The essential guide to using AI in marketing automation effectively in 2025

In the current economic climate, staying ahead of the curve in digital marketing is more crucial than ever. Artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025 is a pivotal component of marketing automation strategies. Marketers need to understand how to effectively leverage AI to scale their efforts, enhance customer experiences, and drive more meaningful engagement.

This essential guide offers insights into the benefits of AI in marketing automation, implementation strategies, and the top tools that can give your campaigns like webinars and virtual events a competitive edge.

What is the role of AI in marketing automation?

Many marketers think of AI and automation as two sides of the same coin. A little automation, a little machine learning, and you have artificial intelligence. In reality, it’s a little more complicated.

When we talk about AI we’re talking about generative AI. Consider Midjourney or ChatGPT. These tools can create something new. Automation can only execute menial tasks. A human still has to create all the content.

The real magic happens when these two tools are combined. Let’s look at an example. You just finished an incredible webinar and want to use some of the footage to promote future events.

Kaltura’s AI can use engagement data and natural language processing to find the most impactful moments. With a single click, it can compile them into a teaser that makes sense and resonates with your audience.

Once the video is exactly how you like, you can plug it into Kaltura’s publishing automation to instantly share it across your website, video hub, and social media. Now a task that might have taken up your entire day is finished in minutes.

The benefits of using AI in marketing automation

71% of business leaders say the ROI of their AI/automation investments was positive. This is because there are so many ways it can improve your strategy. Beyond the obvious time that can be saved with generative AI, there are nearly endless use cases and benefits for bringing AI into your marketing processes.

Enhanced personalization

You are likely already using automation to send emails or target ads. Without AI, the system can’t know exactly what content to push to what leads. By analyzing customer behavior, AI can create hyper-specific customer segments, and even create content that appeals to those niche groups. It can deduce where in the sales journey each client is, and what excites them about your brand.

Joined with automation, this can lead to personalized content and recommendations being sent out without any handholding from your team.

Data-driven decisions

Big data can make your job as a marketer exponentially easier, but only if you understand what to do with all the information collected. AI can process data coming in and make it easy for your team to dissect.

The AI can even trigger automated responses to certain data points, such as automatically reducing ad spending on underperforming channels or posting content at the ideal time of day.

Scalability

With AI-empowered automation taking over the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks for your team, you can grow your customer base without having to invest more.

For example, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants provide instant, round-the-clock customer support without needing any human interference. You can boost customer satisfaction while bringing down personnel costs and reaching an infinite amount of clients with ease.

Using AI automation in virtual events

AI can entirely transform how you plan and execute virtual events. Here are a few of the most innovative ways to implement these advanced automations.

Enhanced engagement

Chatbots can answer questions in real time, making every attendee feel heard. It’s even possible to train an AI to act as a moderator during Q&A sessions.

AI-powered matchmaking tools can also recommend networking opportunities based on attendees’ interests, expertise, and goals. The connections folks make through this process will be both deep and meaningful.

Marketing and promotion

Getting people to attend your virtual event is easier than ever with AI automation. You can feed customer data into the program to find out which topics will garner the most interest from your audience. Once you’ve chosen a niche, your marketing automation can tell the clients who would be most invested.

Automated social media posts and email campaigns can be scheduled and optimized to reach a wide audience. This helps you engage with new and existing customers.

Simplified follow-up

It’s easy to set up automated emails to touch base with attendees after an event. However, without AI it’s virtually impossible to ensure these emails are fully personalized.

AI can analyze which parts of your event were most engaging for each individual attendee and craft emails that meet them where they’re at. For example, if someone was asking questions about a specific feature of your product, the AI can recommend other events or articles related to that feature.

This boosts brand loyalty because customers see that they matter. It also moves them further along the sales funnel by offering them content that excites them.

The best AI marketing automation tools in 2025

While it is possible to create and train your AI for marketing automation, there’s no need for that cost and effort. We are living in an AI boom, and many of the top marketing tools available have AI automation baked in.

Let’s break down some of the best tools you can use to integrate AI automation into your tech stack today.

Top video automation: Kaltura

Kaltura is the number one hub for video marketing. It allows you to easily create and stream webinars and virtual events, and manage a corporate video hub. With built-in editing tools, analytics, and personalization features, you can do everything with Kaltura.

AI helps you:

• Track audience engagement
• Repurpose video content with ease
• Connect with users post-event
• Share content across channels

Top email automation: Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email automation platforms, offering a variety of features including email marketing, marketing automation, and customer relationship management. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create campaigns without any coding experience.

AI helps you:

• Auto-segment your email list based on customer behavior
• Personalize and optimize email content
• Schedule emails for optimal open rates
• Automate A/B testing to improve email performance

Top automated CRM: HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) tool that automates sales, marketing, and customer service workflows. It easily integrates into your tech stack, bringing in data from each of your tools.

AI helps you:

• Segment and target potential leads
• Personalize customer experiences
• Automate follow-up emails and notifications
• Track customer behavior and engagement

Top chatbot: LiveChatAI

What sets LiveChatAI apart from other chatbots on the market is its ability to be trained entirely on your own data. Rather than sharing your information with every other person and company using a generative AI, this tool keeps everything in-house.

You can use this bot across the internet, on social media, your website, and even over text.

AI helps you:

• Manage customer inquiries faster and more efficiently
• Provide personalized responses based on customer data
• Track and analyze customer conversations
• Automate responses to common inquiries and tasks

FAQ

What are some examples of AI in marketing automation?

Use cases for AI in marketing automation are vast and diverse, but a few common examples include:

• Audience segmentation to better understand your target market
• Personalized, dynamic content that changes depending on customer interest
• Automatically qualifying leads so sales teams focus on those likely to convert
• Quick and effective repurposing of video content

This is only the beginning of what AI can do for your marketing efforts. The best way to discover more is to experiment and find what works for your team.

What are some common challenges when implementing AI in marketing automation?

As powerful as AI marketing automation is, it is a relatively new technology. This means there are some challenges with implementing it, whether they be skill-based or from the technology itself.

• Poor quality or incomplete data can lead to inaccurate AI predictions and insights
• Integrating AI with existing systems and databases can be complex and time-consuming
• There may be a skill gap within your existing team, and they will need to be trained to use the AI tools effectively
• Ensuring compliance with regulations such as GDPR is critical when handling and processing customer data

The best way to combat these challenges is by knowing about them in advance. If you take your time and integrate AI properly from the start, your system will be running smoothly in no time.

Meet Kaltura

Kaltura has been on the cutting edge of video marketing and creation for years, and the same is true when it comes to the use of AI. From video personalization to smart video analytics, your marketing team will breeze through content creation with our trusty AI automation.

These tools can instantly generate subtitles, transcriptions, and translations to make your content accessible, then analyze your users’ behavior to turn them on when needed. Change up your marketing strategies in real-time based on insights from customer data, made accessible to your entire team with AI.

Your marketing team can boost retention, create videos quickly, and still have time to enjoy their lunch break. For businesses looking to harness the power of AI in their marketing automation efforts, Kaltura is a great place to start. Book a demo with us today!