Personalization at Scale: How Mailchimp’s Michelle Taite is Redefining Email & AI

Summary

The Speed of Culture Podcast: In-Depth Summary

Episode Title: Personalization at Scale: How Mailchimp’s Michelle Taite is Redefining Email & AI
Host: Matt Britton, Founder and CEO of Suzy
Guest: Michelle Tate, Global CMO of Intuit Mailchimp
Release Date: March 6, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this episode of The Speed of Culture Podcast, Matt Britton welcomes back Michelle Tate, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Intuit Mailchimp. Recorded live at CES Las Vegas, the conversation delves into the evolving landscape of email marketing, the integration of AI, and strategies for creating meaningful customer connections in a data-driven world.

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2. The Role of AI and Data in Mailchimp's Strategy

Michelle Tate opens the discussion by highlighting Mailchimp’s long-standing commitment to AI. She emphasizes the company's integration with the Intuit platform, which leverages over 65 billion machine learning predictions daily across various Intuit-owned brands, including Credit Karma, TurboTax, and QuickBooks. This vast data pool allows Mailchimp to offer “rev intel” — revenue predictions and opportunities tailored to marketers.

Michelle Tate [02:22]: “We are able to proactively give them revenue predictions and opportunities. What we would call rev intel. Right. About here are some of your targets. What they're ready to buy, how they're ready to engage, what you might want to send to them in a very hyper-personalized way based upon their data or anonymized data across all your customers.”

Tate underscores the importance of data quality, noting that AI’s effectiveness is directly tied to the robustness of the data it processes. By harnessing first-party data through integration with Intuit, Mailchimp ensures that its AI-driven insights are both relevant and actionable for marketers.

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3. Creating Meaningful Connections with Customers

The conversation shifts to the pillars that underpin Mailchimp’s approach to customer engagement:

• Soulful Subjectivity: Mailchimp differentiates itself with a vibrant brand personality, maintaining expertise without taking itself too seriously. This balance fosters trust and invites customers to be part of a community.

• Sincere Personalization: Beyond mere data utilization, Mailchimp focuses on communicating with customers in a manner that is genuinely relevant to their current needs and behaviors.

• Shared Courage: Embracing bold initiatives, such as unconventional brand activations, helps create deeper connections and a sense of community among customers.

Michelle Tate [06:24]: “We found that two things really stood out. One was frictionless purchases and availability. And the second was how do you get into rituals? Because when you have rituals, 30% of those customers buy you again.”

These pillars collectively aim to transform transactional interactions into aspirational, trust-based relationships, enhancing customer loyalty and driving repeat business.

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4. The "Email is Dead" Brand Activation

One of the standout initiatives discussed is the "Email is Dead" campaign launched in the UK. This ambitious project partnered with the London Design Museum to create an exhibit that showcased the enduring power of email, both personally and commercially.

Michelle Tate [08:41]: “Email's the highest ROI channel, $42 to the dollar. It's been around for over 50 years. It's outlasted generations... we're okay with people deciding whether they want to choose us, become part of our community.”

The exhibit not only debunked the myth of email’s demise but also highlighted its versatility and lasting relevance. By merging creativity with data-driven insights, Mailchimp successfully engaged marketers, reinforcing email as a vital tool in their arsenal.

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5. Personalization at Scale and the Impact of AI on Email Marketing

Matt Britton raises concerns about the saturation of AI-generated emails potentially diminishing personalization.

Matt Britton [10:21]: “How do you think AI is going to impact the email channel moving forward?”

Michelle Tate responds by advocating for smarter use of AI, emphasizing built-in AI features over add-ons to maintain hyper-personalization. She reassures that with proper use, AI can enhance trust and relevance without overwhelming recipients.

Michelle Tate [11:09]: “We urge marketers not to work harder with these tools, but actually work smarter... consuming data to give value.”

She introduces the concept of "rev intel" again, where AI helps identify precise customer needs and optimal engagement times, fostering sustained trust and long-term relationships.

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6. B2B Customer Segmentation and Marketing Tool Usage

The discussion moves to B2B marketing, where Mailchimp serves a diverse range of segments, including e-commerce. Michelle explains that great personalization relies heavily on data integration, which varies across different verticals.

Michelle Tate [12:51]: “Great personalization relies on data, and the more data in that you can provide, the more sophistication that you can create.”

