What is AI in marketing?

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Artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing uses AI-based technologies to launch, scale, and optimize your marketing. And given that marketing and customer service are deeply intertwined, AI in marketing also means serving customers better and more quickly with AI that answers questions and completes support tasks in ways that feel human and on brand.

AI in marketing is how B2C brands can keep up with consumer demand to personalize thousands or even millions of brand interactions. Working with AI is a novel way to accelerate this process, from ideation to execution to optimization.

What are the benefits of using AI in marketing?

• AI extracts strategic insights from large datasets. AI excels at analyzing customer data to uncover patterns and trends that would be difficult to identify manually. It can sift through millions of data points, predict future customer behaviors, and proactively recommend new growth opportunities—all insights that can drive revenue for your business.
• AI delivers personalization at scale. According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, 74% of consumers expect more personalized experiences from B2C brands. But it’s impossible to manually create individualized content for thousands of customers. With AI, you can easily (and quickly) crunch data and tailor your product recommendations, content, and offers to the behaviors and preferences of every customer.
• AI makes it easier for teams to do more with less. AI can draft and execute full strategies based on a brand’s website and customer data, from forms to flows and campaigns—all fully designed and ready to go live.
• AI reaches new customers and nurtures existing ones faster. AI can help your brand identify high-value audiences who resemble your best current customers. It can also pull in the latest industry, competitive, market, and holiday trends to identify existing customers who are most likely to buy again.
• AI optimizes performance on autopilot. AI tracks trends, runs continuous tests, and automatically refines your targeting and messaging so you’re always increasing the likelihood that every dollar you spend results in profitable returns. Whether you want to determine the best time to send emails or automatically select winning campaign versions for each subscriber, you can do all of it with AI.

How are marketing teams using AI?

Marketing teams are using AI to create strategies and content, analyze data, and run continuous tests at a scale that was previously impossible. Here are a few specific ways you can make the most of AI to increase revenue with fewer resources:

• Start marketing strategies from scratch. Agentic AI can launch a marketing strategy in minutes by ingesting customer and brand data that reflects real events.
• Auto-create cohesive omnichannel messaging. Agentic AI that’s trained on your brand voice and storefront can write and design personalized, cohesive marketing experiences across email, SMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, and more. From forms to flows to campaigns, all you need to do is review and launch in one click.
• Communicate on the right channels. AI-powered channel affinity uses historical data to predict which channel each individual subscriber is most likely to engage on next.
• Determine the best send times. Similarly, AI can analyze each subscriber’s engagement patterns and send your messages based on when people are most likely to interact with them.
• Scale always-on testing and optimization. AI that runs on autopilot is better equipped to deal with the volume of tests required to optimize your campaigns. It’s also better at personalizing winning results based on customer data.
• Respond to customer reviews and inquiries faster. AI can generate brand-appropriate and personalized review responses without templates or manual work. It can also resolve common customer inquiries, like return initiations and product questions, without getting a human involved—then escalate to a human when necessary.
• Use predictive analytics to make better decisions. Rather than manually cataloging customer order dates and lifetime value in a spreadsheet and trying to guess the next one, use AI to predict a customer’s next order date, LTV, churn risk, and more, then send marketing messages accordingly.

When it’s pulling from the right data sources and the algorithm is vetted by actual marketing experts, AI can build marketing strategies, launch fully designed campaigns, run automations, and respond to customers—no briefs required. 

How to track the effectiveness of your AI marketing efforts

Implementing AI is one thing, but measuring its impact is how you prove its value. To truly understand if your AI investments are paying off:

• Before you start using AI, set benchmarks for key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion rates, revenue per recipient, etc. Consider this your pre-AI snapshot of your marketing efforts.
• Consider using advanced, flexible attribution models to understand how each touchpoint influences customer decisions across channels. This will give you a nuanced, channel-specific snapshot of how AI is working for you.
• Identify which tasks you’ll perform with AI, and track how long they take. Track those same tasks after you start using AI to measure your productivity gains.
• If you’re using predictive analytics, run A/B tests to understand whether they lead to higher conversions. Use auto monitors to track important metrics and get alerts for dips in performance.

The challenges of using AI in marketing—and how to solve them

• Data quality and integration: AI systems are only as good as the data they’re trained on. According to Klaviyo’s recent AI trends report, 28% of ecommerce marketers are concerned about the trustworthiness of the data AI is based on. Many B2C brands, meanwhile, struggle with fragmented customer data spread across multiple platforms. When systems are integrated or, better yet, under one roof, it’s easier for AI to analyze and leverage your data effectively and accurately.
• Ethical data usage and privacy concerns: AI amplifies data privacy concerns. Even before AI, marketers needed to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), but now they also need to address specific AI risks. Prioritize AI solutions that guarantee data isolation, ensuring your customer data is used solely for your business’s benefit and not to inadvertently train broader models that could inform competitor strategies. Transparency about data use, robust security, and the mitigation of inherent biases in AI outputs are essential for building and maintaining customer trust.
• Tool integration and implementation: Many smaller B2C marketing teams lack the technical expertise to properly implement and optimize AI tools. Choose a tool built specifically for marketers that not only is easy to use, but also integrates with your existing tech stack. 
• Data retention timespan limitations: Several marketing platforms retain customer data for only 30 days to 18 months. With this limitation, you won’t be able to understand how customer preferences change over time. Consider choosing a platform that offers unlimited data retention without additional costs.
• Change management: New AI tools means new processes, which can take time to implement and perfect. Invest in training your team and give them enough time to get used to it, so that AI is enhancing their human roles.

How to get started with AI as a marketer

The right data and marketing automation platform can help you overcome some of the challenges of AI while generating revenue with it a lot more quickly. 

Klaviyo, the only CRM built for B2C, brings your marketing, service, and data infrastructure into one place, so your marketing AI is working from a single source of truth.

Under the hood, Klaviyo AI (K:AI) powers built-in agents that use your real-time customer profile data to plan and launch marketing, personalize every send, and resolve customer requests—on one platform, with humans in the loop. Here’s how they work:

• K:AI Marketing Agent: internal-facing AI that helps your team start fast, optimize results, and grow revenue—without prompting and with full control
• K:AI Customer Agent: customer-facing AI that answers questions and completes support tasks in a way that feels human and on brand*

*K:AI agents are currently available in English. Additional languages will be available in 2026.