CMOs and marketing VPs should be thinking about how AI can impact every aspect of the marketing flywheel. For insight into how to do this, Kris Rudeegraap, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Sendoso, spoke with Chandar Pattabhiram, Chief Go-To-Market Officer at Workato.

Note: If this is the first time you've heard the title Chief GTM Officer, Chandar explained it as a "CMO+" position that brings harmony across multiple areas of the GTM function, from sales to field readiness to partnerships. His ultimate goal is to set sales up to win in the most productive and impactful way possible.

This talk was part of the AI Marketing Alliance, a network bringing B2B marketing leaders to the forefront of AI's practical marketing applications. If you're a marketing exec looking to shape the future of marketing for your company, check it out.

Read on to learn:

• Is it gen AI, or is it just machine learning?
• Using AI to build the marketing flywheel at scale
• How to justify budget for AI tools
• Navigating the psychological safety challenges of AI
• How to market your own AI tools
• The benefit of multimodal content
• The way you embrace AI now can set your company up for success

Watch the full conversation on-demand below, and keep reading for the major insights.

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Be clear that Chandar isn't talking about machine learning when he talks about AI. He's noticed that some companies refer to all AI as generative AI, but machine learning on its own is a different tool.

Machine learning has become more popular over the last 5-7 years and has the ability to find patterns in large volumes of data and then help users make decisions.

For example, machine learning algorithms are what's at work when you automate customer segmentation in your CRM. Machine learning is behind the chatbots you interact with when you visit a store site. And it's machine learning that takes all of your existing data and creates models that you can use to plan for the future.

Generative AI, on the other hand, is when the model actually creates new data based on existing data it's been fed. ChatGPT is the most well-known large language model (LLM); you can ask it a question or give it a prompt, and it will generate responses based on what it already knows. While gen AI builds on machine learning, they're not interchangeable.

Chandar recently joined the Workato team, and he brings his professional experience from companies like Marketo, Freshworks, IBM, as well as his expertise from serving on the Board of Directors for multiple brands including Blueshift, an AI-based consumer engagement platform.

When he's thinking about AI operationally, he starts with the flywheel of marketing, which places customers at the center of the model and focuses on delivering the best customer experience at all turns.

Broadly speaking, we know we want to drive more pipeline and revenue while we increase productivity and free ourselves up for more creative tasks. With the flywheel in mind, how do we leverage AI to do that?

Here are actionable things marketers can do across the life cycle to impact the marketing flywheel:

Writing and brand messaging

Using AI for copywriting and editing tasks is table stakes at this point. We're all probably aware we can use AI for blog posts and other standard content assets. You can also use AI to help brainstorm and draft brand messaging.

Chandar recently worked with a well-known VC firm on their positioning. The company wanted to drive ToFU awareness, and Chandar developed a one-page document that he then fed to ChatGPT along with the infamous 1997 Apple commercial, Think Different.

Chandar tasked ChatGPT with producing something similar for the firm, and what the LLM came back with in just a few seconds was shocking. While an agency could have been 5-10% better in terms of the first results, AI is reducing what Chandar calls the "latency loop" on these tasks. You don't have to wait for anything; the AI tool gives you what you want immediately, and then you can iterate from there.

Following up with known visitors

Once a person is known in the Workato database, if they visit the site and then leave, that creates a triggering event in the system. Based on the person and their industry, ChatGPT can create personalized content and then send it to the SDR so they can follow up within a few minutes of the visit.

Before this, the latency loop was in play. It might take a day to flag the presence of that known visitor. Then someone had to create a personalized follow-up, and that might take another day. Now, within just a few minutes, that follow-up happens—with great results. Workato has seen a 60% increase in open rates and a 40% in conversion rates just based on contextualized personalization in its messaging.

Repurposing content

Many B2B companies struggle with turning their existing event content into videos, blogs, and other repurposed content they can use after the event or session ends. Marketers have always known that these were assets that could empower the sales team, but it wasn't easy to make it happen.

Now, with tools like Goldcast Content Lab, you can upload a video and immediately get multimodal campaign assets like video snippets, blog post drafts, social media posts, and other branded content.

