Ethan Gustav, Group President, North America for Infobip catches up with MarTech Series to chat about the latest AI-powered marketing trends and consumer buying behaviours:
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Tell us little about yourself, and more about your role at Infobip
For the majority of my career, I’ve been focused on helping ambitious companies (OpenMarket, Amdocs Inc.) grow their business and build high-performing teams in various sales and business development roles.
When I came to Infobip as Vice President of Revenue for North America and Global Strategic Accounts, I saw this as an opportunity to do the same for a “behind the scenes” company – a successful company that powers virtually every touchpoint of the customer experience for some of the world’s most renowned brands. Now as Group President of North America, I leverage my past experience working for major messaging and digital communications companies to point to why Infobip is business-critical for brands to create an unrivaled omnichannel experience for their end consumers, resulting in long-term brand loyalty, engagement, and meaningful customer connections that set the foundation for these companies to become a brand people love.
Can you talk to us about the latest AI in marketing trends that are impacting the ecosystem today?
Last year, specifically during the holiday season, cemented AI as a business must-have. With AI becoming a tool that more consumers are embracing, we’ll really start to see AI maturity take off with brands exploring what kind of value it brings outside of customer support automation. This year, AI agents are expected to handle up to 95% of customer engagements, going beyond round-the-clock personalized support. We’ll see more AI chatbots taking over more routine tasks (banking inquiries, order tracking, cost comparison, product discovery, etc.), while advanced voice bots are emerging as a tool to unlock more opportunities for automation and enhanced customer conversations.
We’ll also see data management becoming more of a priority. Customers want to feel seen and heard, and personalization is key to achieving this. As AI evolves, business interest in smaller, domain-specific language models is gaining traction because of their ability to support hyper personalization by providing accurate, context-aware responses with data privacy and compliance in mind, which is a top consumer preference.
Additionally, conversational AI will continue to improve its ability to mimic human conversations, from speech patterns to awareness. Having a holistic digital presence is still important for businesses to reach various consumer audiences and embedding conversational AI across communications channels make it easier to meet customer expectations at scale; from personalized promos and boosted customer retention to actionable insights that can help marketers optimize messaging, segment audiences, and improve campaign performance over time.
What AI-powered martech features are customers leaning more towards today?
Before I answer this question, I want to share some additional context to deepen the understanding of how agentic AI and conversational AI differ: conversational AI mimics human-like interactions while agentic AI drives outcomes and efficiency.
Consumers have long been skeptical about AI, showing hesitancy to embrace the tech and use it in their day-to-day. That changed last holiday season – consumers felt pressure to tighten their purse strings due to impending tariffs and rising costs. Because of AI agents’ ability to instantly cost compare and discover new products, consumers leaned on the tool to streamline their shopping processes as they fulfilled their gift lists – a trend we’ll continue to see with AI creating a more accessible end-to-end experience.
Additionally, consumers are increasingly adopting conversational AI. People still want to build human connections, even in their interactions with brands. Speaking to human agents might not always be feasible, especially during periods of time when demand for customer support is spiked (holiday shopping season, Valentine’s Day, other major retail events). Conversational AI addresses both needs: maintaining natural human conversation patterns while enabling human agents to focus on more complex issues. In marketing, this deepens customer loyalty further by providing product recommendations, amplifying seasonal promotions, and making it easier overall to bring customers to purchase through cart abandonment notifications, back in stock alerts, and personalized offers.
How can modern marketing teams capitalize better on multichannel texting to nurture prospects and customers?
It’s important for marketers to not view AI as a standalone tool. As I said earlier, having a holistic digital presence is important in order to reach various customer segments. AI can amplify these digital channels’ effectiveness by creating more targeted conversations that resonate with various audiences.
Taking a step back, texting and mobile messaging offer more than promotional avenues. Because they boast more interactive features (appointment booking, in-app purchases, hi-res image carousels, etc.) and allow for two-way conversations to take place, brands can leverage these channels to create more meaningful interactions, provide always-on support, and bring customers to point-of-purchase. Consumers are increasingly using platforms like RCS messaging (Rich Communications Services) and WhatsApp because of their interactive features and security capabilities, making these channels ideal for boosting customer confidence and engagement.
When you add AI into the equation, the value proposition of these channels is enhanced, resulting in stronger customer loyalty, personalization, and intuitive support. When marketers blend conversational AI’s intuitiveness and ability to mimic human conversation with messaging platforms’ interactive features, an unmatched digital experience is introduced, encouraging customers to engage at every touchpoint, from carousel displays of new products to fun games and quizzes that keep them entertained, even when they’re not in the process of purchasing something.
