← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
Klaviyo CMO Jamie Domenici on moving from AI as a tool to AI as an autonomous agent
00:25:01
If AI can now execute an entire marketing campaign from a single prompt, what is the new primary function of a marketing leader?
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A
Today we're going to talk about the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an autonomous agent. We're going to explore how these agentic AI systems, which can independently execute complex tasks based on strategic goals, are poised to redefine the marketing function, separating real value from hype and forcing us to reconsider the balance between human creativity and machine execution. Welcome to season eight of the Agile Brand podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert mode, MarTech AI and customer experience Experience. Talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. Again, I'm your host, Greg Kilstrom, and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech AI and marketing ops. Hit, subscribe or follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor, Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world adoption. For more information, go to techsystems.com now let's dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome back to the show Jamie Dominici, CMO at Klaviyo. Jamie, welcome back to the show.
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B
Hi. Thanks for having me.
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A
Yeah, always great to talk with you and looking forward to talking about this with you before we dive in. For those that didn't catch the last episode you were on, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Klaviyo?
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B
Well, I mean, first of all, come on, guys, you ought to tune in.
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A
But of course, of course. Thank you. Thank you.
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B
My name is Jamie Domenici. I'm the CMO at Klaviyo. So I run marketing. And if you're not familiar with Klaviyo, we are a B2C marketing automation. But we're not just marketing, we're marketing. We're a service, we're data, and we're really powering this new autonomous workflow for B2C companies. So automating your end to end experience for all of your customers in every interaction that you have with them.
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A
Yeah, great, great. So, yeah, let's dive in here and start. I want to start by talking about really the shift to marketing strategy. And certainly as a, as a cmo, you're probably feeling this from that perspective as well as from Klaviyo as a platform. So this concept of agentic AI suggests a pretty significant move from purely human led execution of marketing tasks to human LED strategy. So from your perspective, what does this practically mean for how a CMO or Marketing leader should structure their team and define roles over the next 18 to 24 months.
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B
Yeah, I mean, this is what I wake up thinking about every single day, both for myself as a CMO and for all of my customers who are kind of in the same boat. And we have over almost 200,000 customers. So it's a lot of people trying to figure it out. And I really think this is a moment where you kind of have to take the playbook, how it's been written, and just throw it out the door. And we're writing a new playbook. And I think that this is a time where, you know, it's scary and exciting because it's scary because it's like, oh, what I've done doesn't work. But it's exciting because some of those things, a lot of the tasks that I think my team and a lot of marketers have focused on are the wrong task, to be honest with you. And now this barrier to entry and automate has really transformed the way that you can think about your job, do your job, and then, you know, allow you to spend more time on the things that you want to spend more time on. Things like brand and more of a strategic looking at the market or really thinking about how you differentiate. Like, I think this is going to create the balance in time for us to operate a little bit different as marketers, but there is no playbook and. And we have to look and lean on automation and AI in a whole different way.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Well, and to your point, there's. There's a lot of stuff that just has to get done in marketing, you know, and I think to what you're saying, marketing teams have been kind of stuck doing that instead of focusing on more strategic stuff. And so, you know, along comes AI. And certainly there's a ton of hype around AI, just like there's been hype around a lot of things. But what I'm seeing is that there also is a lot of tangible value to be derived from these things. Which. Where are you seeing some of this tangible value being gotten from some of the AI capabilities versus what are maybe some use cases that are still a little more aspirational?