She also touches on the democratization of marketing tools, noting that AI serves as an equalizer, enabling marketers of all levels to leverage data-driven insights without requiring extensive expertise.

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7. Nurturing a Culture of Experimentation and Learning in Marketing Teams

Michelle emphasizes the importance of fostering a culture that embraces experimentation and continuous learning, especially given the rapid technological advancements.

Michelle Tate [20:47]: “You need to really lean into that and make sure that your teams know that it's okay to feel that way because that's when the learning happens.”

She shares an example of a successful campaign developed through human ingenuity and AI assistance, highlighting the synergy between creative thinking and machine speed.

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8. Michelle Tate's Professional Journey and Learnings

Michelle reflects on her diverse background, including her time in the Israeli intelligence force, product design in London, and roles at New Balance and Unilever. These experiences have shaped her approach to marketing, emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse teams, customer-centric design, and the marriage of product excellence with strong propositions.

Michelle Tate [27:05]: “I learned how teams and specifically diverse teams just think differently and execute flawlessly because of the diversity of expertise.”

Her military background instilled a value for disciplined execution, while her design studies emphasized empathy and customer-centricity. These lessons culminate in her strategic vision for Mailchimp, which integrates data-driven insights with creative, trust-building initiatives.

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9. Future Directions for Mailchimp and Email Marketing

Looking ahead to 2025, Michelle is excited about expanding AI capabilities to proactively identify growth opportunities for marketers. She envisions AI-driven tools that not only analyze data but also facilitate intuitive, personalized outreach at scale.

Michelle Tate [25:04]: “The AI capabilities are certainly really, really exciting because they proactively sort of serve up growth opportunities for marketers.”

She also plans to deepen Mailchimp’s international presence, with ongoing in-person experiences in markets like Australia and London, further strengthening global community ties.

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10. Conclusion

In closing, Michelle shares a personal mantra inspired by Joni Mitchell, emphasizing the importance of living each day meaningfully, despite the constant balance of gains and losses.

Michelle Tate [31:11]: “Sometimes things work for you. Some things you learn and sometimes things don't work out. But at the end of the day, if you live the day as if it's a day, it'll be meaningful.”

Matt Britton wraps up the episode by expressing gratitude for Michelle’s insights and announcing the continuation of The Speed of Culture Podcast. Listeners are encouraged to subscribe and stay tuned for future episodes that explore the dynamic intersection of culture and business.

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Notable Quotes:

• Michelle Tate [02:22]: “We are able to proactively give them revenue predictions and opportunities. What we would call rev intel.”

• Michelle Tate [06:24]: “We found that two things really stood out. One was frictionless purchases and availability. And the second was how do you get into rituals?”

• Michelle Tate [08:41]: “Email's the highest ROI channel, $42 to the dollar. It's been around for over 50 years.”

• Michelle Tate [11:09]: “We urge marketers not to work harder with these tools, but actually work smarter.”

• Michelle Tate [25:04]: “The AI capabilities are certainly really, really exciting because they proactively sort of serve up growth opportunities for marketers.”

• Michelle Tate [31:11]: “If you live the day as if it's a day, it'll be meaningful.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a comprehensive look into how Mailchimp, under Michelle Tate’s leadership, is navigating the complexities of modern email marketing through AI and data-driven personalization. It underscores the importance of balancing technological advancements with authentic, trust-based customer relationships, offering valuable insights for marketers aiming to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Transcript

[Matt Britton]

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[Michelle Tate]

Potential savings will vary.

[Matt Britton]

Not available in all states.

[Michelle Tate]

There's lots of research around the fact that when someone shares an act of courage, it is contagious. We as a brand have found that when we do things that are a little bit out there, that we take that extra step that is certainly not comfortable, that pays off, and that creates meaningful connection.

[Matt Britton]

To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move in an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture. We're live here at CE Las Vegas. I'm thrilled to welcome today Michelle Tate, the global CMO of Intuit mailchimp. Michelle is a return guest on the show. So great to see you here.

[Michelle Tate]

Thanks for having me again.

[Matt Britton]

Absolutely. So how's CES been for you this year?

[Michelle Tate]

It's kind of crazy every time around, right?

[Matt Britton]

Yes.

[Michelle Tate]

You don't anticipate it and then it's still crazy.

