If AI can now execute an entire marketing campaign from a single prompt, what is the new primary function of a marketing leader?
While agility often requires adapting to new tools, it can also require fundamentally rethinking the operating model of a marketing organization. It’s about reallocating your most valuable resource—your team’s strategic thinking—to where it can have the greatest impact.
Today, we’re going to talk about the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an autonomous agent. We’ll 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.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome back to the show, Jamie Domenici, CMO at Klaviyo.
About Jamie Domenici
Jamie Domenici is Chief Marketing Officer at Klaviyo, the only CRM built for consumer brands. She has served as the Chief Marketing Officer since August 2023. With more than 20 years of experience in SaaS Marketing, Jamie has become a pioneer in SMB Marketing and a champion for small businesses. Prior to Klaviyo, Jamie served as the CMO of GoTo, a provider of SaaS and cloud- based remote work tools for collaboration and IT management, and before that, she held various marketing leadership positions at Salesforce for over ten years. Jamie holds a B.A. in International Relations from California State University, Chico. Jamie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters.
Jamie Domenici on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdomenici/
Resources
Klaviyo: https://www.klaviyo.com
The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703
Drive your customers to new horizons at the premier retail event of the year for Retail and Brand marketers. Learn more at CRMC 2026, June 1-3. https://aglbrnd.co/r/d15ec37a537c0d74
We’re proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 – Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658
Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873f
Don’t miss We Make Future – the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2
The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1
Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
Don’t miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba
Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.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. https://www.missinglink.company
Transcript
Greg Kihlstrtöm: 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.
To discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome back to the show Jamie Domenici, CMO at Klaviyo. Jamie, welcome back to the show.
Jamie Domenici: Hi, thanks for having me.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, always great to talk with you and looking forward to, to talking about this with you. Before we dive in for those that didn’t catch your, the last episode you’re on, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Klaviyo?
Jamie Domenici: Well, I mean, first of all, come on guys, you gotta tune in, but…
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Of course, of course. Thank you, thank you.
Jamie Domenici: Yeah. I’m 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 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, and every interaction that you have with them.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, great, great. So, yeah, let’s, let’s dive in here and start, I want to start by talking about the, really the shift to marketing strategy and certainly as a, as a CMO, you’re, you’re probably feeling this from that perspective as well as from, you know, Klaviyo as a, 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 what does this practically mean for how a CMO or or marketing leader should structure their team and define roles over the next, you know, you know, 18 to 24 months?
Jamie Domenici: 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. Right. 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, 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 buried 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 and 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.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: 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, and I think, to what you’re saying, marketing teams have been kind of stuck doing that instead of focusing on, on more strategic stuff. And so, you know, along comes AI and, and certainly there’s a ton of hype around AI, just like there’s been hype around a lot of things. But what I’ve, what I’m seeing is that there also is a lot of tangible value to be derived from these things. Where are, where are you seeing, you know, this some of this tangible value being, you know, being gotten from some of the, some of the AI capabilities versus, you know, what what are maybe some use cases that are still a little more aspirational?
Jamie Domenici: Well, I definitely think it’s a journey. I think some of the areas, I let me talk to you about Klaviyo in particular. At 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, you know, took up most of our time in the old days. Right. 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.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: 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 of marketing, which can take up, 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, you know, potential challenges or, or, or even even things to think through. What what are you seeing there? You know, what what where does the complexity, you know, kind of start, I guess, with some of this stuff?
Jamie Domenici: Well, I think right now for most marketers, it’s just the unknown is is step one, right? 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, right? You are using a 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? So like what you were just 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 on, 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 person or 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, you know, journey.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: You know that moment when marketing wants a landing page, design mucks it up, and engineering says, yeah, we’ll get to it. Thousands of businesses from early stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer where changes take minutes instead of days. Framer is a website builder that works like your team’s favorite design tool with real-time collaboration, a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO, and advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing. Your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your .com from day one. Changes to your Framer site go live to the web in seconds with one click without help from engineering. Framer’s also an enterprise solution, giving brands like Perplexity, Miro, and Mixpanel the confidence they need to build their websites in Framer. Learn how you can get more out of your .com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/agile for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That’s framer.com/agile for 30% off. framer.com/agile. Rules and restrictions may apply.