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B
Well, I definitely think it's a journey. I think some of the areas. Let me talk to you about Klaviyo in particular. Klaviyo, as I mentioned, we're a CRM, so we do marketing and service. But if we lean into the marketing side, which is where we started, we've been doing marketing for 13 years for B2C companies. And I'll use an example, Princess Polly, great customer. If you have a teenage daughter, you've definitely bought a dress from them. They're a great customer of ours. And when they started with us, they had a ton of data and their company was growing like crazy and they were trying to figure out how to expand internationally. Now go back in time, they'd have to sit and look at all their data and try and find trends. Right. And say, you know what, we're going to make a VIP program. I think these are the right VIPs. They'll go create a flow and you know, create a custom offer for that group. So that made sense. But now with Klaviyo, you can still do all that, but we're going to tell you actually where to go. So with Composer, we can identify based on your data, based on your trends, based on your peer sets and make a recommendation, hey, you should have a VIP program. Here's the audience, here's the offer and hey, it's already pre built for you. So same outcomes. But actually the tool and the technology is getting smarter about your business and helping you build faster, better customer relationships. So kind of taking the guesswork out and then also taking the manual execution, the build, which I think probably took up most of our time in the old days, completely transforming, you know, how same outcome, but completely transforming the way that the business operates to get there faster, better, smarter and spend more time on the things that really matter.
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A
Yeah, I mean it sounds like all that time spent doing initial assessments, maybe initial exploration as well as connecting all the dots, whether it's, you know, kind of the plumbing aspect, let's say of marketing, which can take, it's again, it's necessary, it's, it's vital, but takes up a lot of human time when it can't be automated. So to me, you know, to what you're saying, you know, the, this, what this means from a tactical level also means that we can do more. You know, let's, you know, not only can we do a VIP program, but we can do other program, we can do a lot more, which can be hugely beneficial. But also, you know, I would imagine it also brings some complexities with that as well. You know, when you do more, there's more potential challenges or even things to think through. What are you seeing there? Where does the complexity kind of start, I guess with some of this stuff?
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B
Well, I think right now for most marketers it's just the unknown is step one, there's a mandate to use AI. They know, AI is going to transform the way they work. I would say most users are kind of using baseline AI as I would call it. You were using LLM and improving your writing and probably feel really comfortable there. But I think this next level of where we're going is more of the workflow automation. And so I think you have two choices there. Right. Like we were just explaining, explaining campaigns, not only the creation, but then the optimization. Right, Right. So you could either go build it yourself or you can partner with vendors who are building it for you. Right. And I think that's like this, this is a second level, level two. If you're in a video game, you're getting to level two, Right. And then that's where, you know, like, like Klaviyo for example. We're, we're trying to do it for you, right. So now everyone's going to have an agent. You could build your own agent, you could take all of your data, put it in MCP server and run queries on it, or you could look to a vendor to kind of pre populate that for you, which is what I was explaining like already. Tell me the flows and that way that workflow is managed for you. Because I think in this new org structure, your operations team is going to look a little bit different. Right. This is more of moving from maybe a typical marketing ops per person or a campaign manager to an engineer who's building workflows. So I think you have to be really smart about how and where you build because you're going to have to maintain those agents, maintain those workflows. And so it's just going to be a different allocation of resources. But I think that's a really important question that you need to ask as you start out on this AI journey.
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A
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B
Well, as a marketer, like, this is our most treasured thing, our identity. Right, our identity, our brand. So I think we do and should hold this as a very sacred thing. And I know people say like, oh, human in the loop a lot. I don't, I like to say a little different. I think that, you know, humans have to be the conductor and AI is orchestra and we're all building incredible music for the audience, which is our customers, right? And so I don't look at it as a human in the loop because that seems really trivial. It's actually the humans who's at the center of what's going on. And so they really need to have the right visibility, the right controls and the ability to check and validate. So when we've been building out Composer, I'll give you an example, we're creating content for people. So we're, we. This is the most important thing. Like the output is an email from your company. It has to look like you, it has to sound like you, and there could be no variabilities. So we've been building Composer in the background on top of models and literally just sitting with customers and testing, testing, testing, testing. So we're using this sort of human to validate our models are good enough. And not until we get to that threshold of 100% that will we really ga. So we're almost there, which is exciting. But I would say it's also creating a new product development cycle, right, where the goal is like, there's no exceptions to the rule. So the technologies have to be great, the outputs have to be great, the models have to Be great. And we need to make sure that we have the right guardrails in place so that that human, that conductor can run their orchestra. Right, yeah.