[Matt Britton]

And when you go to a show like this as CMO of mailchimp, what are you hoping to accomplish?

[Michelle Tate]

Just learn something. I feel like we go from space to space, space to space, and oftentimes our schedules are so crowded, I just want to stop and learn and hear a great nugget that I can take back.

[Matt Britton]

And in that regard, obviously, everyone's talking about AI here in 2025. We actually talked about AI when you were on our show back in 2022. You're kind of always looking around the corner. What do you have your eye on next year relative to the mailchimp product and how you want to continue to bring the product to market?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah, we've been working. AI, like you said, isn't new to us. Right. We've been working on AI for years and years. What's been really exciting in the last, I would call it, year or so and looking forward is how we've sort of connected back to the Intuit platform and then connected the AI capabilities on the mailchimp platform. So let me take a step back when we think about the Intuit platform. Intuit owns Credit Karma, TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mailchimp and We Power 65 Billion Machine Learning Predictions a day on that platform. That gives us about 500,000 attributes for every business, small or big, that we serve. About 100 or 60,000 attributes for every consumer that we serve. And so what that means for us is that we, as we think about powering marketers success and their growth, we're able to proactively give them revenue predictions and opportunities. What we would call rev intel. Right. About here are some of your targets. What they're ready to buy, how they're ready to engage, what you might want to send to them in a very.

[Matt Britton]

Hyper personalized way based upon their data or anonymized data across all your customers.

[Michelle Tate]

Everything.

[Matt Britton]

Right?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. And pair with that, that we're the number one email and marketing automations platform in world. And I say that not because it's a great claim, but mostly because AI sits on data and it's really important what data it sits on as to how useful it can be to you. Right. So powering or collecting that, connecting that to the Intuit platform has been really successful for us and that's how we expect to and are continuously innovating for our marketers.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah, I mean the world of B2B marketing tools could be overwhelming. As an entrepreneur, myself and a customer of many tools, mailchimp included, what is most important to you in terms of being able to have an effective strategy at communicating who mailchimp is and what makes the company different amongst a sea of so many other tools out there?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. I think you're getting to a question around trust, around proposition. Brand. Right, Brand. We did a study recently, the science of Loyalty. You can find that on our website. And we talked to consumers and customers all over the world and asked them what is it that gets you to buy a product? Right. And it was really interesting and we looked at shopping behaviors, but it was really interesting in multiple ways. The first people are expecting not only sort of hyper personalized experiences now, but they're actually expecting them to come to them. So if you know in the past you could go on a website, you would go to the high street, right. To like discover. Now they're expecting that discovery happens in their inbox. Discovery happens in sms. Right. Like, it will come to me if it's relevant to me, you know, they'll find me. It's an interesting approach. Right. Especially as those types of relationships are repeat relationships, especially on email. The second is when we ask customers what makes you buy. Right. About 47%, this is a global study, said brand trust, like, everything. We like to hear as marketers that they got our proposition, they love us, they trust us. The same amount of people said that it was promotions. So think about that as like, wow, free shipping equals trust. Right, Right. And so for us, like, well, how do you click down then to the secondary purchase and the loyalty that happens and how do you create that? And what we found was that two things really stood out. One was frictionless purchases. Right. And just availability. And the second was how do you get into rituals? Because when you have rituals, 30% of those customers buy you again, just.

[Matt Britton]

Right. Just like you order from Starbucks every single day. Once you get into that consumer behavior flow.

[Michelle Tate]

Exactly. And to get to those rituals, you need to think about the customer journey as a whole on and off platform. You need to think about them not only when they're ready to convert, but when they're thinking about educating themselves on the category, when they're trying to figure out what to do with your product when they're stuck. And so we're thinking about it as a whole across the customer journey rather than just conversion. I think that's what's helped us unlock meaningful connection for our customers. Gotcha.

[Matt Britton]

But in terms of your customer, the B2B audience that you serve, what have you found most impactful at getting them to choose mailchimp for a marketing platform?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. Just creating meaningful connections. And let me unpack that we found over the last three and a half years I've been with the brand, that there are three pillars to us creating meaningful connections with our customers. One is what we call soulful subjectivity. This idea that we are a very bright yellow in a sea of blues and greens. In B2B, we are an expert of certus and we don't take ourselves too seriously. But when it comes to delivering the goods, we do. And we're okay with people opting in and out of being part of our community. And so we bring our soul to the table and we're okay with people deciding whether they want to choose us, become part of our. I don't want to call us a cult, but our community. And that's important. Right. Because we as customers have two choices. We can in any Interaction. It could be a transactional interaction, or it can be something that's more aspirational, more values based.

