5 Things I Overheard About Agentic AI in Marketing at CNX25
I was invited by the Salesforce team to Connections (CNX) in Chicago a couple of weeks ago... here's what I heard.
[Sponsored] I was invited by the Salesforce team to Connections (CNX) in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, where thousands of marketers - and yes, some robots - gathered to explore the future of business with Agentic AI.
Want to experience the event in 1 minute? Come with me:
Here’s what I heard at the event, and in conversation with Salesforce customers and execs:
1. Less "pajama-time", more face-to-face experiences
As Andrew Chang, CMO of UChicago Medicine told me, industries like healthcare might see huge benefits from the possibilities of agentic AI.
“We're still faxing, we're still using CD-ROMs. How do we take all of these activities that have to be done manually today and push the limits of how healthcare should be - like it already is in other industries?”
He shared the industry problem of “pajama time” when a doctor or nurse has to spend time after-hours (in their pajamas, often) updating notes, reading charts, and responding to messages from patients. Andrew believes agentic AI could improve workflows and enhance the quality of life for both patients and healthcare professionals.
“It’s more face-to-face time. It’s less time looking at a screen, typing and asking questions... It’s literally having a conversation. The physician doesn’t have to spend a lot of time after hours updating the notes.”
Watch my conversation with Andrew Chang, CMO of UChicago Medicine below.
2. As many journeys as we have customers
I spoke with Kimen Warner, Salesforce’s SVP of Personalization and Marketing Intelligence. She told me agentic AI will allow marketers to engage in entirely new types of interactions with technology—conversational and collaborative.
“We're pivoting from just looking at reports and making decisions to having the agent help you in the middle of the campaign, readjust your budgets automatically and autonomously to make better decisions and more money and more value immediately.”
In addition, AI agents create the opportunity for customers to lead their own experiences:
“We think that customers can move away from marketer-defined journeys to have customers really interact at will with content and experiences, and have that interaction change as that customer wants, not as the marketer previously defined.”
That shift from marketer-defined journeys to customer-defined is exciting to me, as it means:
“Journeys… have always been limited by what the marketer has been able to define and draw in a journey builder. [Agentic AI] means you can have as many journeys as you have customers.”
For the B2B buyer experience, Kimen explains:
“Agentic AI and Agentforce makes it easier for customers to not have to repeat themselves during their sales process and in their ongoing relationship with the brand. From that first conversation on the website it lets a continued relevant personalized conversation and experience happen - not just in a day or in a session, but for years with that customer.”
Watch my conversation with Kimen Warner below.
3. AI Agents working autonomously alongside human marketers
I sat down with Ariel Kelman, President & CMO of Salesforce, and heard the very tangible ways that AI agents are actively participating in the work, not just generating answers:
“What’s different about agents is that they can work autonomously and take action - not just giving you an answer, but processing an order, looking up inventory, or changing the content on your website.”
Read more about what Salesforce recently announced around Agentic AI.
During the keynote of CNX, he showed a website agent that dynamically changes web content based on the conversation a customer is having with an agent.
“What it's really doing is replicating the experiences our customers have when they're talking to our best human employees.”
Watch my conversation with Ariel Kelman below.
4. Finally, a solution to the age-old quest to “do more with less”
I asked Ariel what kept him up at night as a CMO, and how agentic AI might help him sleep better. His response was all about productivity, and scale - a promise at the core of marketing technology for as long as I’ve been in the industry (15+ years now!)
“As marketers, we always have 5-10X as many things we’re being asked to do than we have time in the day and people for. Anything we can do that helps the team say yes more often when people are asking for help is a good thing.”
He shared that Agentforce has helped his team reduce lead follow-up time by 40%, routing higher-quality leads to SDRs.
I also heard how these agents may affect our workflows in demand generation and lead management:
“Write a campaign brief, and the agent can build the flow - do the first 80%, so you can jump in and refine. And for lead follow-up? AI can engage in multi-turn conversations and only route the highest intent leads to sales. Total game changer.”
Game-changer, indeed.
5. A time for experimentation, a fork in the road for marketers
Everyone I spoke to felt the same way about this moment in the marketing industry.
“As a CMO we’re going to start to bifurcate our employees into the people who are eagerly embracing these technologies and getting stuff done more quickly, and the people who want to go to work, rinse and repeat, and do the same stuff every day.” - Ariel Kelman, Salesforce
“For a marketer to not take advantage of agentic AI at this moment in time is a big mistake.” - Andrew Chang, UChicago Medicine
“Don’t be scared of it. Get started doing something - make your emails better, make your communication better. What we see is that it makes you better as a marketer.” - Kimen Warner, Salesforce
The new marketing playbook?
The overall vibe at CNX25 made one thing clear: we’re at an inflection point in marketing.
Agentic AI is already changing how we work, collaborate, and connect with customers. It can help with laborious work like localizing content in various languages or generating content for segments.
Whether it's streamlining healthcare operations or unlocking a new wave of hyper-personalized journeys, marketers are beginning to embrace this technology today.
These new capabilities will of course present new questions and challenges - namely around governance and trust, data strategy, and standards… but the practical applications cannot be ignored, especially when it comes to real-world efficiency gains.
My biggest takeaway? This isn’t the time to hesitate, it’s the time to experiment.
Big thanks to Salesforce for having me at CNX25 to experience the AI revolution first-hand.