Marketing teams don't lack data. They're overwhelmed by it.

Every week brings another round of manual exports and another reporting deadline. The gap between having customer data and acting on it keeps widening, and the repetitive production work to bridge that gap eats hours that could go toward strategy, creativity, and growth.

That changes today. Klaviyo's expanded integration with Anthropic brings agentic marketing workflows to Claude, shifting from "analyst who tells you what to do" to teammate who actually does the work.

Everyone is talking about AI in digital marketing.
But very few are talking about what actually drives results.

I use AI regularly in my workflow, so I decided to break down what is genuinely working.

Last week, I focused on three areas:
1. Ad copywriting
2. Content ideation
3. Lead nurturing messages

Here is what I observed:
- AI is fast, but not always effective
The first drafts looked polished, but they felt generic.
If I had used them as they were, engagement would have been low.

- The real advantage is in refinement
When I added my own experience, market understanding, and real examples, the quality improved significantly.

- AI saves time, not thinking
It reduced my effort by around 40% to 50%.
But the strategy still depends on human input.

My biggest takeaway:
AI will not replace marketers.
But marketers who use AI effectively will outperform those who do not.

My CMO gave me three weeks to fix a campaign that had a 0.8% click-through rate.

I didn’t hire a consultant. I didn’t run another A/B test. I opened Claude.ai and treated it like the most senior marketing strategist I’d ever worked with.

The campaign hit 4.3% CTR. We added 2,100 leads in 18 days.

This is not a “AI is amazing, go use it” article. This is the actual playbook — the prompts, the frameworks, the mistakes, and the surprising moments when Claude did things no human marketer had thought to suggest.

Two years ago, I used AI to write a caption.

Today, I use it to understand what my audience wants before they even tell me.

That shift happened faster than I expected.

AI in marketing isn't really about robots anymore.
It's about something much quieter and more powerful.

It's about knowing which email subject line will actually get opened.
Which ad will make someone stop scrolling.
Which customer is about to leave even before they do.

68% of marketers say AI is most useful for automating routine tasks.
That's true. But I think we're underselling it.

The real unlock isn't speed.
It's relevance.

When a brand speaks to you like it actually knows you,
that's not magic.
That's machine learning working in the background.

But here's what I keep coming back to:

AI can optimize a message.
It can't originate one.

It can tell you when to post.
It can't tell you why you care about what you're posting.

The marketers who will win aren't the ones who fear AI.
They're the ones who stay deeply human while using it well.

Use the tools.
Learn them properly.
But don't outsource your judgment to an algorithm.

Because AI can make you faster.
Only you can make your work matter.

P.S. If you're a marketer still on the fence about AI then you're not behind yet. But the window is closing.

I use AI wrong.


And honestly? Most people do. At least everyone I know in marketing.

Because nobody taught us how to talk to it. Yeah, we can figure it out ourselves — I'm not playing the victim card here — but using AI properly takes practice. Real practice.

People talk about AI like it's changing their lives and their way of working. Sure. But HOW though?

It should be part of every company's training to teach each team how to actually use AI for their specific role. Not a generic "here's ChatGPT, good luck" session. Actual, useful training.

Right now, most of us use it for basic copywriting. And even then, we type "improve this email for me" and wonder why the output is a bit... meh.

Vague questions get vague answers. And then we decide AI "doesn't really work for marketing."

It does. Once you learn how to use it properly — to your advantage — it works for any job, honestly. I'm focusing on the marketing side of things, but you can apply this to any role, I promise.

5 days. Prompting basics. No jargon. No PhD required.

Are you in?

And do you think you use AI in the right way? Be honest 👇🏼👀

I run a small B2B agency and was trying to automate most of my work, writing ad copy, creating social content, get insights from performance data faster

so three months ago I decided to test every AI marketing tool that promised to "save time" or "automate" something meaningful

I spent $1,847 and gave each one a real 4-week trial on active campaigns

The pitch is always the same: AI writes your copy, designs your graphics, analyzes your data, generates insights- you just review and publish

that's not how it actually works, and I'm gonna be specific about why most of these tools are time-sinks pretending to be time-savers

Profound ($600/month): I tested it because my CMO saw a demo and it looked incredible. The dashboard is genuinely beautiful. I ran an analysis of our top-performing campaigns and it spit out attribution models that looked scientific. Then I manually checked the numbers and they didn't match our actual conversion data. Spent 8 hours trying to understand their methodology before support went silent when I asked direct questions. Killed after week 2.

Canva Magic Studio ($13/month): This one actually worked, but not how I expected. I thought I'd describe a campaign and it would auto-generate everything. In reallity it's a much better design tool than Canva was before, with some smart templates. But I still had to brief it properly, review every output, and fix copy. Time saved: maybe 20 minutes per week if I'm generous. Still paying for it because the design quality is legit, but it didn't change my life tbh

HubSpot's AI Features (included): The subject line generator works okay for email. The content assistant is surface-level. If you're already paying for HubSpot, sure, click the AI button- but it's not a reason to use HubSpot

Notion AI ($10/month): This one surprised me. I actually use it every day for things that aren't "AI magic." I use it as a CRM, a content calendar, and yeah, sometimes the AI fills in database fields or generates first drafts. Never once saved me hours. But the system itself (Notion, not the AI) reduced context-switching because everything lived in one place

Zapier (free tier): This is the one that actually moved the needle for me. It connected my existing tools so I wasn't manually copying data between systems. One workflow: new lead in my form, auto-filled contact in Notion, auto-triggered email sequence. Setup took 90 minutes and saves maybe 5 hours per month, pretty good!

Ryze AI ($49/month): They promise "AI that watches your ad campaigns and gives advice." What you get: alerts when performance drops, and a chatbot that gives obvious advice. Is your CTR down? "Try improving your ad copy or targeting." Unsubscribed after the trial

AI tools save time at the margins, not the fundamentals

they make a small job slightly faster. They don't eliminate 4 hours of work

the real time-saver was hiring a part-time person to do data entry and basic copywriting ($1,200/month)

that moved the needle way more than all six tools combined. But that's the honest conversation nobody has because there's no commission on recommending hiring someone

Every founder and marketer needs to set up AI workflows in 2026.

Not optional anymore.

The people who figure this out first are going to have an absurd advantage over everyone else.

I recorded a full walkthrough of the setup I use to run most of my marketing.

Ads, SEO, emails, community, thumbnails, dashboards. I'll show you how all of it works and how you can set it up yourself.