The definitive guide to personalizing your marketing with AI research

You open your inbox. There are 10 new emails, and none of them grab your attention. What do you do? Delete. Delete. Delete.

That’s the world your customers live in, too. They’re bombarded with so many soulless marketing messages – if yours feels too generic, they just won’t care.

And the data backs it up. A recent report from McKinsey stated that companies that have great personalized marketing generate 40% more revenue, while from a customer perspective, 76% of people say poor personalization will cause them to look elsewhere. 

So, with so much at stake, why do businesses still get it wrong? Quite simply, because they’re guessing at who their customers are and what they want and need. They just recycle old copy, change a headline, drop a first name into an email, and fire it off.

Great personalization goes much, much deeper. It’s all about truly understanding your audience’s struggles, goals, and motivators and then shaping your marketing around them. 

And you can’t do that without the right research.

That’s why we’re here to talk about AI-powered Quizzes and Surveys. They give you real-time insights into who your audience really is and what they care about, all while delivering something valuable straight back to them. 

In this guide, we’ll show you how to:

• Collect the right insights without wasting time or money
  
• Segment your audience into groups that matter
  
• Build personalized marketing journeys at scale
  
• Repurpose your data into content, campaigns, and offers
  
• See how real businesses are already doing it successfully with ScoreApp

If you want to know how to use AI research to personalize your marketing, nurture your leads, and ultimately make more sales, this guide is for you. Let’s dive in.

Why personalization fails without research

Your customers receive so much content that if a message feels in any way boring or (taboo word) generic, they’ll scroll straight past it.

So the burning question is: What’s going to make them stop and think, “This feels as if it was written just for me.”

The answer is relevance. And there’s one crucial point to keep in mind here: Relevance only comes from the right research.

You need to know:

• What your audience struggles with
  
• What they want most
  
• What motivates them to act
  
• How they describe this in their own words

Without this crucial information, you’ll be stuck guessing. And when you guess, your campaigns will miss the mark, no matter how clever your copy is.

It’s only when you discover what really matters to your audience you can hook them with a message that stops them in their tracks – because it will feel like it’s been written for them.

How can AI help your personalization?

We’ve talked about why personalization fails, but let’s be specific: How can AI actually help? Well, there are clear, practical tools you can use right now to take the guesswork out of personalization.

What AI tools are out there?

• AI copy tools that generate tailored messaging for different segments.
  
• Recommendation engines (think Amazon or Netflix) that suggest the next best action or product.
  
• AI tools inside CRMs and marketing platforms that automatically tag, score, and segment your leads.

How can these AI tools help you?

• Speed – AI can analyze data in minutes, saving you hours looking for inspiration on how to personalize your customer messages.
  
• Scale – You can personalize thousands of interactions without needing a huge team.
  
• Relevance – AI spots patterns in customer behavior you might miss, helping you make messages sharper and more timely.

Things to watch out for:

• Don’t rely on AI as a ‘takes care of it all’ shortcut. If you feed it poor or shallow data, you’ll get generic output that feels hollow.
  
• Always keep privacy in mind – people want personalization, but they also want to know their data is safe.
  
• Remember your human touch – your expertise is what makes AI-generated results meaningful.

This is why Quizzes and Surveys are so useful. You design the Quiz and ask the right questions, then your audience provides concise, first-person data AI tools can work with for excellent personalized marketing. 

Without this extremely relevant data, AI will only guess.

How to collect the right insights with AI Quizzes and Surveys

So, how do you conduct your market research right now? Is it a chore? Long surveys… focus groups… both are notoriously time-consuming and expensive.

Recently, Quiz software has shaken everything up. Your research can be done quickly and scalably – while being enjoyable for you and your audience. When you design Quizzes and Surveys, well, they actually want to take part.

Why? Because they’re getting something valuable back. A Quiz gives your prospects instant, personalized results they can use right away in their day-to-day lives. A Survey-style Quiz helps you research, but also helps them benchmark themselves and see where they stand. It feels like a two-way conversation, not a test.

So what kind of questions should you ask in a Survey? Our advice is to go beyond basic demographics and ask about:

• Struggles – e.g., “What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to generating leads?”
  
• Goals – e.g., “What would success look like for you over the next 12 months?”
  
• Motivators – e.g., “Which of these is your top priority: saving time, saving money, or scaling faster?”
  
• Objections – e.g., “What’s the biggest reason you’ve held back from investing in a solution so far?”

When you use ScoreApp, answers to questions like these will form the backbone for your personalized marketing. They’ll inform your email sequences, help you create content, and allow you to design offers that resonate.

Designing a Quiz to collect your data is simple:

• You can use templates designed by experts as a starting point
  
• You can add logic jumps so people only see the questions that matter to them
  
• You can create results pages that feel like 1:1 feedback, not just a generic download

Unlike other methods, an AI-assisted ScoreApp Quiz will be fast and inexpensive. You won’t have to wait weeks for a report or spend thousands on a research firm. All the insights you need will flow in instantly, while your audience gets a useful experience that builds trust from the get-go.