[Matt Britton]

Sure.

[Michelle Tate]

And we want to be in that second bucket. The second pillar is sincere personalization. So communicating to customers where they're at, whether that's on platform or off platform, in a way that is sincere to them, that is relevant to what they're.

[Matt Britton]

Doing, not just copy, find and replace like you're going to talk. Everyone the same, right?

[Michelle Tate]

Totally. And the last is what I would call shared courage. There's lots of research around the fact that when someone shares an act of courage, it is contagious. And we as the brand have found that when we do things that are a little bit out there, that we take the extra step that is certainly not comfortable, that pays off, and that creates meaningful connection. I'll give you sort of an example that ties it all together because you think about soulful subjectivity as creating trust and see your personalization in terms of utilizing data to give value. Right. As creating value. And then that last piece on courage is creating a community. We launched a brand activation called Email is Dead in the uk. And the insight there was that marketers, they care about one of two things, creativity and business results. Right. And so business results, we had you covered with ROIs, but as it relates to creativity, we recognized that off platform, what they were doing in their spare time was they were spending. Spending time in exhibits over the weekend. And so we partnered with the London exhibits. Exhibits, right? Yeah, it's London. Right, Right. And so we partnered with the London Design Museum and we created an exhibit about the cultural power of email.

[Matt Britton]

Such a cool idea.

[Michelle Tate]

And we married it with an insight from, or I guess a little bit of an inside joke around all of the press keeps asking us every holiday season, is email dead?

[Matt Britton]

Yeah.

[Michelle Tate]

And it is very far from being dead. Right. Email's the highest ROI channel, $42 to the dollar. It's been around for over 50, 50 years. It's outlasted generations and software, hardware, whatever you want to look at. And ultimately what we said is, hey, what if we created this exhibit and the brief to the team was create Ice Cream Museum meets the Cultural Power of Email. Go. Right. Would they interact with us? And they did. We showed them not only the power and the history of email, but also the personal power of email and the business power of email. And email is very personal. Right. Businesses are born on email, like Airbnb was created on e mail. Email people find their birth parents. On email, people find whether they're Going to live or die on. It's kind of crazy, right? We like to say if it happened and it mattered, it most likely happened on email. And then we looked at predictions for the future of email and showcased how it would outlast generations and allowed people to write an email to themselves, which we sent back in a year. And this was all sort of a courageous act that was built on sincere personalization based off of where they were at at what point and some trust that we had with them. And what we did was we truly designed for data. A lot of the brand activations, all of our brand activations are designed for first party data. It was a free activation, a free exhibit. But if you wanted to interact with some of the quizzes, some of the photo booths, you had to give us your email. Right, right. It became a nurture pool for us. And that's the value exchange. Yeah, but that also created meaningful connections.

[Matt Britton]

You're basically not telling your showing through a campaign like that. Email definitely is very powerful. There is obviously an AI story around email that there are now all of these tools that allow you to build AI powered SDRs or self development representatives essentially that are AI powered agents that write email. And I think what I worry about as a B2B marketer is that the end customer who we serve is going to get flooded with emails that look personal, but they're really written by AI because the barrier to entry and the cost to create what seems like personalized emails is now so low. So I guess my question is how do you think AI is going to impact the email channel moving forward? And what are you guys doing in terms of leveraging AI to allow people to do just that, create customized personalized outreach at scale.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. So we are, and we're seeing this behavior, but we urge marketers not to work harder with these tools, but actually work smarter. And what we've seen in terms of usage of our customers and also the research that we've run is that customers prefer AI that's built in versus added on. Right. And so that allows you to be hyper personalized in a way that's more focused. I'm not so afraid of the proliferation of like crazy amounts of emails because there's one button where you can unsubscribe. So email is a repeat game and that's why the stakes are high, but also especially exciting. Right. And to our conversation on rev intel, if you know exactly which customers are ready to buy or they're outside of their cycle, but you have an insight around what it is that they're looking to do. And you can provide that specific message to them at the right time, the right place. Right. Then you continuously get that trust and compounding trust over time will, I think, filter those pieces out.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah. And I think the notion of personalization at scale is ultimately what every marketer is looking for. And I do think technology is at such a point now where email marketing will no longer be one to many, but it should be one to one at my email I get from a company should be completely different in yours based upon my history with that company, what that company knows about me. And I would imagine that's a big part of where mailchimp is going to enable that one on one personalization.

