A monthly take on what’s new in AI — personal stories, opinions, and inspiration from Drift’s leadership team. This edition is written by Drift’s VP and Head of Marketing, Emily Singer.
What’s On My AI-Mind
To move forward with AI, we need to be educated on AI. From governments to universities to movie studios to newsrooms, people all over the world are determining how AI should be developed and utilized. It’s crucial that those decision makers—whether they be in boardrooms or Congressional halls—truly understand how AI works and how the technology will reshape our lives. After all, who could forget the cringe-worthy 2018 Congressional hearings in which Mark Zuckerberg was forced to explain the basic principles of the internet to our government’s leaders? We’re still in the dawn of AI, and it’s already changing how we work and interact with each other. It’s safe to assume that impact will only continue to grow, which means that we all have the responsibility to learn about and understand the technology because you can’t hold people accountable to policies you don’t understand.
Marketers, it’s your time to shine. As the world scrambles to figure out its AI action plan, marketers are uniquely positioned to establish themselves as the leaders who determine how their companies evolve and thrive in the age of AI. The buying journey is being reshaped at breakneck speed: Buyers are not engaging with a salesperson until the last 30% of their buying journey, which means that marketers are now responsible for orchestrating the experience up until that point.
But buyers’ expectations for that first 70% of the buying journey have also increased. They expect experiences that are uniquely personal and allow them to engage with the buying process at their own pace, on their own time, and in their own way. ABM is no longer the gold standard of personalization. Meeting today’s buyer expectations requires orchestrating experiences at the contact level and understanding what is important to them as an individual, not just to their account or company. AI is the only way to accomplish this level of individualization at scale, and it is creating both new opportunities and challenges for marketers to engage with buyers in an always-on, digital-first global marketplace.
AI is here, and the time to determine how the technology fits into our future is now. It won’t always be a perfect fit right away, but part of embracing AI is embracing experimentation. CMOs and marketing teams are perfectly positioned to be the proactive, informed champions of their company’s AI transformation.
AI lets marketers do what they do best. The best technological advancements give us the space and time to focus on what really matters to us. While we all have different definitions of ‘what matters,’ human connection—to the product, to the brand, to each other—will always sit at the center of marketing. Paradoxically, AI is a catalyst for more of these human connections. Not only does AI help marketers become more efficient by taking on manual and repetitive tasks, but it also uncovers important insights that give us a more profound understanding of our customers’ needs and generates suggestions based on data to inform more emotionally resonant campaigns.
AI will continue to transform marketing in ways we can’t yet imagine, but as that happens, the skill sets that are uniquely human—relationship building, creativity, humor, leadership, empathy—will become even more valuable.
GPT Made This for Me: Brainstorming an Opening Speech
As a summarization tool, GPT technology helps me streamline the writing process. I recently used ChatGPT to help me draft an opening speech for a virtual event: I asked ChatGPT to summarize the main themes from all of the event’s session abstracts and build opening remarks off of them. I then used this consolidation as inspiration for what I wanted to say. ChatGPT is really good at breaking huge amounts of information down to its essential points, which is incredibly helpful during the outlining phases of writing.
On a personal note, I still send out printed and hand-written Christmas cards every year. This year, I used a new printing service that required all my “send to” data for the envelope to be formatted in a specific table. I asked ChatGPT to take 250+ rows in Excel and reformat it for me. It completed what would have taken me hours in a matter of seconds.
The Single Best Thing I’ve Read About AI
I had the opportunity to listen to Geoff Colvin, former Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine, deliver a compelling keynote about AI’s impact on the future of humanity during a software technology conference back in 2015. It was largely based on his book, “Humans are Underrated,” which to this day, remains the single best thing I’ve read about AI.