One thing I know that a lot of brands, and rightfully so, take pride themselves on, is maintaining that that brand voice, that that human-centric voice as well. And so, you know, I know, you know, some, some marketers I’ve talked with, there there is a bit of trepidation as far as, okay, if I send the campaign to the agent, you know, are we going to be able to maintain that? So how do you, how do you do that at scale and, and in in some cases maintain the, the right level of human oversight, but also be able to do stuff at scale, right? That’s still keeps brand voice.
Jamie Domenici: Well, as a marketer, like this is our most treasured thing, our identity, right? Our company 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 I I like to say a little different. I think that, you know, humans have to be the conductor and AI is the 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, you know, center of what’s going on. And so they really need to have, the right visibility, the right controls and the right 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%, will we really GA. So we’re almost there, which is exciting. Yeah. But I would say it’s also creating a new product development cycle, right? Where the, the goal is like there’s no exceptions to the rule. so the technology has to be great, the out, the outputs have to be great, the models have to be great, and we need to make sure that we have the right guard rails in place so that that human, that conductor can run their orchestra. Right?
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, yeah, no, I I love that. I I love that metaphor there. I think that’s really powerful. And I I think it’s also just because we’re, I know I’ve seen so much of the AI slop out there and and even, even, let’s call it well inten 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 I truly believe that that will be transformational when it’s, you know, when it’s achieved, so, yeah.
Jamie Domenici: Well, and I 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 reel? And she’s like, mom, that’s AI. I’m like, oh shoot, I didn’t know that. So there’s some 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. Yeah. So keeping that authenticity is really matters. So when we go back, you know, one thing you’d ask me, where do we think AI’s not there yet? And I I I think it’s that authent 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. So 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 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.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, yeah. Well, and, 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, and I think one of the, one of the things that really struck me from all the, the data from last holiday season was just how much consumers are using AI, not 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, you know, how how this is being used and and how consumers want to use it maybe?
Jamie Domenici: I would say two things. Like one, as I mentioned, value authenticity. So one out of five customers, they’re like, that’s not me, that’s not relevant, and then they’re that’s that really is a negative impact on your brand. two, 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 never, we didn’t have to work on our LLM strategy two years ago. but now that’s people are researching and buying and and commerce is 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 Klaviyo, we call it omni-channel 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 the, you know, 100 years ago and also now in this new agentic world.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, well, and and to to your what you’re saying, I mean, again, the the old channels don’t go away. I mean, you know, I I remember, you know, print was dead and TV ads were dead and, you know, everything, you know, I I think it’s mostly for dramatic effect, but no nothing actually goes away, it just, you know, sometimes evolves, but it, we just keep adding more things. And so, I guess, does AI, you know, when when we’re talking about measuring success and and KPIs, like does AI change things there? Are there, are there new metrics of success that that CMOs should be paying attention to? You know, what what what changes, I guess?
Jamie Domenici: Gone are the days of like, you know, open rates and click rates. I think they are kind of obsolete. They’re relevant, but more a little bit more obsolete. And I think great CMOs are looking at, CLV, like, you know, 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. Yeah. 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.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: 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 it’s kind of a cliché, but just because it’s a cliché doesn’t make it not, needed, let’s say. When we start talking about all these different channels, 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 or I guess does it change the the skills needed for marketers or just the the understanding? You know, what I guess what does change there in in this world where things like customer lifetime value and omni-channel are becoming more and more prevalent?
Jamie Domenici: I think the skills over the next 18 months that we need in marketing org are 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 higher premium are actually the human-to-human interaction. So if you’re doing 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.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Right, right. And I mean it also sounds to me, at least it sounds a little more a more technical, yes, but also more strategic, right? I mean, you’re Yeah. And and probably more end-to-end, right, as well.
Jamie Domenici: Yeah, I’ll give you an example from my own org. We’re our 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 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, we 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, an internal slack, and it just fires directly, so that I no longer, but that used to take like three people, you know, 8 to 15 hours per feature. And now, 100% automated. So I just have one person who makes sure it’s in online, aligned with the brand, the tone, the voice, etcetera, and they’re just validating. Like, completely changed the way we work. yeah. So, and that person’s not technical. He is, he is, he is handy, he can use chat code, Right. But he has built this, it works, and now he his role is just simplified, but strategic.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: 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. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
Jamie Domenici: 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 our agent.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Another acronym, right?
Jamie Domenici: I was like, what? I’ve never even heard of that. but so I’ve 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. So I think I don’t think it will be a full year, but I think that will be the next level of conversation. That will be level three, you know.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Nice, nice, love it. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll have to have you back on and 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?
Jamie Domenici: 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.