[Michelle Tate]

Exactly.

[Matt Britton]

So when you look at just different sectors that you serve, I know that you have a big SMB business and you're also working more enterprise companies. How do you look at B2B customer segmentation and how does your approach vary across different segments you're trying to bring into the fold for mailchimp?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah, we work across a bunch of different segments. We look at e commerce as a torture test for a lot of those segments. Just because great personalization relies on data and data in. And the more data in that you can provide, the more sophistication that you can create. The less work that you necessarily have to do, the more pointed the outcome is. And so that's sort of what we look at as the torture test. And then we will personalize for different verticals within.

[Matt Britton]

We'll be right back with the speed of culture after a few words from our sponsors. Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger.

[Michelle Tate]

Wait.

[Matt Britton]

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[Michelle Tate]

Yeah, I think that as you get bigger, you certainly have specific expertise. Right, right. And those expertise for the longest time have been something that you grew up and sort of did over time. I think AI is becoming an equalizer in a sense.

[Matt Britton]

That's a great point. Yeah, yeah.

[Michelle Tate]

And if you take a step back and you think about what AI provides as the equalizer, it provides sort of predictive analytics and generative a. Right. But if you think about the marketer's biggest challenges right now, they're to stick with all the data and realize the insights from the data. And what's been happening is we've talked about always on marketing for the longest time. Right. And we've talked about insights and data and data fluency, but the reality is that the data's changing consistently or constantly. Right. And so utilizing AI to provide those insights based off of that data, that's where the differentiation is going to come in. And I think we've been thinking a lot as a team about as a marketing team, you're looking across the customer journey. You have the privilege of really understanding. Is the journey that we're crafting compounding in value for our customer or are we shifting the org? Right. And we have an opportunity to really connect those silos across the org. And I would say move from consumers of data. And we've talked about data fluency and data savviness and data backed marketing for the longest time to designers of data and being able to partner with the product teams to say, well, this is how we need to instrument the product. These are the points by which we'll understand whether the person is stuck or there's an opportunity to engage. And that's where I think there's an opportunity both for AI to come in and crunch that data and help us personalize. But there's also the responsibility, I think, of marketers to take a step back and say, are we doing this properly?

[Matt Britton]

And I think you kind of touched on this point. But a lot of people don't have patience when it comes to writing reports and trying to decipher what's working, what isn't. I would imagine another thing that AI can do from the analytics standpoint is allow the marketer to actually see what's working, ask questions through some type of chat interface to really understand what's working, what email worked the best, what audience is growing the most in terms of conversions. Sometimes people have a hard time navigating these dashboards and figuring out. But I think now it should probably become easier over time.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. And we ran a study called the Revenue Blueprint and it looked at who are the marketers, what are the traits and the behaviors of marketers who were driving outsized revenue impact for their organizations and sort of came back to that where there are three types of marketers that we found in the study. The first were sort of baseline marketers. They would emphasize all the current or the basic strategies that you would assume. Everything we know is marketers. The second is performance marketers. They were more data savvy, they were more martech savvy. So they knew how to sort of marry the tools with the data and create more short term growth. And then the third was a subset of those performance marketers were revenue leaders. And the revenue leaders had outsized impact in terms of the revenue because they actually had a higher usage above 85% for both predictive analytics and AI and generative AI and the use and the combination of those together. So to your point, when you do that, that's when you see the outs. I think the more that we'll get marketers to do that, the more we'll see the outsized result. Yeah, but it's hard, right? You need to really lean in and do it.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah. And it really is the barbell, as you mentioned, in terms of understanding the data and the analytics that drive business results. Well, at the same time, being creative, doing things like you did in terms of your activation and exhibits in London, like what is that key insight that's going to get somebody to care about what you're talking about? And I think sometimes you'll see marketers, I guess go too much towards the brand side or the performance side, but you really need both. Can optimize all day long. But if you're not adding value to the consumer, if you're not emotionally moving them, then you're not going to drive them to take any behavior that's going to help your business in any way.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Britton]

So moving on to you and your journey at mailchimp. How has being a CMO changed over the last couple years with all the evolution that we've seen in the marketplace.

