Machine Learning Applications in Marketing Training Course

Duration 10 days 20 modules · 65 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Marketing Analytics Managers, CRM and Lifecycle Managers and others
Fee from USD 2,200 KSh 190,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-AI-073

Before you join: Participants should be comfortable interpreting marketing performance metrics such as conversion rate, retention, campaign response and customer value.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Marketing teams hold customer, campaign, digital and transaction data, yet many decisions still rely on broad segments, last-click reports and rules that do not adapt to customer behaviour. Machine learning can improve targeting, retention, offer selection, demand planning and media decisions, but only when models address a clear commercial decision, use time-valid data and are measured against business outcomes. Poorly specified models can waste media budget, suppress valuable customers, create unfair treatment or produce forecasts that fail when campaign conditions change.

This course equips participants to define marketing machine learning use cases and build analytical approaches for propensity, churn, customer lifetime value, next-best action, recommendation, demand forecasting, uplift modelling and marketing measurement. Participants work through the full model lifecycle: preparing customer data, creating features, selecting algorithms, validating performance, interpreting predictions, setting decision rules and monitoring deployed models. The course also covers experimentation, attribution limits, privacy, fairness and governance requirements relevant to customer data.

Teaching combines concise instructor briefings with marketing cases, guided analysis, team-based model design and practical planning sessions. Participants use realistic datasets from retail, banking, telecommunications, travel and digital services to connect model outputs with campaign and customer-management decisions. By the end of the course, each participant has produced a machine learning marketing use-case package containing a decision brief, data specification, feature plan, model evaluation approach, activation rules and monitoring controls.

The course is suited to marketing, CRM, customer analytics, digital, data science and commercial leaders who need to commission, assess or apply machine learning within marketing operations. It is particularly useful for professionals moving from descriptive reporting and dashboarding into predictive and prescriptive customer analytics.

What you will be able to do

  • Define machine learning use cases linked to acquisition, retention, pricing and media decisions
  • Prepare customer and campaign datasets using time-valid joins, quality checks and feature specifications
  • Build propensity, churn, customer lifetime value and recommendation model designs
  • Evaluate classification, ranking and forecasting models using commercial and statistical metrics
  • Design uplift modelling approaches that distinguish treatment effects from response likelihood
  • Interpret model predictions using feature importance, SHAP values and segment-level diagnostics
  • Create activation rules that convert model scores into campaign and customer-treatment actions
  • Present a governed machine learning marketing use-case package with monitoring requirements

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Produce credible machine learning briefs for marketing and customer analytics teams
  • Assess vendor and data science proposals using clear model-performance criteria
  • Translate predictive scores into campaign audiences, offers and contact strategies
  • Recognise weak validation, data leakage and misleading attribution claims
  • Build a portfolio-ready marketing machine learning use-case package

For your organisation

  • Improves selection of machine learning projects with measurable commercial value
  • Reduces wasted campaign spend through better audience prioritisation and suppression
  • Strengthens collaboration between marketing, analytics, data engineering and risk teams
  • Introduces controls for privacy, fairness, model drift and customer-treatment risks
  • Creates repeatable specifications for predictive marketing model development and activation

Course modules

20 modules over 10 days

Participants can frame a marketing decision as an appropriate machine learning problem with defined commercial measures.

  • Marketing decision systems mapped to acquisition, retention, pricing and media choices
  • Business questions translated into prediction, ranking, segmentation and optimisation tasks
  • Unit economics connect model outputs to revenue, margin and customer value
  • Supervised, unsupervised and causal methods matched to marketing decisions
  • Decision owners, intervention points and feedback loops documented before modelling
  • Model risk register covers customer harm, cost and reputational exposure

Participants can assess whether customer and campaign data is fit for a defined modelling use case.

  • Customer identity resolution using deterministic keys and probabilistic matching rules
  • CDP, CRM, web analytics and transaction tables profiled for analytical fitness
  • Grain, keys and time windows defined before joining customer data
  • Feature availability checked against the intended scoring timestamp
  • Missingness patterns separated from true zeroes and absent events
  • Data lineage records source, transformation, owner and refresh frequency

Participants can specify repeatable datasets for marketing model development and scoring.

  • SQL joins combine customer, product, interaction and campaign response records
  • Window functions calculate recency, frequency and rolling behavioural measures
  • Cohort definitions preserve consistent observation and outcome periods
  • Target labels constructed from measurable customer actions and business rules
  • Deduplication rules prevent repeated customers distorting model training samples
  • Training datasets partitioned by time rather than random customer selection

Participants can identify data quality, privacy and consent controls required for marketing models.

  • Completeness, accuracy, timeliness and consistency checks applied to customer attributes
  • Consent status incorporated into audience eligibility and scoring-data specifications
  • Purpose limitation assessed before combining behavioural and transactional data
  • Sensitive attributes identified for restricted use and fairness assessment
  • Retention schedules align analytical datasets with approved business purposes
  • Privacy impact assessment questions incorporated into model intake documentation

Participants can investigate customer behaviour and select segmentation methods appropriate to the decision.

