Jackie Palmer, VP of Product Marketing at ActiveCampaign chats about the evolving martech ecosystem and influencing impact of AI in this Q&A:

__________

Hi Jackie, take us through the highlights of your time as ActiveCampaign’s VP of Product Marketing.

It’s been an amazing year so far with ActiveCampaign. Since my time began here in December 2024, a key highlight has been seeing the reorientation of our product vision come to fruition. We’ve become truly AI-first and outcome-oriented in delivering autonomous marketing for SMB marketers and the agencies that serve them. It’s no longer enterprises alone that can deliver large-scale marketing campaigns with speed and accuracy. SMBs and agencies can now have the tools and capabilities to do this too.

Another highlight has been to roll out Active Intelligence, our AI engine that powers autonomous marketing through a conversational interface, to all users of ActiveCampaign. By making the engine available across all plan tiers and expanding the set of specialized marketing agents, we’re providing every business, no matter the scale, the tools to move from ideation to execution in a few prompts.

Can you briefly tell us about some of ActiveCampaign’s latest enhancements?

We’ve introduced several enhancements to our platform that make marketing more intuitive and connected. Not least of these has been the introduction of a native solution for WhatsApp to enable our customers to deliver effective marketing campaigns via this increasingly important channel.

Alongside the milestone of making Active Intelligence available to all users, the new Active Intelligence Workspace has brought insights, campaign creation, and recommendations together in one place, changing up the user experience. Our expanded AI agent ecosystem has added 30+ new agents that let marketers describe audiences in plain language, such as “find all contacts who have engaged with content in the last month but have not downloaded a lead magnet”, and create goals from simple prompts, personalize content at scale, and generate forms in seconds. The new remote MCP Server also extends these capabilities into tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Slack, delivering truly autonomous, cross-platform marketing.

How are you seeing AI-powered features impact the martech ecosystem, and what stands out for you?

AI is fundamentally reshaping martech by shifting it from a support function to a vital growth driver. Most impactful is the pace at which we’re moving from “assistive” to “autonomous,” where agents can create and optimize campaigns for you in real time, delivering personalized content to users without manual intervention. SMBs can now bring their “human” messaging to a far greater scale than ever previously possible as generative AI continues to transform personalization and accurate segmentation.

I am seeing AI become an operating system, rather than just a feature. It’s a very exciting time for the field.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Kevin Shectman, Senior Director of Product Marketing @ Braze

How is marketing technology set to evolve in the near future, and how will that reshape marketing teams?

Marketing technology is set to become far more seamless and intelligent. Rather than relying on a stack of tech tools that have disparate functions and produce different metrics, marketers will rely on intelligent AI agents that communicate directly with one another to automate the legwork and reporting. Slow, manual integrations will be eliminated, and campaigns, customer insights, and analytics will be possible within one system. Simple language commands will unlock these capabilities even further, reducing the friction between marketing, commerce, and data tools.

Can you talk about some leading global brands from the B2B and B2C arena that have got their martech play right, and the top learnings from these experiences?

One standout example is Parrish Law, a bi-coastal law firm that has mastered its martech strategy by adopting an AI-powered platform. They are using conversational language to tailor and deliver a holistic marketing campaign, from automating community programs, to personalizing client outreach. By doing so, they have replaced hours of manual reporting with direct, real-time insights. It’s been a real success. Email marketing rates are often benchmarked as successful if they move above 20%; Parrish Law is achieving 35–40% in their campaigns.

Another great example is Pit Boss, the grill brand that transformed its marketing by unifying customer data with AI automation. They connected in-store purchases with online behavior to deliver personalized, timely messages such as back-in-stock alerts and product recommendations. They achieved: $76,000 in revenue from a single email, a 786% rise in click-throughs, and a 32% open rate on community emails.

The key takeaway is that successful martech isn’t about stacking more tools. It’s about using intelligent automation to create meaningful connections at scale. Both Parrish Law and Pit Boss’s approaches show that when AI is used to enhance personalization and streamline operations, marketing becomes less about promotion and more about building authentic, lasting relationships.

A few misconceptions around martech and AI you’d like to bust before we wrap up?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that AI is just an add-on to make workflows function more effectively and get tasks done more quickly. In reality, if it isn’t embedded to the extent that it alters how you work or the outcomes you achieve, it’s not transformative. To truly make an impact, marketers need to move to full adoption. To truly make an impact, marketers need to embrace AI as more than just an add-on; they need to fully integrate it into their workflows. Full adoption allows users to reap the benefits of focusing on the strategic work as the day-to-day marketing analysis and execution are managed autonomously.

Another misconception is that playing it safe is a viable strategy. In an era where AI evolves almost weekly, gradual change is inadvisable. I’d also challenge the idea that LLMs alone are enough for marketers. Without lifecycle integration, contextual data, and goal alignment, even the best models fall short. Ultimately, a considered adoption of AI into marketing workflows will pay dividends, and I advise marketers to start adopting strategies for it now.

Marketing Technology News: Martech & the ‘Digital Unconscious’: Unearthing Hidden Consumer Motivations