Turning research into audience segments that matter

People lead complex lives. Some prospects are going to be ready to buy straight away, while others need more time, or are just curious. If you treat all your new leads the same, you could lose the ones who might have become loyal customers.

That’s why segmentation matters.

Segmentation means taking all the diverse insights and opinions you’ve collected from your Survey and grouping your audience, based on what really drives their decisions.

For example, you can segment by:

• Problem – e.g., ‘I don’t have enough leads’ vs. ‘I’m struggling to convert’
  
• Goal – e.g., ‘Grow my audience’ vs. ‘Launch my first product’
  
• Stage of awareness – e.g., ‘Still exploring’ vs. ‘Sales-ready’
  
• Role or industry – if that’s relevant to your business

The best segmentation reflects the exact journey your customers are on, and when someone completes your ScoreApp Survey, their answers flow automatically into your (integrated) CRM or email platform. They’ll be tagged as cold, warm, or sales-ready, and labelled by industry, challenge, or revenue band – all without any manual sorting from you.

Once segments are set up, your email marketing system will work in the background to:

• Send emails that speak directly to someone’s biggest challenge
  
• Recommend the right product or service for their situation
  
• Tailor follow-ups so any sales-ready leads get an invite to book a call, while others get more education first

The result? Every single message is going to feel highly relevant, and your leads will move through the funnel much faster.

Building personalized marketing journeys

Most businesses collect expensive market research data, then aren’t able to do a lot with it. They might tag warm leads in their CRM, but follow-ups usually look the same for everyone. That’s a waste of potential, now that there are tools such as ScoreApp to help.

Successful personalization means taking the insights you’ve gathered from your AI-assisted Quiz and shaping an experience for your customers that’s tailored at every step – from the first email to the sales conversation.

Here’s how follow-ups can work in practice:

• Segmented nurture sequences – Instead of sending the same 5-part email series to everyone, you can create tailored flows. For example, time-poor professionals might get productivity hacks, while marketing beginners get step-by-step guides.
  
• Relevant offers – You can use your Quiz or Survey results to recommend the next logical step. Someone scoring low on strategy could be sent to a workshop, while a high-scorer could be invited to a mastermind class.
  
• Automated delivery – When you connect ScoreApp to your email platform or CRM, personalized journeys will happen automatically. Every lead can be set on the right path, without you lifting a finger.

Here’s how real ScoreApp customers grow:

• TJ Power, a neuroscientist and coach, used segmentation to guide his audience into programs that address their biggest focus and wellbeing challenges, improving engagement and conversions.
• Joanna Kleinman, a psychotherapist, launched her ‘Inner Critic Assessment’ with ScoreApp and was able to add over 1,200 subscribers to her list in just a few days. She used segmentation (plus her expertise) to drive rapid growth.

The beauty of this approach is that the whole sales process feels effortless for your customer – they’re being guided along a path that makes sense for them.

For you, it’s highly scalable. Once your ScoreApp Quiz or Survey is connected to your CRM, every lead is automatically nurtured. No manual sorting and no wasted opportunities.

Turning research into sales conversations

Personalization isn’t just limited to marketing campaigns. The insights you gather from your AI-assisted Quizzes and Surveys will transform the way you approach sales conversations.

Most sales calls start with the same old questions: “So, tell me about your business,” or “What’s your biggest challenge right now?” They follow the same script, and don’t impress prospects.

But when you’ve got great research to pull from, a call can look very different:

• Instant context – Before you even say hello, you’ll already know what your lead is struggling with, what they’re aiming for, and what’s been holding them back. You can jump straight into a meaningful conversation.
  
• Tailored framing – If you know your prospect scored low on strategy but high on execution, you can frame your offer around clarity and planning, not implementation. You’ll be on the same page from the start.
  
• Stronger trust – People love to feel understood. When you reference their Quiz answers directly (e.g., “I noticed you said your biggest roadblock is converting leads after discovery calls”), they’ll know you’ve listened. You’ve got instant credibility.

Your segmented Quiz or Survey results are a conversation starter, and if you use insights to guide your sales calls, proposals, and follow-ups, you’ll be able to close with far fewer objections.

Using your research to create original content

Content is everywhere. Think of all those ‘5 tips’ or ‘best practices’ posts you’ve seen lately. Your audience has seen most of them before too. What they haven’t seen is content created based on original insights from people just like them – and this is where AI research becomes gold.

When you use Quiz and Survey data to shape content for your business, you’re sharing opinions, facts, trends, and stories taken directly from your audience. That makes your content credible, engaging, and more shareable.

Here are some ways you can put your insights to work:

• Blog posts that stand out – Instead of just another generic ‘How to retain employees’ article, an HR consultancy could publish: ‘Why Employees Really Leave: Insights from 317 Professionals.’ That’s original content people won’t have seen before, and will position you as an industry authority.
  
