#539: Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Supplier Voices | Why Hightouch Thinks AI Should Transform Marketing Workflows, Not Just Campaigns

When Anthony Chiulli talks with lifecycle marketing teams, he rarely hears marketers having a shortage of campaign ideas. Instead, he hears about the campaigns that never get the chance to launch. 

According to the Product Marketing leader for lifecycle at Hightouch, marketers don't struggle with creativity. They struggle with the lengthy workflows, approvals, and handoffs required to turn ideas into customer experiences. 

"The workflow itself was the problem. ," Chiulli said. 

As an agentic marketing and customer data platform (CDP), Hightouch helps organizations activate customer data to power personalized marketing across channels. After more than 16 years in marketing technology, Chiulli believes AI represents an opportunity not simply to create marketing faster, but to fundamentally change how marketing gets done end-to-end. 

"What's different this time is the pace," he said. "AI is innovating so quickly and changing so rapidly that it's forcing change at an unprecedented rate." 

Transcript

Welcome And What To Expect

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Supplier Voices, the Loyalty360 podcast where we speak with the innovators, technology providers, and solution partners helping brands create more meaningful customer experiences and stronger loyalty strategies. In today's episode, we're joined by Anthony Chulli, Product Marketing and AI at HighTouch. With nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing technology space, Anthony has witnessed countless waves of innovation. Today he'll share why the current AI revolution is fundamentally different, how organizations can overcome the barriers that prevent great marketing ideas from reaching customers, and why the future of marketing may be centered around managing intelligent AI agents. We'll also explore how AI is transforming life cycle marketing workflows and examine the opportunities this creates for loyalty and CRM teams looking to deliver more personalized, efficient, and impactful customer experiences. Welcome, Anthony. It's great to have you here. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

I'm good, Sam. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, wonderful.

What HighTouch Does For Brands

SPEAKER_00 1:09

To start, would you mind giving us a brief overview of HighTouch and the industries that HighTouch supports?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Sure, sure. Yeah. So HighTouch is uh is an agentic marketing and customer data platform or CDP, as most people uh uh most people recognize. Uh and what our goal is is really just to help companies activate their data right from their warehouse to power personalized marketing workflows across their business. Um we work with some of the largest brands in the world across industries like media and entertainment, retail, travel, finserv, qsr, uh brands like Domino's, PetSmart, Solomon, DraftKings, DoorDash, and more. Um, so yeah, we're we're really excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Wonderful. Yeah, we're excited to have you. Um thanks for the the overview of of HighTouch. And then uh next, would you mind uh telling us a little bit about yourself and your role at HighTouch and then what brought you to HighTouch?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating story. So I kind of started my career in Martech um many years ago. I won't date myself, uh, at a company called Return Path. They were kind of this pioneer in the email deliverability space. And that's where I kind of cut my teeth, if you will, in Martech and have been in Martech ever since. Um I've worked with or worked at companies like Salesforce Marketing Cloud after the exact target acquisition, um, Iterable, which is a modern marketing ESP, and then most recently Cordial before joining HighTouch. Um and so when I joined High Touch, it was an opportunity through uh a friend of mine, Alec Hossey, uh, who's here at High Touch that leads our AI division, who I've known in this space. Uh, and there was a role for actually leading GoToMarket for our AI decisioning or our one-on-one personalization at scale feature. Um, so I joined, it'll be a year ago next month in August. It's been an awesome place to be.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Wonderful. Well, yeah, congratulations on your upcoming, uh, upcoming anniversary next month. Um, and so you've spent uh you know 16 years in the email and Martech world. Uh with uh that time in the industry, you've seen a lot of uh, you know, AI will change everything