  • Distribution analysis identifies skew, outliers and sparse customer behaviours
  • RFM analysis establishes a transparent baseline for customer prioritisation
  • K-means clustering groups customers using scaled behavioural feature sets
  • Cluster quality assessed through silhouette scores, stability and commercial interpretability
  • Personas derived from segment profiles without treating clusters as causal facts
  • Segment migration analysis tracks movement between behavioural customer states

Participants can create time-valid behavioural, transactional and campaign features for predictive modelling.

  • Recency, frequency and monetary features derived from dated transaction histories
  • Customer tenure and lifecycle stage encoded for retention models
  • Engagement features capture opens, clicks, sessions and content interactions
  • Campaign exposure variables distinguish delivered, viewed and acted-on communications
  • Lagged features prevent future information entering historical model predictions
  • Feature dictionary documents definition, source, refresh logic and permitted use

Participants can design and assess propensity models for conversion and customer acquisition decisions.

  • Binary classification predicts conversion, purchase or lead-qualification outcomes
  • Logistic regression establishes interpretable conversion-propensity baseline models
  • Decision trees identify interaction patterns across customer and campaign features
  • Gradient boosting models compare nonlinear accuracy against operational interpretability
  • Propensity scores translated into priority bands and contact-volume thresholds
  • Precision at k measures audience quality under fixed campaign capacity

Participants can specify a churn model and convert risk scores into retention actions.

  • Churn definitions distinguish cancellation, inactivity, downgrade and reduced purchasing
  • Observation windows separate early warning signals from confirmed churn outcomes
  • Survival analysis estimates time-to-churn rather than binary risk alone
  • Hazard rates reveal periods of heightened attrition risk
  • Retention priority combines churn probability, customer value and intervention cost
  • Save offers tested against natural retention and customer-treatment constraints

Participants can select customer lifetime value methods for acquisition, retention and investment decisions.

  • Historical customer value separates realised margin from forecast future value
  • Cohort-based lifetime value models estimate repeat purchasing patterns
  • BG/NBD models estimate transaction frequency for noncontractual customer relationships
  • Gamma-Gamma models estimate expected monetary value from purchase histories
  • Discount rates and contribution margins incorporated into lifetime value calculations
  • Acquisition bids constrained by predicted value, payback period and risk

Participants can design recommendation and next-best-action approaches for relevant customer interventions.

  • Collaborative filtering recommends items from similar customer interaction patterns
  • Content-based filtering uses product attributes and customer preference signals
  • Association rules identify products frequently purchased within shared baskets
  • Cold-start strategies address new customers, products and sparse histories
  • Next-best-action policies combine eligibility, propensity, value and contact constraints
  • Recommendation quality assessed through precision, diversity, novelty and coverage

Participants can distinguish likely responders from customers whose behaviour is changed by treatment.

  • Response models identify likely buyers regardless of campaign treatment assignment
  • Uplift models estimate incremental response caused by a specific intervention
  • Treatment and control groups provide evidence for causal campaign effects
  • Four uplift segments distinguish persuadables, sure things, lost causes and sleeping dogs
  • Qini curves compare incremental gains across ranked campaign audiences
  • Contact policies exclude customers likely to purchase without intervention

Participants can develop forecasting specifications for demand, sales and campaign-volume planning.

  • Time-series decomposition separates trend, seasonality, cycles and irregular variation
  • Moving averages provide transparent baselines for short-term demand forecasts
  • ARIMA models represent autocorrelation and differenced stationary series
  • Exogenous variables incorporate price, promotions, holidays and media activity
  • Forecast accuracy measured using MAE, RMSE, MAPE and bias
  • Prediction intervals communicate uncertainty for inventory and campaign capacity planning

Participants can assess media-response modelling methods and their decision limitations.

  • Marketing mix models estimate channel contributions from aggregated time-series data
  • Adstock transformations represent delayed and decaying media effects
  • Saturation curves model diminishing returns from increasing channel expenditure
  • Channel coefficients interpreted cautiously under correlated media investment patterns
  • Incrementality tests validate media-response assumptions through controlled comparisons
  • Budget scenarios compare expected marginal returns across eligible media channels

Participants can design marketing experiments that provide credible evidence of incremental effects.

  • Randomised controlled trials establish counterfactual evidence for marketing treatments
  • Hypotheses specify audience, intervention, outcome metric and decision threshold
  • Power calculations estimate sample sizes for detectable campaign effects
  • Randomisation checks confirm balance across treatment and control populations
  • Holdout groups measure incremental value beyond predictive model performance
  • Sequential testing controls false discoveries during repeated campaign monitoring

Participants can evaluate model performance and set score thresholds based on business economics.

  • Confusion matrices expose trade-offs between true positives and false positives
  • ROC-AUC measures ranking discrimination across possible classification thresholds
  • Precision-recall curves assess rare-event models with imbalanced customer outcomes
  • Calibration plots compare predicted probabilities with observed event rates
  • Profit curves incorporate contact cost, conversion value and treatment expense
  • Thresholds selected according to capacity, risk appetite and customer experience

Participants can explain marketing model outputs and identify fairness and treatment risks.

