How to stand out in a sea of AI-driven marketing? Use it for support at scale, but never lose that human at the steering wheel. Great POV on balancing the use of AI in marketing from our Co-Founder, Josh Rosenheck. #genAI #SMSmarketing #marketers #AIagent
What happens when your customers start to feel like they’re talking to a chatbot instead of a brand? A big challenge for marketers in 2025 will be balancing the power of AI with the need for authenticity. What tasks can be outsourced to AI, and what requires the human touch? And how do we separate hype from true value? Customers crave genuine, human interaction. Relying too heavily on AI risks losing the personal touch. If you sound like a chatbot, customers will treat you like one. This is similar to the arc we saw with email marketing, blind to the channel itself as we have outsourced much of the job to automation. We founded Community.com in 2019 (throwback photos below) to create a channel grounded in trust – where the audiences opt in because they truly want to be there. Sparking genuine engagement – the kind that inspires audiences to take action – is still the cornerstone of our business. Maintaining authenticity, with a human at the steering wheel, remains critical to successful marketing. SMS is an incredibly powerful channel, but if it becomes too transactional people will ignore it… just like they do the vast volume of emails. The key to successful SMS marketing lies in the fact that your audience can feel the human on the other end. Take McDonald's as an example. They recently texted their audience a picture of Big Mac sauce with a fun question: “What should I try this with…fries, nuggets, or a QPC?” I replied with “fries for sure” and minutes later, got a photo from the person running the account of them holding a fry next to an open cup of sauce saying, “thx, fries was a great idea. so GOOD. i CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU TO TRY. (ignore the mess on my desk pls).” It felt personal, even though they were replying at scale. We’ve had a lot of success integrating AI into Community (such as with supporting summarization, content co-piloting, and response grouping) – but we’ve purposefully done it in ways that adds value without losing audience trust. We work with our customers to avoid one-way conversations that sound like a bot and drive meaningful data collection opportunities. We stand out by enabling brands to blend AI-enhanced tools with human-driven engagement, ensuring every interaction is genuine and meaningful. AI has a place – but it’s a balance marketers must strike carefully. #AI #genAI #marketing #martech #AIagent #customerengagement #SMSmarketing