[Michelle Tate]

That's such a good question. I think just there's a lot more learning.

[Matt Britton]

Right.

[Michelle Tate]

I'm a very curious person. If you ask my teams, they'll tell you that, like I read way too much and that I ask a lot of questions. But I really believe in sort of curiosity and humility, sort of turbocharging each other. This idea that you don't know everything. And if you ask and you're interested, then you'll learn more. But I think over the last three, three and a half years, just technology has moved so quickly. And being in that space, you need to keep trying and experimenting and understanding what's going on. And so it's just been about experimenting and learning with the team. More so than I would say, just coaching. Right?

[Matt Britton]

Right.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah, right.

[Matt Britton]

And experimenting is a key point, I think, because technology is moving so fast and there's so many tools out there, sometimes there's nothing that really replaces just the value of trying stuff out.

[Michelle Tate]

Right.

[Matt Britton]

And actually seeing how it works. I love trying out new tools that does the promise meet what you know, the hope is of the product. And sometimes, like especially now, you see some tools. As a business marketer, you're like, what do you mean I can do that? That's incredible. And, and it is really moving so fast. You look at like the text to video tools that are coming out right now. Yeah, they're just unbelievable like Google's VO in terms of coming up with any type of idea. If you can combine things like that, like video that's completely custom towards whoever you're going. And a tool like yours, all of a sudden you can do things that are just mind blowing in terms of delivering on what you know about the customer with creative that pops off the screen that gets them to, to drive conversions. And I think once you can figure out how to synthesize and put it all together, I think that makes, gives you a real superpower moving forward and.

[Michelle Tate]

Also just like really being uncomfortable, being uncomfortable all the time. Right. Like, which may be the case for all of these jobs. But I just think with the technology moving so much faster, you just need to lean into that and make sure that your teams know that it's okay to feel that way because that's when the learning happens and celebrate when there are small wins. You know, we have a corny but really useful hashtag on our team. It's hashtag beat our best and we use it with work together. And the intent is really to just say like, let's do Something today that was better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today. And it just instills this instinct to try to do something different, try to outperform in a different way. I was on a call yesterday with my teams, and we're onboarding someone new to the team. And they said, well, we have this idea that maybe we can teach funnel metrics in a way that's not so boring. And so they created a song through an AI tool with all of the funnel metrics. And I was like, this is amazing. Because they're thinking about multiple ways. I mean, it's just even that, right? And just experimenting with everything that's out.

[Matt Britton]

There, I would imagine. Also, a big part of your role in terms of nurturing and growing a team is fostering a culture of experimentation, of learning, because it's moving so fast, much faster than when you or I entered the workforce. And it's just having people enter the workforce now. When you're trying to get your bearings on a tool as sophisticated as mailchimp, but at the same time trying to get your arms around the dizzying array of new tools and changes that are happening in our industry right now, it's a lot. And I think allowing people to have the right type of approach, giving them space to learn, is probably the only way to allow people to succeed in this day and age.

[Michelle Tate]

And I would say, like, learn and teach. Yeah, right. We had exceptional success with our campaign last year. The clusterboard campaign that was created with the help of AI, it was created by humans. But let me kind of back out and explain. We had a meeting. Our first sort of. Let me show you five concepts, right as we got to a brand campaign type of meeting, and the team had this idea for a customer campaign that was based off of an insight where we spoke to marketers and marketers told us they had a customer growth problem. We were like, no, you don't really have a customer problem. You have a customer problem. You're treating all of your customers the same and therefore you're seeing growth because you're not using hyper personalization. And so team came into this meeting and they didn't tell me about it. They showed me it. Think about hearing that from a team. You're kind of wondering, well, what does the customer look like? What does it feel like? Can we stretch it this way or that way? No, they use generative AI to sort of pull together what the visuals of this customer would be so that we could have a real conversation. It's like a show versus tell. Right. And within One meeting we decided on that concept versus like the five meetings it would take us to narrow down to the final concept. Within one meeting we decided we were going to launch this, but we needed to research it really well with different countries because customer and Spanish might be something different. And so we took it to groups in four different countries, in between the groups and between the focus groups and quant. The team took the insights that they saw in the focus groups and prompted for the optimizations and optimize the research in between the groups. And then what we finally ended up creating with humans. Right. And this was a human led idea. Right. But I always say, like, it's human ingenuity at machine speed. Right. And it's just allowed us to create a campaign that, you know, has performed like top 5% at Ipsos ADS and really, really successful for us. And the team taught me that it's awesome. I didn't come in and say, well, why don't you prompt and we'll see how it goes. So I think it's a dual sort of learning curve.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah. The idea of the customer versus the customer too is so cool because you're right. I think when someone says, I have a growth problem, that's the outcome, that's the symptom, but what is the cause?

