A top CMO reveals how AI is going to change sales and marketing across every company within 12 months

• AI is going to have a huge impact on the workforce, making many workers more productive.
• The chief marketing officer at Twilio says AI will soon be in use in sales and marketing at every company.
• The tech can be used both to boost productivity, and to make ads more effective.

There are many parts of the business world where AI is going to have a huge impact, but sales and marketing is one of the big ones.

A McKinsey report recently found that 75% of the value that generative AI use cases could deliver falls across just four areas, including sales and marketing, customer operations, software engineering, and R&D. 

Joyce Kim, CMO of $12 billion tech company Twilio, described a world where marketers could create individualized ad campaigns, and where each potential customer receives a different message at a different time that's tailored to their needs and behaviors. To be sure, Twilio builds products that faciliate sales and marketing, but other CMOs agree that AI could supercharge those activities.

Kim's prediction: "In 12 months, call it next year this time, I really think every company, every marketing team, every sales team, this generative and predictive AI is going to be a core part of every tool that they use. I just cannot see technology in the next year not incorporating this capability.

You can watch the full conversation on LinkedIn and YouTube. Below are some lightly-edited highlights from the conversation:

The macro environment

Everybody has said, 'Are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession?' We have definitely seen businesses  trying to get more bang for their buck. When it comes to how they're going to get more out of the efforts that they're doing. A lot of marketing teams are seeing the phenomenon of, 'Hey, lower budgets, but still achieve more.'

The importance of quality data

A lot of marketing teams across the enterprise are used to having data analytics people pull a bunch of data, provide insights, and it takes days, most likely weeks, to gather all of that. And then we leverage that and build a campaign around it. Today, the best digital first companies are doing it in real time. It allows you to ingest a whole slew of data that's virtually impossible for a human being to take in and synthesize.

But the technology is there where you can pull out the right pieces of data so that you can build very, very specific journeys in the audiences. And if you take AI on top of that, where you can predict certain audiences, then you can generate certain messages. That's the thing that Twilio's CustomerAI is aiming to do.

The potential of pairing great data with AI

Imagine having a single person per customer for your business, not one person for all your customers. A true one-to-one relationship with AI. That's actually possible, because you can understand and know what every single customer is doing, what they're doing on the web, how they call in, why they call in, why don't they buy something, what do they respond to? There are so many signals that are harnessing all of that, leveraging AI to really make sure that you're not even personalizing, but individualizing your engagement with customers is actually possible.

How AI will be used in marketing

There's tremendous potential for what this can do in the way we work and how productive we are. You and I spoke about the first draft — not starting from a white sheet of paper. We forget how important it is to have something to work with.

One example is, we usually have to have industry experts in order to generate content that's appropriate for the banking industry or healthcare. Large language models and AI can do that now. Generative AI can take concepts and then really tailor it to a particular industry.

Imagine doing that across thousands of different sectors without hiring thousands of people.

The pace of change

We've crossed a chasm. We've talked about AI forever, right? This isn't a new concept. It's more that we've made that large leap forward and then the incremental steps that'll follow will happen faster than we think.

In 12 months, I really think for every company, every marketing team, every sales team, generative and predictive AI is going to be a core part of every tool that they use. I just cannot see technology in the next year not incorporating this capability. To me, the bigger question is, how is it all going to work together?