By folding in AI into existing omnichannel platforms, marketers unlock more strategic advantages, including deeper customer loyalty, in-app shopping experiences that are more accessible for customers, and 24/7 hyperpersonalized service. On the other side of the coin, marketers receive more customer details that are provided during AI-powered conversations that help them nurture prospects and better understand what matters most to shoppers, giving them the tools needed to deliver an experience that will resonate with prospective and existing customers.
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A few ways in which you’ve been using AI-powered martech and salestech features and processes to drive impact at Infobip?
As a company that’s been at the forefront of digital innovation since its inception, we’ve evolved into a platform that’s AI native by design and a company that’s actively exploring the use of AI for various business functions beyond automation.
Our AI chatbots, including the ones on our Answers platform, handles routine internal and B2B customer queries so human agents can dedicate more time for complex issues that require intervention. We also use generative AI to craft tailored marketing messages and email campaigns at scale to meet consumer expectations for hyper personalized experiences, resulting in higher engagement rates with potential enterprise clients.
Another top priority has been using AI to analyze prospective behavior so we can pinpoint high value leads for sales teams to ensure immediate action on the most promising opportunities. The customer insights collected allow us to predict churn or identify upsell opportunities so customer success teams can intervene proactively.
These are just a few examples of how we’re making the most of AI’s ongoing evolution — AI’s value as an FAQ automation tool is cemented, and it’s critical for us to leverage our tech innovation expertise to apply the technology in a way where we deliver what our customers need and help them keep pace with the expectations of a growing digitally native audience of end consumers.
Five martech takeaways you’d like to leave us with before we wrap up?
AI is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s critical in order to keep pace with the market and consumer expectations. As the pool of digitally native consumers continues to grow, some takeaways I’d like to share are:
Marketers do not need to reinvent the wheel to deploy AI or create an unmatched experience. AI and omnichannel need each other to improve brands’ digital presence, ensure they’re on the channels that consumers find the most valuable, and make customers feel valued through hyper personalization.
If brands are still in the early stages of AI adoption, they’re falling behind. Folding AI into existing digital tools can help brands bridge that gap, amplifying the effectiveness of communications platforms they’re already using while they explore new opportunities for AI to boost automation and enhanced customer conversations.
Mobile messaging still reigns king. AI may be the shiny new object consumers are embracing and businesses are investing in, but the easiest way to reach customers at scale is still through the communications channels on their phone. It’s important for marketers to understand which channels are used most, and they must also take the time to understand which channel is most valuable for each touchpoint of the customer journey (RCS messaging for real-time delivery updates, social media for attracting new customers, in-app chatbots for support, etc.).
Brands must understand the various AI tools they have in their belt. As investments in AI continue to ramp up, it’s important that they know the distinction between AI types (ex: conversational AI vs. agentic AI) in order to reap the most value. This will help them understand where in their marketing strategies AI can be most beneficial (product launches, customer segmentation), as well as how AI can help them address consumer priorities (immediate support, personalized offers).
Creating meaningful customer experiences requires more than adopting the latest technologies. It means really knowing your customers, from how and where they prefer to communicate to macroenvironmental factors that impact their behaviors. Omnichannel strategies and AI adoption can only do so much – marketers must understand what type of personalized communication will bring them to the point of purchase and foster long-term loyalty, which AI can support.
Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey, with AI as the driving force of innovation. Through a single, natively built platform, Infobip delivers omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions that help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications while driving growth and increasing customer loyalty. Infobip is focused on enabling and accelerating AI adoption as it continues its transformation into an AI-first company. Infobip’s technology has the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices in 6 continents connected to over 10k+ connections of which 800+ are direct operator connections. The company was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.
About Ethan Gustav
Ethan is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience, harnessing a track record of building and leading high-performance teams that drive revenue in high-growth technology companies. He is an experienced leader principled in building high-trust working cultures and proven champion of the Customer and Employee experience. Serving in the role of Group President North America at Infobip (and member of the Executive Leadership Team), he is responsible for Infobip’s global customers headquartered in North America and is responsible for all go-to-market functions for the largest TAM in CPaaS and SaaS-based Conversational AI. He is passionate about delivering the promise of Infobip to the world: enabling and simplifying B2C interactions at scale, on any device, channel, place, and time.