[Michelle Tate]

Right.

[Matt Britton]

And yeah, more than likely you don't understand your customer well enough or you're not speaking to them in a personalized or individualized way. And because of that, whatever message you have just isn't lending.

[Michelle Tate]

Right.

[Matt Britton]

And that's the problem you need to solve, not the growth problem. That will solve the growth problem for you.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah.

[Matt Britton]

Which is interesting. So looking ahead to 2025, what are some of the new and exciting things that you have on your mind in terms of the continued growth and expansion of mailchimp? Yeah.

[Michelle Tate]

The AI capabilities are certainly really, really exciting because they proactively sort of serve up growth opportunities for marketers. And as a marketer, I know I sort of wake up every morning, I'm like, how am I going to grow this business even faster?

[Matt Britton]

Right.

[Michelle Tate]

So that I think is just going to be a huge unlock. Continues to be an unlock for too.

[Matt Britton]

Fast, by the way, in rolling out like new AI functionality because obviously you want to focus on what matter to your customer.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah.

[Matt Britton]

If you push too much out too fast, I would imagine they get overwhelmed. Like, how do you deal with that balance in terms of a product roadmap?

[Michelle Tate]

I think it's the what versus the how.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah.

[Michelle Tate]

Right. And like, if the how is built in and Easy to use and intuitive or you have education on points of need. And again, you instrument the product so that you understand where people are getting stuck and you also bring in humanized expertise right at the right time, then you can build that successfully. But we've seen customers sort of take on and really love using AI because it delivers for them.

[Matt Britton]

It does.

[Michelle Tate]

Right?

[Matt Britton]

Yeah. So what you were saying. So new AI function on anything else that you're focused on?

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. We continue to expand our offerings beyond email, SMS and now forms and pop ups. We're in 190 countries and we're continuing to go really deep in our international markets. About half of our business is international and we've done a lot of sort of in person experiences in Australia and London. We're continuing to do that in the spring. So I'm excited for that.

[Matt Britton]

I was about to ask you, what is your most profitable channel at winning new customers?

[Michelle Tate]

We don't talk about our specific rois camera desk, but as an email marketer, I can't tell you that I don't love email.

[Matt Britton]

Right. Yeah. And I imagine it's kind of a mixture of everything you guys are doing. For sure. So looking back at your professional journey as a CMO and now you've been at mailchimp, I guess four years and obviously you're accomplishing a lot and it's an exciting place to be. What are some of the learnings when you look back at your journey, both at mailchimp and before that, and more specifically, some of the decisions you think you made right along the way to put you in a position you are today?

[Michelle Tate]

I don't know if they've been decisions along the way. I would say they're learnings that have positioned me well. I started my career in the army. I learned. Really? Yeah. And from Israel, I spent two years in the intelligence force.

[Matt Britton]

Wow.

[Michelle Tate]

I learned how teams and specifically diverse teams just think differently and execute flawlessly because of the diversity of expertise and really valued that and continue to bring that to every team I work on. I studied product design in London. I think one of my final projects there made a huge difference for me in terms of just understanding customers and how walking in the shoes of your customers is really important. I had designed some pediatric medical tools and from the lens of a toddler and their parents. And we all sort of know with kids, you walk into that office, the kids are like on alert. They know that this is business. And so the design was really based off of, if you looked at a toddler's world, they don't really connect form and function. What does it look like for them if you create a stethoscope that looks like a whale's tail or you know, the earpiece that is kind of like half duck, half seal?

[Matt Britton]

Less intimidating.

[Michelle Tate]

But think about the world that they live and connect in. Right.

