Podcast EP 6 | How AI in Customer Communication is Changing Marketing Forever ft. Andrew Boni, CEO and Founder of Iterable

I got to see how Google would do things, including how they would communicate with customers. I just remember thinking that it was a very cumbersome and very clunky process that Google had, which was surprising to me. You would think that Google being this amazing tech company with tens of thousands of incredibly smart people, you’d think that they would have the best tools, the best ways of doing things.But what I saw, it was pretty far from the case. And from just a lack of empowerment of the Google marketers, they were not able to do the things they wanted to do using the software that Google had to communicate with the customers. It was very difficult.You had to be very technical. Really, only engineers could use this communication software. And that led to a lot of friction, a lot of red tape.

It led to just really long cycles for doing things. Things took way longer than they really should have. And then from the customer perspective, so if you are a customer of Google, maybe you’re using one of their ads products, for example. It just led to a very poor customer experience. You’re receiving these really not personalized messages, messages that maybe are irrelevant to you. You’re receiving messages that maybe provide no value to you.

So I saw all that and really thought, again, there has to be a better way. There has to be a way where we can both empower people who use our software, make it easy for them to do all the things they’re looking to do. But then also for recipients, for customers, there has to be a way to just improve the quality of the messages that people are getting, improve the value of those messages, improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

And so if you pass forward more than a decade with Iterable, one of the things that we’re really looking to do, especially with our new announcement of Iterable Nova, really looking to go the extra mile in terms of extreme personalization, individualizing every facet of a message that a brand is sending to ultimately make it as valuable as possible for consumers like you and I. We can talk more about that. But I’m really excited by that, by Nova and just what’s now possible with AI that, frankly, wasn’t possible just a couple of years ago.

So again, that was my Google experience, and it really kind of laid the foundation for what would eventually become Iterable.

Host: That’s great to hear about Nova. So, moving on to the next question, the company’s AI-powered platform enables personalized customer interactions. So how do you ensure these automated messages don’t lack authenticity and human touch?

Andrew: Sure. I’d start out by saying, first of all, Iterable has the most powerful data engine in the market. We have been building and building towards this moment for the past 12 years when it comes to AI.

And with AI, you’re only as good as the data that you have. So the fact that we do have the most powerful data engine in the market, the fact that it’s incredibly easy for our customers, whether it’s Priceline or Calm, as you mentioned earlier, the fact that we make it very easy for them to send data and put data in Iterable, the fact that we make it very easy for them to access that data and make use of it and incorporate it in the messages that they’re sending to their customers, the fact that we can process huge amounts of data in real time, that makes it really advantageous for us to use and ultimately ensure that the messages that we’re sending are authentic, are contextually relevant and aware, are thoughtful and actually useful for folks like you and I.

And there’s just, I would say, this broader issue of there’s so much noise out there today. We live in this attention economy. Everybody’s vying for your attention.

Every brand wants a piece of your mindshare. And I think it’s just getting to a point where there’s so much noise out there and there’s not a lot of signal. So, what we’re really trying to do as a platform is, again, give brands the right tools and the right ways to communicate better and more thoughtfully to customers, to people like us, and again, provide real value to us.

Because if you can do that, that’s really going to foster just a better, more fruitful long-term relationship between a brand and a customer.

Host: Definitely. I think one must really consider these points. So, from startup to USD 200 million plus ARR, what was the most surprising challenge you encountered while scaling the company and how did you tackle it?

Andrew: Sure. I mean, there’s so many challenges that you come across over 12 years of building a business, as you mentioned, going from nothing to over USD 200 million of annual recurring revenue to scaling the team from nobody to 600 employees around the world. So, there’s a lot of challenges, a lot of things that you’ll come across that are unexpected.

One that comes to mind more broadly is just working with our incredible customers, but how quickly the expectations of customers can change, how quickly they are looking for a new feature, a new, better way of doing things. It is surprising how quickly that demand can change. And we’re seeing that tenfold now with what’s happening in the broader AI space.

Obviously, it’s only been less than three years, for example, since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world. And since that time, what we’re seeing from our customers is the expectation that our software and MarTech software in general follows suit, meaning they’re expecting it now to be conversational. They’re expecting it now to be so much more intelligent than it ever was.

And it’s for good reason. It should be that way. MarTech software and Interval should be much more intelligent because we now have the tools to be able to do things that were, frankly, impossible just a couple of years ago.

But again, I would say it’s just surprising how quickly things can evolve and how fast technology can mature. But it’s exciting at the same time because it gives us a lot of fun things to work on and exciting things to build and ship and ultimately get in the hands of our customers.

Host: Definitely. So, as more customer communication is managed by AI, how do today’s marketers modify their skills for them to be effective with tools like Interval?