Why This AI Wave Feels Different

SPEAKER_00 3:15

moments. Uh they've come and gone. What feels genuinely different about what's happening right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Oh man. Um yeah, I you know, I think like as I look back over my career, there's been um, you know, these like macro trends, these kind of like hype cycles, I call them, about like journey builders or these big marketing suites or big data. Uh, and they've all had their moments. Um, and typically those are like long-tail types of trends that um, you know, they hit and then they take a long time for the market to actually catch up and adopt. Um man, it's a it's a super exciting time to be in in in life cycle marketing and marketing in general. I I think AI is unlike anything that we've ever seen before. I think all of us have our own personal stories about hey, how AI is infected or impacted our own lives, even beyond our professional world, right? Like AI just in your day-to-day or your family dynamics or how you plan recipes or or trips or things like that. I just think that it's unlocked this massive new wave of opportunity, both on the practitioner side of how they go about their day-to-day jobs, uh, whether it's CRM or lifecycle or loyalty or retention, as well as on the other side with with businesses, with with vendors, uh, and creating and innovating new solutions and new ways to power uh workflows and and and uh and marketing technology. So I think what's different this time is is like the pace. Like AI is just innovating so quickly and changing so so rapidly that it's forcing change at an unprecedented rate. It's exciting. It's also a bit daunting as well. Um, but I just think that this is an inflection point for all of us where it'll be like the iPhone moment. It's gonna be life before AI and then life after AI.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah, I think uh probably uh exciting and daunting are probably the two best adjectives you can you can have to describe it. Um so you and your team, you you talk to hundreds of marketing teams every

The Campaign Workflow Bottleneck

SPEAKER_00 5:16

year. What's the one thing that you keep hearing over and over, regardless of the size of the company or the industry that they're in?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Yeah, and I think you know, part of part of the beauty of being in product marketing is you do have the opportunity to kind of be client-facing and sit on calls and listen to customer calls and engage with sales on prospect calls. And at least for me and in my domain and focusing on go to market for some of our agency products is at least on the lifecycle marketing side, as well as the paid side, the performance team, it still takes quite a bit of steps and handoffs and interdependencies to launch a single campaign, right? So if you think about you're a marketer, maybe you're a loyalty marketer and you have an idea for a campaign. Typically what that looks like in a TLDR format is you have an idea, you write a brief, and then you pass it off to your content team to write and copyright, or your creative team to design assets. Uh, and then your design team to actually design and and code the email. And then it's got to go through legal reviews and content reviews. And so there's this manual week-long process that typically a campaign has to go through to actually get out the door. Um, and so that is one of the big problem spaces that we've recently tried to, high touch has tried to solve for marketers is kind of reinventing the way that marketing is done using agents. And we believe marketers should kind of be uh managers of agentic systems and elevate their role to be more strategic versus having to kind of be in that manual week-long process to do their job. Um, so that's that's kind of one of the things that we keep hearing over and over, is just with the evolution of technologies and solutions, the workflow really hasn't changed largely in the past decade or so. And this is a ripe opportunity for AI to kind of rethink that that entire workflow top down.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah. Um, and so it sounds like uh the problem isn't ambition. Marketers, they have they have plenty of ideas. So why do you think most of those ideas never actually launch?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, I think it's just the process, right? Like uh, for example, one of the um uh uh one of the customers that we work with is full span health. They're in the healthcare and life sciences uh industry. And she talked about Lindsay, who had the privilege of meeting down at CRMC in Texas in early June. She talked about having this backlog of ideas, like sticky notes of ideas of campaigns that she and her team wanted to run. But just the process and the time that it would take to launch a single one of those was daunting. And so the workflow was the problem. The workflow was the bottleneck. And I think what that the impact of that is it it causes a lot of teams and a lot of marketers to shift their mindset of like what can be done versus what should be done, and kind of that ambition to launch new campaigns or optimize existing programs or respond to cultural moments that are happening in the space. Um, you know, think about like if the USA was to advance to the World Cup final, like every every marketer would want to do something around that, right? And being able to respond in speed to those moments and stay relevant, a lot of brands just don't have the means to do something like that because it just takes too long. Um, so that's that's kind of again, I think not the ambition isn't a problem. It's typically the workflow and the process and the resources to get it done.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah. Um, and so AI tools are changing how software developers work. Um, are there lessons marketers can apply from that?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

I think so. I think, I mean, if you zoom out and take a look at things like Claude Code or Cursor and what those have done, for instance, for like software engineers and how coding and how software development looks like today, um AI and and and specifically like Claude Code, for instance, acting as a co-pilot and acting as an agent to do the heavy lifting has completely transformed the way that that industry domain and that that role operates today. And it's because when you have this like deep layer of context, so for Claude Code, it's typically like you have tons of get GitHub repos that are set up and they're structured in a way that the agents can actually understand uh uh that information to then create an output for an app development or for uh um a web page or something of the like. And what that means is like you have years and years of data at your disposal, and agents are able to actually ingest, reason, and understand that quicker than any human can. And so it's again, it's it's a paradigm shift in the way that coding works. And I think for marketing, marketing is ripe for the same type of transformational opportunity. And and it's both on the paid side, so like performance teams and ad teams, as well as like loyalty or CRM teams on the lifecycle side. Um, and it's because of the the power of like the context and agent delegation is is extremely powerful in reinventing the way that those teams work.