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A
No, I love that, I love that metaphor there. I think that's really powerful and I think it's also just because we're. I know I've seen so much of the AI slop out there and in. Even, even let's call it. Well, if, if a, if gen AI can have intent, well intentioned brand content but still not quite there. So you know, it's great to hear the level of effort that's going into making sure that, you know, the, the content that's being created is on brand because it, you know, I truly believe that that will be transformational when it's, you know, when it's achieved. So.
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B
Yeah, well, and by the way, I have a 16 year old daughter and she loves to show me on Instagram. I'll be like, hey, did you see this real? And she's like, mom, that's AI. I didn't know that. So there's some good and there's some bad, but I also think this next generation is kind of going to be trained to identify what's not authentic. So, and we, you know, we did some research and nearly one in five notice low quality AI content. So it's like it's a real thing thing. So keeping that authenticity is really matters. So when we go back, you know, one thing you'd asked me, where do we think AI is not there yet? And I, I think it's that authentic authenticity piece which often translates into your brand, your brand guidelines, your brand tone, your brand voice. We have to own that. And, and so when I think about one of the other areas, imagery, right. Like that will be. There's new updates every day about who is doing what. I think there's going to be a lot of advancements there on scale. But there is this. My worry is like it's going to all become the same homogenized. Everybody has AI, everybody's using these models, everybody's going to have the same like packaging. So what I'm excited about is getting back to where am I going to spend more of my time. It's going to be in that human to human connection, the authenticity piece, maintaining my brand understanding and knowing my customers. Like some of that AI can automate, but it's never going to have that human to human connection. So, so I feel like as CMOs or as marketers, that's where we're going to have to maintain and Invest, to differentiate and to really relate to our customers in the future.
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A
Yeah, yeah, well, and then to talk about measuring success a little bit. But also, you know, they, they don't remove things from our plate, they just keep adding more things. So now we've got the, you know, the consumer agents. Right. So now we've got this whole. You know, I think one of the things that really struck me from all the data from last holiday season was just how much consumers are using AI. Not even consuming the AI content that we just talked about, but actually using AI to do shopping, to do other things like that. I know Klaviyo has done some research on that as well. So what have you found there as far as how this is being used and how consumers want to use it?
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B
Maybe I would say two things. One, as I mentioned, they value authenticity. So one out of five customers, they're like, that's not me, that's not relevant. And then that really is a negative impact on your brand. More and more people are going and shopping and researching different ways. So I say to every marketer, you have to care about every single interaction. You always have, but now there's new places, right? We didn't have to work on our LLM strategy two years ago, but now that's people are researching and buying and agentic commerce is changing the way that people shop and buy. So as marketers, we have to think different and strategically across every single channel. How we show up, how we communicate and we have to tie that all together, right? And so at Klaviyo we call it omnichannel marketing. Right? And that's how we think across every single channel. Maintain our brand and consistency, but also know your customer and they might shop here, look here, go in store and sort of what's old is new. The companies that understand and track every single interaction and leverage that are the companies that are going to build those better relationships for, you know, a hundred years ago and also now in this new agentic world.
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A
Yeah, well, and to what you're saying, I mean, again, the old channels don't go away. I mean, you know, I remember, you know, print was dead and TV ads were dead and you know, everything, you know, I think it's mostly for dramatic effect, but nothing actually goes away. It just sometimes evolves, but we just keep adding more things. And so I guess does AI, you know, when we're talking about measuring success and KPIs like, does AI change things there? Are there new metrics of success that CMOs should be paying attention to? You know what changes, I guess gone
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are the days of like open rates and click rates, I think that are kind of obsolete. They're relevant, but more, a little bit more obsolete. And I think great CMOs are looking at CLV, the lifetime value of the customer and measuring every single engagement and starting to understand how strong is my relationship with this customer and how smart am I being at leveraging that data. So more of that lifetime value versus that one off interaction I think is really the measurement that we need to be leaning towards in the future, which is probably somewhere on someone's scorecard, but not the number one. And I think that's going to be elevated in this much more competitive time.