While you'll still need a human to review and refine the content, the latency loop is dramatically reduced. The speed at which we can execute on marketing tasks with the help of AI is pretty remarkable!

Using AI to increase customer conversions

At Sendoso, Kris's team is using AI to improve the customer experience. They've used AI to help customers write better handwritten notes or more personalized printed notes to go with the gifts they're ordering. They're also now leaning on AI to research the best gift to send to people via the right channel.

Democratize customer storytelling

You may have a lot of customer case studies, but most marketers don't have the bandwidth to capture every single case study, send it to the sales team, and be sure that you're getting the most value out of them.

AI can change that. Workato is exploring a tool that takes press releases, customer videos, and other types of case studies and then creates a succinct, slide version you can share with your sales team. This is game-changing. Being able to take a mountain of customer stories and walk away with something meaningful and digestible is powerful and dramatically impacts productivity.

Of course it would be nice if we could just try all of the shiniest, newest AI tools but we know that budgets don't quite work like that.

If you're wondering how to allocate budget or make the case for a certain AI tool, first identify what will truly produce revenue and efficiency gains for your team. It takes research and some experimentation to discern the noise from the truth.

At Sendoso, the executive team is currently working to do just that. Kris asked everyone to come up with an AI wish list of sorts—the tools they would want if budget were not an issue. Then, each person presents the AI tools they've found and their features. This has helped them unearth tools that can solve actual business challenges that they weren't previously aware of.

Consider the stack consolidation you can achieve by adopting a new AI tool. Is your stack optimized right now? Will you add complexity to your stack with new AI, or will you simplify and be able to remove some things?

Chandar urges everyone to consider whether the tool will create 5x improvement compared to your current processes. And don't forget to distinguish between machine learning and gen AI. Always be wary of anything that's just repackaged machine learning; that likely won't drive a ton of improvement.

The balance every marketer has to play with here is adding complexity to your tech stack with tools that can incrementally change the game and reduce latency.

Beyond budget issues, psychological safety is a big challenge when it comes to AI adoption. We're seeing things done that we've never seen before, and processes are being entirely upended. You may be wondering, "Am I going to be replaced? Will I be redundant soon?"

First, remember that right now, this is augmented intelligence. Humans are still needed, and your expertise is invaluable and can't be replicated.

Second, take an altruistic POV. This helps you take your existing investment in your team and free them up to do more. No one has infinite bandwidth, and we've all been a bottleneck from time to time. The AI is actually freeing you up to do higher-judgment activities and be more creative, which is a good thing!

If you've come out with a gen AI tool, you might be wondering how to talk about it in a compelling way. Sendoso has been transparent about how AI can help end users and why they've made these changes—to increase productivity and conversion for their customers.

Be very clear about the value to your customer, and they're likely to be open to it.

Sendoso has also found success with calling gen AI tools "AI-enhanced" so that people understand a human touch is still needed. That seems to have contributed to a positive reception of the company's AI tools so far.

At Goldcast, we employ a similar approach, labeling our Content Lab as "AI-powered" for the exact same reason.

Speaking of Content Lab, multimodal content—which integrates video, text, and audio into a single piece of content—is easier than ever to create, thanks to AI.

Multimodal campaigns create harmony throughout each asset. When you have a writer working on a blog, and a video person working on your video, and someone else working on social media, things can feel disjointed.

With Content Lab, you take one video and then create discrete assets that have a connective tissue joining all of them.

Again, you still need a human in the mix to shape things up, but you can get going much faster than before! Plus, with multimodal, you meet your audience the way they want to be met. You satisfy your readers, your listeners, your visual folks, and anyone in between.

If you want to see it for yourself, we're offering a two-week trial of Content Lab below. Click to get started and start churning out your own multimodal campaigns!

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Right now, AI tools are more of our copilots. However, there may come a time when AI truly does augment the workforce. The way that marketing leaders embrace AI and build the appropriate data foundation now will matter when the field begins to significantly change.

If you're looking for a community that you can learn, share, and grow with as we figure out AI together, consider joining the AI Marketing Alliance. Learn more below.

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