Andrew: Yeah, I would say in order to be effective in this current and future world of MarTech and AI, really taking a step back and ensuring that you are able to articulate as a marketer what it is you’re looking to do very clearly. Understanding the bigger picture and understanding where it is you’re looking to go ultimately. Because if you’re unable to do that, if you’re unable to articulate your goals, if you’re unable to articulate, again, what it is you’re looking to do or where you want to go, AI is going to have a harder time helping you get to that ultimate outcome.

So again, really working on your communication skills, the ability to articulate crystal clear in terms of where you’re looking to go, I think is the number one thing. And that’s true for AI more broadly, right? If you’re using ChatGPT, if you’re using Gemini, if you’re using Claude, you do need to be able to articulate what you want and what you hope to get out of it very, very clearly.

So those skills are going to be more in demand than ever. Because again, if you can’t tell it your destination, it’s going to have a hard time helping you get there efficiently.

Host: Definitely. It’s very important for businesses to understand their goals. So next up, the company is a very big believer in remote work and teamwork. What practices have best helped you create your global team culture?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s exciting. We obviously live in this remote world these days. And for us, we have six offices around the world. So, we started here in San Francisco where I’m based. We have folks in New York, a New York office, Denver. And then in addition to those three US offices, we have London, Sydney, and most recently, Lisbon, Portugal.

So pretty exciting that we’ve expanded internationally. Today, more than 50% of our employees are completely remote. And then the remaining employees are what we call hybrid. So, they live close to an office, but maybe they’re coming in a few times a week, but not necessarily every single day. And yeah, in terms of how do we establish a great, strong culture, not just here in the US, but globally, I mean, we do have things like an international culture committee. So, folks from outside of the US get together and help us kind of steer what it is we hope to get out of our international offices and culture.

We do encourage our leaders to travel to every single office in order to spend time with the teams, to really just see what it’s like from every single vantage point across the company. And one thing that we do every single year is we fly all 600 of us together for a week in a particular city. So, this past year, we flew everybody together to Seattle, Washington, here in the US.

And really, it was a mix of, of course, talking about business and strategy and our goals for the year. But a lot of it was also more leisurely, happy hours, having lunches and dinners together, exploring a new city, and really just getting to know your teammates in a way that is more difficult to do when you’re strictly talking to folks in a two-dimensional box on Zoom. So that’s super important that we do this company kickoff every single year together.

And lastly, I would say, when it comes to expanding into a new office, we always try and have somebody who has been with the company for some time, maybe a year or a couple of years. Somebody who’s been here, who kind of understands just how it is we operate as a business, somebody who understands the culture, and then we try and put them into this new office in a new region and help us kind of see that location. I think that makes it much easier to ensure that the culture remains similar to how it is in other locations.

Of course, each region is going to have a slightly different flavor, and that’s exciting, and that’s what makes it fun. But we do want to try and ensure that overall, you’re getting a consistent cultural experience across all of our offices. I think that’s really important.

Host: That was excellent. Excellent. So, with a saturated marketing tech market, what really differentiates the company from others like Braze at Bloomreach?

Andrew: Yeah, I would say, I mean, there’s a lot that sets us apart, right? There’s so many reasons why brands choose Iterable over our competitors. At a high level, like I mentioned earlier, we do have the most powerful data engine in the market.

So again, that means it’s really, really easy and simple for customers to send us data and data that they deem important for customer communications. It’s really easy for them to send it to us. We process it in real time, and we make it very easy for them to leverage within the platform.

We call it activating that data. And in addition to that, we make it super easy for them to understand what’s happening as they’re messaging their customers, things like real-time analytics and giving them just deeper insights into what’s happening, what’s working, and what isn’t. I would say in a similar vein, we have this incredible foundation for data.

We have 12 years worth of customers sending us data. So that means we have this really rich foundation from which we can then build on top of and train things like AI models. We have really great insights into, for example, the best time to send messages to customers based on historically what has worked well.

Or we have really great insights into what is the best channel to send to a particular customer. Is it email, or is it a push notification, or is it an SMS, or is it a WhatsApp? And there are many examples of this.

But again, the fact that we have this rich foundation and this rich data platform really makes the AI features shine and really come to life. And then I would say in addition to that, taking it one step further and ensuring that with our AI features, ensuring that customers understand what’s happening, ensuring that customers understand why Iterable chose this particular time to send a message, or why Iterable chose this particular channel, email or push, to send a message to a customer. So making sure that it’s what we call explainable.

We can explain, okay, Iterable chose this time because of these reasons. And we want to do that for many reasons, but I think it goes back to ultimately trust. If you don’t understand why your platform and its AI is making certain decisions, you’re going to have a harder time trusting it.

