, yet complex question that most marketers consider for every campaign. I’ve asked myself the same thing many times. 

A broad customer base requires targeted messaging that ensures relevance, minimizing the risk of unintentionally excluding people. Reaching and converting those who aren’t gravitating toward your advertising themes becomes increasingly difficult when you’re not specific enough.

Every business strives for this kind of ideal personalization. It’s a challenge, but also an opportunity that brands face in a hyper-competitive, digital-driven world moving at the speed of AI.

Over years of digging into how inclusion is personalization, I’ve found that the answers may be simpler than they appear. It’s possible to achieve higher engagement and conversions by approaching personalization with inclusive, human-centric data insights to reimagine audience engagement. And the inclusive insight that’s common to all humans is rooted in having emotional intelligence with your audiences.

In part 1 of this series, I discussed the nexus of untapped value to be the intersection of generative AI, inclusion, and personalization. Let's continue the conversation about the mechanisms to tap into that value with insights based on our study, The Psychology of Inclusion and the Effects of Advertising.

I’ll share how to reimagine audience engagement with emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient or EQ.

Resonate with audiences through personalization built on trust

To build a personalized marketing campaign that resonates with more audiences, start by using inclusion as a source of insights to build connections. Here are some important considerations to this approach as it relates to audience engagement.

Inclusion equals trust

Neuroscience tells us humans cannot make a decision—like purchases—without accessing their emotions. So, it’s no wonder that business growth is influenced by feelings. In fact, 70% of buying decisions are driven by emotion, including brand preferences.

And according to our research,

How much does trust matter in buying decisions?

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 71% of consumers say it’s more important than ever to trust the brand they buy or use. In looking at generational differences, Gen Z—a key segment for growth-minded brands—rated this even higher at 79%. Additionally, 85% of consumers say they’ll only consider a brand if they trust it.¹

Audiences likely won’t emotionally connect without trust. For example, when companies present themselves as environmentally friendly without substantial evidence to back up their claims, it can erode consumer confidence and damage the brand’s reputation. Trust is earned in drops, but lost in buckets.

And trust doesn’t just elevate a brand as preferred. Trusted brands can net higher margins, as 46% of consumers said they would spend more with them. Companies understand this value of trust, with 93% of business leaders agreeing that developing and maintaining customer trust improves revenue.

The pillars of trust-building and inclusivity

Creating trust isn’t easy, but greater personalization is a highly accessible avenue to it. Personalization strengthens the relevance of advertising, increasing its impact. However, this engagement is met with many failures, as 76% of people say brands miss the mark in relevance.

That's why my critical components of trust-building with inclusive advertising campaigns include:

While this may seem overwhelming taken together, there’s no expectation for audiences to feel all 12 feelings at the same time. Campaigns can be developed to invoke certain emotions with representation, specific keywords, and tailored CTAs that are aligned to product and brand truths and promises you can keep.

So what are the “right” feelings that create trust, love, and loyalty in your audiences?

Each emotion is unique, yet all provide introspective insight—any of these emotions can contribute to a more personalized and inclusive advertising experience. When your advertising truly resonates, the primary feelings produced by inclusion are joy and trust. But the goal is to evoke feelings mapped to your product truths or brand promises that solve a person’s problem, meet their needs, or satisfy their wants.

Since making decisions requires accessing emotions, it’s necessary to understand how your customers feel and reimagine engagement accordingly. For example, the emotions you should seek to evoke depend on the needs of your audience, product truths, and overall goals. This is where the future of personalized audience engagement using EQ ties back to generative AI.

How to apply the 12 feelings of inclusion to reimagine your advertising

Step 1: Know your customer pain points by leveraging inclusive data sets and your researched customer personas.

Step 2: Identify your product truths that can solve these pain points and consider how they align with the 12 feelings of inclusion. You can ask Copilot to help you map these feelings to your customer personas’ reasons for buying your product category.

Step 3: Write ad copy with a tone that conveys the corresponding feeling(s) of inclusion that your product authentically delivers because it solves the original customer pain point.

Actionable Tip: An Example Prompt

Here’s how to write a prompt for generative AI (like Copilot) to help you execute this tactic in your search marketing campaign:

“The brand Contoso sells widgets and has a marketing segment called ‘Make me believe.’ These people are not yet customers, but use widgets because it makes them feel confident, helps them stand out, and makes them feel like they belong.

Consider that when a person experiences an inclusive ad, they could feel one or more of the following feelings: joy, trust, certainty, contentment, celebration, zest, relaxation, acceptance, clarity, confidence, relief, or safety.

Could you identify which feelings align to the reasons the “Make me believe” segment uses widgets and then write up to 5 Microsoft Advertising search ads to make them feel the aligned inclusive feeling in each of the ads?”

How personalized ad creative builds trust, loyalty, and love

Besides the 12 feelings of inclusion, there are other ways to source inclusive insights for context, needs, and wants—all tightly related to EQ in advertising.

The following categories of inclusive data sources can power generative AI personalization efforts across market analysis, customer insights, and content creation to boost your brand’s EQ.