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A
Yeah, well, and I would say that also just kind of, I know there's lots of talk about breaking down silos and you know, it's kind of a cliche, but just because it's a cliche doesn't make it not needed. Let's say when we start talking about all these different channel, even you know, talking about in store, but you know, talking about all of these different channels, you know, it kind of doesn't that change maybe the, or I guess does it change the, the skills needed for marketers or just the, the understanding? You know, I guess what does change there in, in this world where things like customer lifetime value and omnichannel are becoming more and more prevalent?
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B
I think the skills over the next 18 months that we need in a marketing org is going to, I think the marketing org is going to look different, so the skills are going to look different. I think some of the areas that are going to become a higher premium are actually the human to human interaction. So if you're hosting an event or you're on site with a customer, you're having that face to face interaction. I think that's going to be really valuable. But then the other side I would say is this marketing engineer, which is an evolution. That doesn't mean you're like in JavaScript or Python, right? But what it does mean is you are that conductor, right? You have all of these workflows and agents working for you and you're going to manage them. And that usually you probably managed a team of 10 people who was doing this work before. Building the flow, building the segment, doing the send, you know, building the copy and the content. That team will just be consolidated into a group of agents. And so your new skill set is going to be managing agents versus managing human to human. And I would think that you will have a slight lean towards technology Right. But it'll be more. How do you manage the technology, how do you prompt the technology, how do you validate the technology versus the old school way of manually building everything out yourself.
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A
Right, right. And it also sounds to me, at least it sounds more technical. Yes. But also more strategic. Right. I mean you're.
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Yeah.
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And probably more end to end. Right. As well.
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Yeah. I'll give you an example from my own org. Like I said, product development is changing with AI. So gone are the days where you have like three big releases a year. Now you're putting a new feature out every day or for a B2C customer, you're introducing new product every day. So you have to be able to keep up with that. So I can't take a marketing team, they can't take hours, days, weeks to go launch a product. So what we did was just automated it. We actually have from linear where our product team manages their product management. When they hit go and we go into production, an entire workflow is created. A blog, website, page, enablement, internal slack and it just fires directly so that I no longer. But that used to take like three people, you know, eight to 15 hours per feature and now 100% automated. So I just have one person who makes shirts and online aligned with the brand, the tone, the voice, et cetera. And they're just validating like completely changed the way we work.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So. And that person's not technical. He is, he's, he's, he is handy. He can use cloud code but he has built this, it works. And now his role is just simplified but strategic.
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A
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, Jamie, always great talking with you. Thanks. Thanks for joining today. I got a couple questions for you as we wrap up here.
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B
Yeah.
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First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
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B
Actually I heard this new concept yesterday, so it might not be a year, but now people. I've always talked about PLG product led growth and now people are talking about ALG agent led growth, which is going to be a whole new thing. How are acronym?
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A
Right.
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B
I was like what? I've never even heard of that. Um, but so I, I have been thinking about this agent to agent marketing and I think agent led growth. How we're going to be using agents to drive business forward, I think is it's the next phase. I think, I don't think it'll be a full year, but I think that will be the next level of conversation. That'll be level three. You know.
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A
Nice, Nice. Love it. Yeah, we'll we'll have to have you back on and talk about it. Love it. And last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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B
I would say two things. One, Always talk to your customer and stay close to them. If you know your customer, if you're authentic and you're putting your customer first, you will always be a great marketer. So I don't think that will ever go away. But the two, the second thing is like got to get hands on AI is for everyone. So the more you can spend time with it, demystify it, champion it, both for yourself and for your team, I think those are the people who are going to go to this next level and really thrive. So I would say jump in.
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A
Love it. Love it. Well again, I'd like to thank Jamie Domenici, CMO at Klaviyo for joining the show. You can learn more about Jamie and Klaviyo by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@techsystems.com that's teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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