You’re going to be skeptical. Maybe it’s going to make you feel uneasy. So, we really try and go the extra mile to, again, ensure that our customers do understand what’s happening, that we are as transparent as possible when it comes to the decisions that our AI is making. And I think if we can continue to do that extremely well, that’s only going to foster trust and it’s going to lead to really good outcomes. So that’s one area of differentiation. And then quickly, I would mention our team.

It’s something I hear time and time again. When I talk to our customers at conferences or our cab meetings, or really anytime I meet customers, the team always comes up time and time again. And it’s really something that makes me smile because we do try and really just have this strong spirit of partnership with our customers.

Not just giving them the platform to use, but being almost like a partner, but a strategist, a consultant, really trying to help understand their business and then give them suggestions, insights, tips, best practices, and really ultimately helping to solve the problems that our customers are looking to solve. And again, that piece of feedback comes up time and time again. And I want to make sure that that continues to be a top reason why customers and prospects choose Iterable.

Host: Adaptable leadership can really help organizations to grow. And I think Iterable is a perfect example of it. So where do you see the most exciting innovation in customer communication technology in the next three to five years?

Andrew: Yeah, the next three to five years, I’d say the most exciting innovation is going to be Nova, which is the new AI-powered platform that we announced earlier this month at our customer conference. And it really is designed to change the game and to change the way, honestly, marketing is going to be thought of and done in the future. You know, one of the things I talked about earlier this month at our conference is the death of the traditional campaign. And it’s a bit of a provocative and bold statement, but it’s very true. I do think we’re going to see the death of the traditional campaign happen fairly quickly over the next few months to a couple of years. And so, what do I mean by that?

I mean, this notion of these very episodic, weekly or monthly batch and blast campaigns that are being sent, essentially the same message being sent to millions of customers. We’re going to pretty quickly see those go extinct and die out in favor of these extremely individualized, truly one-to-one, highly tailored messages where each message is unique and differentiated and one-to-one to millions of customers. That’s the world that’s going to be ushered in sooner rather than later.

And that’s the world that Nova, which we just announced, is designed to foster, which is super exciting. And when I think about Nova and how it was designed, it was really the child of us asking ourselves, hey, if we were to build a customer engagement platform, a MarTech platform today in 2025, knowing what’s now possible with AI, how would we build this platform? So, it was sort of this taking a step back and thinking from first principles.

How should the system work? How do we design it? What’s the best way to help our customers accomplish their goals? And what came from that was Nova, where it’s this platform that’s designed to be extremely prescriptive, meaning it will tell marketers, hey, Iterable Nova thinks that you should do this. And these are the reasons why it thinks you should send this kind of message to this group of people in this channel. Here are the reasons why. And then not only that, but it takes it a step further and helps you start building out all those different pieces. So, it’ll help with creating the content to send. It’ll help identify the audiences to send to.

It’ll help pick the best channel. It’ll help set up a journey. And it really, again, is this ultra prescriptive mechanism that just makes the life of a marketer so much easier and simpler. So that’s super exciting. That’s sort of the first tenet when I think about Nova. The second is that Nova is conversational, right? So, you can ask it questions. You can get insights from it. You can ask it pretty broad strategic questions and have this sort of interactive back and forth chats and ultimately arrive at what it is you’re looking to do as a marketer.

I think there are a lot of parallels between that and let’s say what’s happening in the software engineering space today. You see the rise of these incredible software engineering products where you can now all of a sudden build fully featured applications and not know how to code, right? With just 10 or 20 prompts and iterations, you can build an app.

And I think we’re going to see that happen again in our world. And that’s something that Nova is bringing to life where in a few prompts, anybody, technical or non-technical, can set up really rich and fully featured marketing messages and do it in a way that was just not possible before. So that’s exciting. And the last thing I’ll say very quickly is with Nova, things are much more goal oriented. So this idea that you tell Interval Nova, hey, these are our goals as a business for the next month, for the next two quarters. Could be revenue goals. It could be conversion metrics. It could be really anything that you’re looking to accomplish as a business. Maybe it’s app installs.

And once Interval Nova understands those key goals, it can then be off to the races in terms of optimizing and experimenting and driving towards those goals in a way that just was not possible before. So to answer your question, Nova is going to be the most exciting thing to come about in the next few years. And again, it’s really designed to flip the existing traditional way of doing things on its head. And it’s really designed with the future in mind.

Host: That was amazing to know about Nova. Thank you so much, Andrew, for sharing your valuable insights and experience with us. It was a pleasure to host you today.

Andrew: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Again, this is fun to do, and appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Take care, everybody. Thanks.

Host: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I’m your host, Sudakshina, signing off. See you in the next episode of ExtraMile by YourTechDiet with our next extraordinary leader on board, sharing their thoughts and knowledge.

Stay tuned.