The Marketing Context Layer Explained

SPEAKER_00 10:33

And uh you use the term marketing context layer quite uh quite a bit. Uh what do you mean by that and why is it the key to making AI actually work for the lifecycle team?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah, I think context is is a word that uh if you haven't heard it come up in in thought leadership or in materials or on LinkedIn, you you will. And it's because it's arguably the single most important factor and the quality and output of AI or agentix systems. So uh it's really what separates like the ability for agents to truly understand your customers, your business, and create on-brand, production-ready, high-quality outputs versus it looks good, but it would never, we would never send something like that, right? So, in my own experience, and maybe some of you guys can relate as well, if you've tried to create something for your brand or for your business and like a generic LLM like GPT or or or Claude, it can get close, but it's not going to be exactly what you would produce or meet the criteria and the quality standards of your brand. And so when you think about context and you apply it to marketing or or lifecycle marketing, you have so much data at your disposal, things like your digital asset manager, where you keep all of your assets, past campaign performance and templates from your ESP, all of your customer data, your business context that lives in your warehouse, even external market signals, right? When you can combine all of that into a context layer to inform agents and how to understand, reason, and then create, it's what separates like high quality production ready outputs and campaigns or even ads versus typically what you're seeing now is a lot of vendors like sprinkle AI optimization into their existing workflows. Really good at single specific things, not great at uh the entire end-to-end workflow.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

And then once agents have that context, what does the actual workflow look like?

From Goal To Launch In Minutes

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Um, and how does a campaign get made in this new world?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Yeah, so we talked about like, you know, at the beginning of this interview, the the what we call like the 50-step process, all the the dependencies and the and the handoffs and the teams that it takes to typically launch a campaign. When you have agents and context at play, it basically compresses that into a workflow that looks like something where, like, if you were a marketer at your company, you would start your Monday and you would have a goal that you would want to accomplish for like a campaign uh or your business. So maybe it could be like, I want to increase um uh win backs for lap subscribers, or I want to generate a new uh ad campaign uh for XYZ. So you have this goal as a business, and that's really the first step that you would prompt the agents to achieve. They would then take that prompt and layer on all the understanding of your business that's grounded in your brand to create a draft for like a campaign brief, right? And then it would provide you as the marketer the ability to refine, review that brief, edit it as needed. And once you have a solidified brief, you would then move into the content creation or the generation step. And this is where it's creating, for example, like email SMS or push messages that look and feel like your brand, that are using your product imagery, that are using your approved templates, that are using your typography and your color palettes. And so it's accelerating and compressing that traditional workflow into something where you can go from an idea to a campaign in literally minutes and be able to launch with speed.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah. And then uh I've heard you use the phrase every marketer should be a manager of agents. Um, what does that mean in practice? And uh does it require a totally different uh skill set?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Um I don't think it requires a totally different skill set. I think it's a different approach to how a marketer would do their job. Um, you know, when you're when you have this agentic capability, it's elevating your role to be more focused on like strategy and the outcomes that you want to drive and be more of like a high-level approver versus being in the weeds, stuck in the back and forth revision copies, back and forth review cycles, kind of manual work. And so I think perhaps in a way it's it's requires more of an elevated strategic way of thinking, which I don't think lacks, I don't think that skill is lacking in marketing right now. I just think it's a it's a shift based on this new capability of basically being a director of agents um um versus kind of being required, being being a necessity to kind of be in the day-to-day. So it's perhaps just a shift in the approach and the mindset versus developing a whole an entirely new set of skills.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

