Klarna has revealed it cut its marketing spend by 11% in the first quarter of this year, partly through the use of AI.
The buy now pay later pioneer said AI was responsible for 37% of the cost savings, or about $10 million on an annualised basis.
The figures included a 25% decrease in spending on external marketing suppliers, including across translation, production, CRM and social agencies. There was also a $6 million reduction in image production costs, despite generating over 1000 images in Q1 and reducing the image development cycle from 6 weeks to 1 week.
The vast increase in image production means that Klarna’s app and website images can be updated on a weekly basis to reflect key retail events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and summer sales.
AI is also being used in writing marketing copy, with a new Copy Assistant allowing Klarna to use it for 80% of copywriting.
Klarna said that employees had created over 300 GPTs for internal use, in collaboration with OpenAI. Across the organisation there are over 100 AI projects, with more than a dozen in marketing.
“AI is helping us become leaner, faster and more responsive to what our customers care about, leading to a much, much better experience,” says David Sandström, CMO at Klarna. “And we’re actually driving more marketing activity while saving tens of millions of dollars a year.”
David Sandström, CMO at Klarna continues: “Traditionally, it would have been very costly to cater to these occasions with bespoke imagery but with AI that is no longer an issue and we can create relevant imagery to support practically any event. Essentially, we have removed the need for stock imagery.”
