Vision #3 - Beyond the noise: AI’s role in marketing

Hello, Founders and Marketers!

Happy Tuesday 👋🏼 This is your weekly dose of insights at the intersection of AI and marketing. In this issue, we’ve got the latest AI×marketing news, a quick launch update, a powerful marketing tactic, some cool experiments I’ve been tinkering with, and a personal take on where marketing stands today. Let’s dive in!

What’s New in AI & Marketing (from last week)

Here are 3 noteworthy AI-in-marketing news updates from the past week:

1. Cloudflare now charges AI bots: Cloudflare is blocking AI bots by default and launched a “Pay Per Crawl” marketplace, letting publishers charge AI companies for every crawl. This protects your content and ensures fair value exchange, meaning your website data can now generate revenue instead of being used for free!

2. Collectively and Jellyfish launched Chorus, an AI tool showing how LLMs (like Gemini or LLaMA) perceive your brand compared to competitors. It helps marketers understand how algorithms “see” their brand and suggests influencer content to improve that perception, ensuring your brand ranks better in AI-driven recommendations.

3. SEO firm Previsible acquired Internet Marketing Ninjas to merge classic SEO expertise with AI-driven strategies. As Google and ChatGPT reshape search, this signals the shift to AI-powered SEO, helping brands future-proof their search visibility and authority in the evolving AI-first search landscape.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Elma by Questera - our brand new AI Email Lifecycle Marketing Agent!  Elma basically acts like your personal email strategist, writing, optimizing, and automating entire email campaigns in minutes with just simple prompts. (Shameless plug: if you’re curious, we’re live on Product Hunt today so go hit that upvote button!)

Marketing Tactic of the Week: Lifecycle Marketing

One tactic smart marketing teams are doubling down on is lifecycle marketing - engaging customers with the right message at each stage of their journey (onboarding, activation, retention, etc.). It’s not a new idea, but what’s exciting is how AI can supercharge it now. For example, AI can analyze your user data to find the most valuable segments and predict exactly when someone’s about to drop off. Fun fact: roughly 20% of customers drive 80% of future revenue for a business, so identifying and nurturing those high-value users is gold. Using AI, you can trigger hyper-personalized emails or offers at just the right moments, think a timely discount before a user lapses, or a perfectly timed upsell suggestion. Your users will feel like you totally get them, and your metrics will thank you.

Experiments I Tried (and you should too)

As always, I’ve been playing around with new ideas. Here are a few recent marketing experiments I ran that showed promising results, you might want to try these yourself:

• Keep your captions clear and keyword-focused, skip the vague stuff and say exactly what your post’s about. Add alt-text to every post (yes, every one). Use simple text overlays on Reels and images, titles, hooks, or searchable phrases work great. Refresh your bio with relevant keywords. And do a quick Google Trends check to see what people are actually searching for.

• In-person events work well when they match your audience, GTM strategy, and team strengths. Treat them like any other marketing channel, check fit, ROI, and your capacity to execute. Think of events as full campaigns: creative, content, and follow-up matter. Focus on events that balance reach (coverage) and relevance (composition). Events flop when they're forced, too salesy, or handled by the wrong people. Plan wisely.

(If you decide to try any of these experiments, let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear if you get similar results.)

My Take on the Current Marketing Landscape

Lately, the marketing world feels like a rollercoaster. On one hand, every week there’s a headline about a “revolutionary” AI breakthrough that will change marketing forever. On the other hand, we’re immediately hit with reality checks - “actually, most AI projects fail” or “maybe we’re hyping this too much.” It’s a bit of hype whiplash: we’re told AI will do everything, and in the next breath we’re told it can’t do anything reliably. So if you’re feeling both excited and skeptical, you’re not alone - I am right there with you.

Here’s how I see it: AI isn’t a magic wand, but it’s also not just smoke and mirrors. In practice, AI is already augmenting marketing in powerful ways – from automating grunt work to uncovering insights in data to personalizing at scale – and those who use it thoughtfully are reaping real benefits. But AI won’t replace having a smart strategy, knowing your customer, and good old creative marketing intuition. The best results I’ve seen come when you blend human creativity and judgment with AI’s efficiency and scale.

So despite the noise, I’m optimistic. The marketing teams that cut through the hype and leverage AI where it truly adds value are pulling ahead. My plan: keep experimenting, stay pragmatic about what works versus what doesn’t, and continue focusing on delivering real value to customers. At the end of the day, marketing is still about people - AI is just a new tool to help us connect with them in smarter ways.

That’s a wrap for this week’s newsletter! 🙌🏼 As always, reply here and let me know your thoughts – what news or experiments caught your eye, or how you’re navigating this crazy AI-marketing landscape. Until next time, stay creative and stay curious!