  • Global feature importance identifies variables influencing aggregate model predictions
  • SHAP values explain individual predictions using additive feature contributions
  • Partial dependence plots examine marginal relationships while noting correlation limits
  • Fairness metrics compare selection, error and outcome rates between groups
  • Proxy variables assessed for indirect discrimination and sensitive attribute inference
  • Adverse customer outcomes documented with mitigation and escalation procedures

Participants can design an operational path from model scores to controlled marketing actions.

  • Batch scoring schedules align predictions with campaign planning and execution cycles
  • Real-time scoring requirements assessed for trigger-based customer interactions
  • Audience rules combine model score, consent, exclusions and frequency caps
  • APIs, CRM platforms and decision engines mapped to activation workflows
  • Champion-challenger deployment compares incumbent rules against new model approaches
  • Fallback rules protect campaigns when data feeds or scoring services fail

Participants can establish monitoring and governance controls for marketing machine learning models.

  • Performance dashboards track discrimination, calibration, uplift and business value
  • Data drift detects shifts in incoming customer and campaign characteristics
  • Concept drift identifies changing relationships between features and customer outcomes
  • Model documentation records purpose, data, assumptions, limitations and approvals
  • Retraining triggers define review points after performance or data changes
  • Governance forums assign accountability across marketing, analytics, risk and technology

Participants can create a practical implementation roadmap for a prioritised marketing model.

  • Use-case prioritisation scores commercial value, feasibility, risk and data readiness
  • Stakeholder map identifies sponsors, decision owners, builders and control functions
  • Delivery backlog sequences data, modelling, activation and measurement requirements
  • Model acceptance criteria define minimum analytical and operational performance
  • Operating model assigns responsibilities for campaigns, controls and model maintenance
  • Benefits tracking links model adoption to incremental commercial outcomes

Participants can build, review and present a complete machine learning marketing use-case package for a defined commercial decision.

  • Decision brief states target customers, intervention, value hypothesis and success measures
  • Data specification defines sources, grain, time windows and consent controls
  • Feature plan documents behavioural signals, exclusions and leakage safeguards
  • Model approach selects baseline, evaluation metrics and threshold economics
  • Activation design translates scores into audiences, offers and treatment rules
  • Governance checklist records fairness, monitoring, approval and retraining requirements

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Marketing machine learning use-case canvas
  2. Customer data and feature specification template
  3. Predictive model evaluation scorecard
  4. Uplift modelling and experiment design checklist
  5. Campaign activation and threshold rules template
  6. Model governance and monitoring plan

Who should attend

  • Marketing Analytics Managers — need to turn customer data into measurable commercial actions
  • CRM and Lifecycle Managers — need better targeting, retention and next-best-action decisions
  • Data Scientists — need to apply machine learning methods to marketing decision problems
  • Digital Marketing Managers — need predictive approaches for media, conversion and audience selection
  • Customer Insight Managers — need to move from descriptive segmentation to predictive analysis
  • Commercial and Product Managers — need to assess model-led offers, pricing and growth cases

Skills and tools covered

Marketing use-case designCustomer data preparationPredictive model evaluationUplift modellingModel interpretabilityCampaign decisioning

Tools and standards

Python, SQL, scikit-learn, SHAP

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce methods, followed by case work using realistic customer, campaign and transaction data. Participants analyse marketing decisions, inspect data structures, compare model outputs and develop activation rules in small groups. Simulations examine trade-offs between conversion, customer value, contact cost and treatment risk. Guided discussions address model governance, experiment design and stakeholder communication. Application planning sessions help participants adapt the methods to a live marketing use case from their own organisation.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable interpreting marketing performance metrics such as conversion rate, retention, campaign response and customer value. Experience working with spreadsheets, dashboards, CRM data, web analytics or campaign reporting is expected. Familiarity with basic statistics, including averages, distributions, correlation and sampling, is helpful. Participants should understand how customer journeys and campaigns are managed in their organisation. Prior Python, SQL, data science or machine learning experience is not required; technical concepts are introduced through marketing decisions, datasets and model outputs before more detailed analysis.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should understand common marketing metrics and have experience with customer, campaign, sales or digital analytics data. Python and SQL experience are helpful but not required; the course explains technical methods through practical marketing decisions.

Participants should bring a laptop suitable for accessing course materials and analytical tools. It is also useful to bring a current marketing challenge, such as churn reduction, lead prioritisation, campaign targeting or customer value planning.

The course suits marketing analytics, CRM, digital marketing, customer insight, product and data science professionals. It also suits commercial managers who commission machine learning work and need to judge whether proposed models will support decisions.

General machine learning courses often focus on algorithms, programming and broad technical applications. This course concentrates on marketing decisions, customer data, campaign activation, incrementality, customer treatment and commercial measurement.

Participants can use the use-case canvas, data specification, evaluation scorecard and governance checklist to structure a live model initiative. These materials support conversations with marketing, data engineering, analytics, risk and external suppliers.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. The first part establishes data, use-case and core predictive modelling methods; the later part covers causal methods, activation, governance and the capstone package.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.