As a marketer, I’ve found myself grappling with innovation while navigating changing consumer attitudes. It’s almost second nature, given the technological shifts over the past two decades. But predicting the future, especially with modern AI, is challenging due to its unpredictable nature. We can’t simply rely on today’s AI state to foresee where it’ll be in five years or even one year from now. Navigating this platform shift requires a fundamental understanding from the ground up.
Despite this, certain fundamentals remain constant. Consumers will always seek products, services, and experiences that resonate and fulfill their needs. As marketers, I’ll always pursue quicker, more efficient ways to connect with these consumers. However, the technological landscape mediating these relationships is on the verge of significant change, drastically influencing our work and the customer experiences we provide.
In the evolving world of marketing, less rote work and more creativity is the name of the game. The history of marketing is one of continuous evolution, but the rise of modern AI pushes even seasoned teams to adapt. For success, I’ve realized the need to embrace new skills, perspectives, and capabilities that allow us to accomplish more with fewer resources.
The transformation is underway. Embracing AI means I’m spending less time on mundane tasks like manual message creation. Instead, I focus on strategy and creativity, from crafting innovative campaigns to refining testing and optimization strategies. As AI becomes a vital part of the engagement process, it enables me to establish goals and guidelines, empowering AI to operate independently, digesting context, making decisions, and acting on my behalf.
Currently, that involves training basic AI agents in my brand’s voice for consistent messaging. But as we grow confident in AI’s ability to function autonomously over extended periods and manage complex projects, I look forward to dedicating more time to strategic management of AI resources, enabling greater AI decisioning and optimization.
The team dynamics in marketing are destined to evolve with AI working alongside humans. As I thrive on collaboration, I recognize that successful customer engagement programs often hinge on the team’s ability to cooperate rather than individual prowess. AI isn’t just a tool; it becomes a direct teammate, offering support across various aspects of customer engagement. Entry-level marketers under my guidance may soon act like managers to autonomous AI subordinates.
I’m excited at the prospect of deploying a team of AI agents for tasks like personalizing product recommendations, quality assurance of messages, translations, and providing alerts for campaign performance. By augmenting capabilities with these agents, I reduce the workload for myself and my human colleagues while building a digital institutional memory that benefits from accumulated context and goal alignment.
Looking ahead, AI’s role in customer engagement promises unprecedented personalization. For years, personalizing communication on a 1:1 basis across vast audiences has been the ultimate goal in marketing, but the technology was lacking. With AI decisioning, this dream is becoming a reality, multiplying my marketing effectiveness and creative impact to deliver what consumers desire.
Previously, reaching out to lapsed customers was a prolonged process. It involved using churn models, product predictions, and extensive A/B testing. While effective to an extent, personalized 1:1 engagement was out of reach. AI decisioning now offers a fresh approach by leveraging reinforcement learning, enabling AI to learn consumer behaviors and optimize key performance indicators autonomously.
AI can now determine the best product offers for lapsed users, the ideal channels and timings, and even message frequency preferences. This constant background experimentation allows AI to adapt to consumer preference shifts, engaging individuals through first-party data for truly personalized interactions.
As I witness this platform shift, I understand the importance of not just planning for the obvious but being prepared to respond to unforeseen changes. The real value of AI in customer engagement comes from a deep integration within a solid infrastructure. It’s not simply a shortcut but an amplifier, and our AI tools must be built on a foundation capable of supporting real-time action.
Curious about how Braze is approaching AI in customer engagement? I invite you to explore our BrazeAIᵀᴹ page.
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