And then

Biggest Wins For CRM And Loyalty

SPEAKER_00 15:43

uh for loyalty and CRM marketers specifically, um, who are often managing complex long-running programs with uh a lot of moving parts, where does this model create the most immediate value?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, I think I think like one is is just speed, right? So uh another customer that we featured, um we we launched this product called Lifecycle Studio uh about two weeks ago, and it's and it's built for CRM loyalty lifecycle teams. Um ThumbTech is a is a customer of ours that we feature. They're out of SF. They're if you're not familiar with ThumbTech, they're like a uh a marketplace that basically connects like homeowners with service professionals. So if you want to do like a bathroom remodel or you wanted to, I don't know, fix your toilet or something, like you could you could create a project and it would connect you with licensed professionals. And what's really powerful about their story is it was taking them like four to six weeks to launch a single campaign. And they only had the capacity to do it for like two or three variables or or variations, excuse me, of a campaign. Now, with with Lifecycle Studio with the power of agentic marketing, they're able to launch campaigns in days and have like 20 permeations of a single campaign. So I think one immediate value is just accelerating speed and being able to launch campaigns faster than ever. Um, I think the others are uh just increase in again variables and increase in variation. So more permanentations, more ability to experiment without the potential proportional work to create additional experiences and experience. Um, and I think the third is is probably just like personalization in depth. And I think personalization is something that all marketers continue to strive for, to work towards. Um, but a lot of that is either like dynamic content and you're limited in a box in terms of what you can operate off of. When you give agents access to your brand, to your legal guidelines, to your product catalog, to your dam, to past campaigns, to all of your customer data. Agents are so much more better at like machine learning and reinforcement learning to be able to predict, Sam, what's the best offer I can give you? What's the best channel that you want to hear it on? When's the best time to send? Uh, what's do you prefer lifecycle images or product imagery? It's so much better at analyzing that at scale across millions of subscribers than any marketing team could do single-handedly.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

And uh, are there teams already operating this way today? Uh, if so, what are they seeing?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Yeah, I talked about like ThumbTax, a great example case study on our on our site at hightouch.com, uh, really going from like a traditional six-week campaign uh timeline to being able to launch in days, um, saving 30 hours per campaign versus what it used to take like uh before using agentix systems. Um, full span health is another great example. Again, uh different industry uh and in healthcare. But what's really cool about them is they sit on a ton of really important data, but also very sensitive data, right? Like you could imagine your healthcare, your uh health information is is great for personalization, but but quite sensitive. And so they're able to use like insights agents to surface audiences that uh they should target or that overlap with behavioral signals. And they've got like millions of subscribers that they do this with. And so being able to create and automate journeys uh without the engineering lift, without the manual uh necessities to orchestrate those, save them a ton of time and kind of created this really powerful personalization flywheel that they've they've formally like completely revamped the way that they operate and the way they engage with their customers using agentic marketing.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Great.

Where To Start With Agentic Marketing

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Uh what's your honest advice from a marketer who wants to start moving their program in this direction but doesn't know where to begin?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, I mean, I empathize with this question. I think maybe there's some folks listening to this that are like, I'm interested in AI, I just don't know where to start, or I'm getting AI mandates from my boss or my leadership team, and I and I don't know where to go to or or how to start. I would I would encourage everyone to just like think about think about one way that AI could optimize your day-to-day and just start. I think everyone's curious about AI. Likely folks are using AI in their own personal means. Um, AI is incredibly valuable and powerful to increase speed, increase quality, increase production, uh, and just scale programs beyond what any any marketer or marketing team can do. And that's not a slight to the team. I just think that like oftentimes there's this AI hype, and I think it's real. Everyone's talking about AI, it's everywhere. I get it, it can be overwhelming, but there are real powerful solutions that are occurring, real powerful use cases that businesses are driving. And I and I truly believe this is an inflection point. So if you if you want to stay ahead, if you kind of want to lean into this, to this to this moment in marketing, uh, I encourage folks to kind of do their due diligence and research and and get a demo or go to a conference or follow some of the thought leaders on on LinkedIn about you know the latest and greatest in agentic marketing. And you know, if if you're curious about high touch, hightouch.com is a great place to visit. Uh, we have two different agentic marketing solutions, one for paid teams in Ad Studio, uh, and one for more lifecycle CRN teams, which is which is our lifecycle studio product that we just launched. So Netnet, just go for it, just start somewhere. Um, it's a huge opportunity for businesses to learn about.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Awesome.

World Cup Pick And Closing

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Um, and my my last question for you uh earlier in the interview, you used uh the World Cup and and uh USA making it to the final World Cup final is this weekend. Who do you have? Argentina or Spain?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Oh man, I I mean for the record, I am not a huge soccer fan, but I do get World Cup fever. I think like many of us. Um I have I have two kids. I have uh uh a 12-year-old son, Roman, and a 10-year-old daughter, Stella. Uh, they're huge messy fans, for sure bandwagon fans. So I think we're gonna be Team Argentina on Sunday.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Awesome. Awesome. Uh well, yeah, I'm looking looking forward to it. And and Anthony, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and sharing insights into High Touch. We look forward to seeing what uh what the company does next. And thank you to everyone who tuned in. Be sure to check back every Tuesday for a new episode of Leaders in Customer Loyalty Supplier Voices podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on YouTube and across our social media channels listed below.