u/Bitter-Wonder-7971

I talk to a lot of our ICP customers—agencies using Klaviyo for their clients, and Shopify brands using it for themselves.

They all take the call because they’re curious about AI and how it can help grow their business (or their clients’ businesses). The owners get it.

The operators, on the other hand, usually have a few objections:

1. “We’re already set up on Klaviyo. We don’t have time to learn a new tool.”

2. “Klaviyo has AI too—so what’s the big deal?”

3. “This year’s budget is already committed. We can’t take on another migration.”

And honestly, I get it.

But the first objection is usually said with about 50% conviction. People know AI is coming. They just don’t yet know what it means for their workflows, their roles, or how quickly they need to adapt.

The owners generally are more forthcoming and as part of our add 90 customers in 90 days I invite them to the AI x Marketing Summit on Oct 9 during SF Tech Week.

We’re bringing together 10 of the top companies building in AI x marketing for e-commerce, along with Shopify brand owners who want to learn practical ways to use AI to grow.

I get it—until people see the product live and hear directly from real customers, it’s hard for it to feel real, just another guy on the other side of a Zoom screen.

Most products bombard new users with emails the moment they sign up. We don’t think that’s especially effective anymore.

By the time someone creates an account, they’ve usually already spent time evaluating your product. Sending a stream of introductory emails right away—explaining what the product does or repeating the same value proposition—often adds little value and is easy to ignore.

At Humanic, we’ve taken a different approach: we wait a few weeks, then send a Weekly Activity Report

This format serves a few purposes:

1. It reminds users they signed up for a tool they may not be using yet—and highlights the opportunity they could be missing by not fully exploring the product.

2. It includes personalized recommendations for setting up Humanic more effectively to help grow their Shopify store.

3. It keeps users up to date on new features and improvements, so they can see how the product is evolving over time.

We’re kicking off a 90 customers in 90 days campaign, and these are the growth tactics we’re actively testing:

1. Small-batch cold email. Using Humanic, we’re targeting Shopify store owners and lifecycle marketers in fashion, beauty, skincare, and luxury goods (watches, etc.). We’re positioning Humanic as a better AI-native alternative for lifecycle email marketers (e.g. Klaviyo, Mailchimp). Most of these brands have lists in the 20k–40k subscriber range.
2. Getting into the right Slack communities. We’re focusing on channels and groups where CPG, e-commerce, and DTC operators already hang out.
3. Reaching out on Instagram. We’re identifying and messaging relevant individuals directly. Most e-commerce Shopify merchants are very active on Instagram.
4. Google Ads - Although targeting the right ICP is challenging and wasteful so far.

What other acquisition ideas would you suggest?

I sent a test batch of 500 emails from a new domain to people who had purchased in the last 180 days on Shopify and the delivery rate was 99%.

Then I started sending to a much larger opted-in list of about 30K users, and the delivery rate suddenly dropped to 64% — using the same domain and the same list.

Few hours later I tried again and the delivery rate now dropped to 37%?

Any thoughts on why the delivery rate has suddenly plummeted so much so quickly?

After years of building, I’ve learned this: your product shape is one axis, your ICP is another, and your GTM is the third. The real challenge is getting all three to line up into a single plane that resonates.

Today, anyone can build anything - Honda builds an Accord and a Civic but it could a Lexus if it wanted to but doesn't - there is resonance between the shape of its cars and its ICP and then they have GTM.

Thoughts?

Another AI x Marketing Hackathon in SF organized by the AMA SF Chapter with MBA students in Marketing in SF. Lots of great insights and conversations.

Thank you American Marketing Association (AMA) San Francisco Ipsita Bhattacharya Sukriti Khosla Eric Weidner Melissa Grimshaw-Vargas Chris Rogers and all the participating students at the Golden Gate University MBA Class for giving me the opportunity to present what we are building at Humanic.

Rooms like this are a reminder of why community matters. This is how the best learning happens: in rooms full of people who aren't afraid to challenge your assumptions. 💡

Follow this Reddit page for more events in SF like this if you are in Marketing and are using AI.

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Several users who sign up for Humanic have requested a “scheduled workflow” feature, where a prompt runs automatically on a daily or weekly basis to generate and send an updated email newsletter. In essence, this would enable recurring emails powered by a prompt. I'm not sure that users will like to receive such a newsletter. Do you think this is a viable use case?

I keep feeling like “on-brand AI content” is still kinda broken.

Some models go way too hard and everything turns into a caricature of the brand voice.
Others play it so safe that it’s technically fine, but completely forgettable.

Feels like we don’t have a good middle ground yet.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on this (we’re building in this space), and a couple things have helped a bit:

• Chaining models together Instead of relying on one model, we’ll start with a solid draft, pass it through something more creative, then have another model critique it, and finally clean it up. It’s messy, but it works better than any single model.
• Forcing it to use real brand stuff Big difference when you give it actual past campaigns, brand guidelines, assets, etc. vs asking it to “sound like a brand.” Otherwise it just makes things up.

Even then… it still feels inconsistent.

Curious if anyone here has cracked this (or at least gotten closer).

How are you keeping things on-brand without everything sounding generic or overprocessed?

What is the best e-bike to buy for a rising freshman in California?

I was trying to connect all my social channels to drive registrations for the AI x Marketing Summit (May 28–29 in SF) using Claude Code. Thought I’d share how it went in case anyone else is going down this rabbit hole.

Here’s what I ran into:

• Luma – surprisingly the easiest to set up
• Twitter/X – ran into a bunch of credential issues
• LinkedIn – couldn’t get a direct connection working
• Reddit – had to create a Reddit app first
• Apollo – easy to connect, but not very useful after that
• Instagram – absolute pain via MCP, especially if you’re not active on Facebook
• TikTok – pretty straightforward
• YouTube – also easy through Composio - didn't even try going direct
• Substack – haven’t set this up yet
• Humanic – using this for email

Eventually landed on Bright Data + Composio. That combo worked well for Twitter and Reddit (super smooth), and somewhat for LinkedIn.

Big takeaway: a lot of MCP servers are still pretty limited and harder to set up than expected.

Curious if anyone else has found a cleaner stack for managing cross-platform posting?

This is a test post created by Claude Code using the Composio MCP server — part of building out the AI x Marketing agentic stack.

If you're curious how this works: Claude Code connected to Reddit via Composio's MCP integration and posted this autonomously from a single prompt.

More to come. 🚀

AI x Marketing Summit

Where marketers become AI-native in 36 hours. Two days of promptathons, workshops, and real campaigns shipped live at AI x Marketing Summit in SF.

Early bird tickets going out soon https://aixmarketingsummit.com

#AIxMarketingSummit #AIxMarketing #GoAINative #AIMarketing #GrowthMarketing #PromptEngineering #BuildWithAI

The Largest Community of AI x Marketers in SF

Get your ticket now at https://aixmarketingsummit.com

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Sign up now -- https://maven.com/p/c2d323/ship-high-converting-lifecycle-email-campaigns-in-60-minutes

You can plug in your own store and send your first AI-written emails free at humanic.ai – no credit card needed

Curious how this works in practice? Create a free account at humanic.ai and spin up your first AI-powered campaign