• Authority-building reports – You can package findings from your Quiz or Survey into a white paper or market report. These interesting resources will build trust and respect, attract backlinks, and they can generate media coverage.
  
• Infographics and visuals – You can turn key statistics into simple, visual formats perfect for sharing on social media, or for embedding in bigger reports or blog posts.
  
• Social media with substance – You can share standout stats or surprising trends from your data. These posts are far more likely to get saved, shared, and commented on because they deliver something fresh and useful.

Data-driven content is the gift that keeps on giving. When you create it from your research, you can repurpose it across multiple formats (blog posts, videos, podcasts, lead magnets, and more) without starting from scratch each time.

With ScoreApp, using your research is easy. The platform automatically organizes responses and packages them as visuals so you can spot patterns and create stories your audience cares about.

Using insights to improve your products and offers

Leading businesses are also using AI research for more than just marketing. They’re using it to shape what they sell.

If your audience is telling you what they’re struggling with, what frustrates them, and what they wish they had… why wouldn’t you use that to refine your products and services?

Here are some practical ways to do this:

• Spot hidden gaps – Maybe your Survey revealed most of your audience feels confident in strategy but stuck on execution – that’s your cue to create an implementation-focused service.
  
• Fix frustrations – If your customers highlighted pain points with your checkout process, onboarding, or features, you’ve got a roadmap for improvement.
  
• Validate new ideas – Before investing months of work in a new course or program, use your Quiz data to test demand. If 60% of respondents say, “This is my biggest challenge,” you know you’re onto something.

This is market validation in action. Instead of guessing what your audience might want, now you can shape offers around what you’re being told directly.

Every ScoreApp Quiz and Survey you run feeds insights straight back into your business, and those insights can be used to guide your product development. You can create offers that feel like a perfect fit, because they’re built on what customers have told you they need.

Customer story: real-world personalization in action

Daniel Wagner, Communications Director at The Journey, used ScoreApp to completely transform his lead generation. He built a Quiz that uncovered people’s needs and then automatically segmented them based on where they were in their journey.

Here’s how it paid off:

• His ‘Life Wounds and Trauma’ scorecard generated 1,533 leads in a single month.
  
• Over the following year, he added around 10,000 leads to his list and was able to funnel high-quality prospects toward the right content and offers.

Daniel used his Quiz to uncover why people came to him and what they needed next so he could deliver different experiences to different segments, and build trust and alignment before he spoke with them. His funnel worked smarter, not harder.

While his work was in a specific niche, his story can help you. Whether you’re running an SaaS funnel, a coaching program, or an e-commerce brand, the principle is the same – when you understand why someone comes to you, you can guide them to the right next step.

The future of personalized marketing with AI

We’re only scratching the surface of what AI-assisted research can do for personalization. Right now, you can use Quizzes to segment leads, draft tailored follow-ups, and automate funnels. But the next wave of AI will take this even further.

Here’s what’s coming:

• Predictive personalization – Instead of you having to react to customers, AI will anticipate what they need next based on their behavior online. Think Netflix-style recommendations – a lead completes your Quiz, and the system knows which product, service, or piece of content to show them.
  
• Ethical personalization – Customers want personalization, but they also want complete transparency about how their data is used. Businesses that show how personalization improves experience (without crossing boundaries) will win trust and loyalty.
  
• AI + human synergy – Tools such as ScoreApp will continue to handle automation, segmentation, and analysis, but your expertise, stories, and lived experience are what will make results meaningful and set your brand apart.
  
• Cross-channel personalization – Most personalized marketing is currently delivered by email marketing tools, but soon, we’ll see joined-up experiences across every channel. Imagine a lead takes your Quiz, then their results shape their email sequence, the ads they see, the content on your website, and the offers presented in a webinar.

The future is going to be about using AI to scale personalization and create consistency and momentum, while keeping a human touch at the core of the marketing process. So, if you’re already using Quizzes to research, segment and nurture, you’re right on track.

Final thoughts on using AI for personalized marketing

At the end of the day, great personalization is about making your audience feel like your content, offers, and advice are designed specifically for them. The goal is to create connection, trust, and momentum through to lead conversion.

Surveys use AI research to make this easier, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. Without human knowledge, expertise, and strategy, personalized marketing will miss the mark. 

Marketing really starts to feel personal at scale when you:

• Don’t rely on guesswork and start with real audience data
  
• Segment your leads so every message feels relevant
  
• Automate your follow-ups, but always add a human voice
  
• Use insights to shape not just emails, but your whole marketing strategy
  
• Keep testing, refining, and improving as you grow

ScoreApp makes it simple to collect insights, allowing you to send better personalized and automated content to nurture your audience and turn leads into loyal customers. 

Are you ready to put it all into practice? Launch your first AI-powered Quiz or Survey with ScoreApp today – it’s completely FREE to get started.