[Matt Britton]

It's a great learning lesson that applies really everything in terms of putting yourself in the shoes of the customer.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. And so just bringing that to life. Fascinating. It was an unlock for me of like, you have to walk in your customer's shoes to really understand their world when you're designing for them. New Balance taught me a ton about commercialization. But in addition to that, I think when I worked at New Balance designing shoes and I still look at everybody from the bottom up because it is what it is. Right. As your designer, that's how you look at them.

[Matt Britton]

Yeah.

[Michelle Tate]

I think it taught me a ton about crafts. Our design headquarters were based just above a manufacturing plant in Boston. And they required us to work in the plant two weeks a year. Really? Yeah. And it just like. I mean the amount of ends that I messed up are insane. But the respect for craft is immense. Right. And then I think at Unilever, just the. When you marry an amazing product up with really a great proposition, how product just flies off the shelves. My first rotation there was on Magnum ice cream and launching that into the North American market. And it took us like 18 months to get the caramel sauce right. So that the bite was just right. That it created the right sort of perfect moment that we could then marry up with a proposition that was essentially, it was a premium proposition. A very price driven market. So like Chanel on a stick is how we thought about it. And when we did that and we pulled it together, within 10 days, everything was gone. We were out of product. And so just the understanding that you need both. Right. To make everything work. You can't just market, you can't just create a product. And then with QuickBooks, what a privilege to work. Work with small businesses. Right. And medium sized businesses and just like health and grow.

[Matt Britton]

It's a heartbeat of our economy.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah. And the realization that even though it's hard and you need to be so thoughtful in because they have such complexity and you're really powering their prosperity. You can have fun. Like B2B should not be boring to boring. Totally breakthrough at a brilliant. I love that.

[Matt Britton]

Couldn't agree more.

[Michelle Tate]

We worked with Danny DeVito at the time. It was my. One of my most memorable experiences. I think we have immense trust between us and our agency partners. The creative director, Kristin Rutherford, is one of my best friends up until this day because of that work, because we were able to, like, just have such trust and such insight and create something that was different, even in a very serious category. And then the beginning of Mailchimp 2 was just a very good learning curve around whatever new job you're in and whatever you've been asked to do by the business. It really doesn't matter until you build trust.

[Matt Britton]

Absolutely. And it sounds like the learnings from mailchimp go so much more beyond that in terms of being data driven and understanding the mixture of art and science and so many other things that you're learning every single day. Well, this has been amazing. I knew it would be based on our last discussion and you did not disappoint. And such exciting stuff you're working on. Finally, before we wrap up, I asked of all of our guests, you may remember from last time, if there's a quote or mantra that you have by guide your professional career, does anything come to mind for you?

[Michelle Tate]

You? Yeah. Joni Mitchell's Both Sides now has a line that says, something's lost and something's gained and living every day. I think I live by that and that, you know, sometimes things work for you. Some things you learn and sometimes things don't work out. But at the end of the day, if you live the day as if it's a day, it'll be meaningful.

[Matt Britton]

Fantastic.

[Michelle Tate]

Yeah.

[Matt Britton]

Well, thank you so much for taking your time.

[Michelle Tate]

Thank you.

[Matt Britton]

During a busy week at CES and I'm really appreciative. Can't wait for our audience to hear it. On behalf of Susie and Abbey Team, thanks again to the great Michelle Tate, the global CMO of Intuit mailchimp for joining us today live from CES in Las Vegas. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon. The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Suzy as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and a guest Creator Network. You can listen subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.podcast. to find out more about Suzy, head to Suzy.com and make sure to search for the Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Suzy, thanks for listening.

[Michelle Tate]

Okay, let's talk about your expense report.

[Matt Britton]

I didn't submit an expense report.

[Michelle Tate]

You will custom saddles and dog training services are not within policy.

[Matt Britton]

What are you talking about?

[Michelle Tate]

SAP Concur uses advanced AI to audit and automatically detect out of policy expenses. It's the breakthrough I needed to focus more on our future.

[Matt Britton]

These are my future expenses?

[Michelle Tate]

Yes. And self defense classes are out of policy.

[Matt Britton]

I'll need self defense classes.

[Michelle Tate]

You will?

[Matt Britton]

For what?

[Michelle Tate]

It's a big dog.

[Matt Britton]

SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn [e-mail] Race the Rudders, Race the sails. Raise the sales. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger, Wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution? REITs sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn. Com results terms and conditions apply.