It may seem ironic to use artificial intelligence to better understand human psychology, but the truth is, AI is bringing marketing teams closer than ever to their customers.
More than just a sales accelerator, AI is helping marketers fine-tune every stage of the customer journey — from brand discovery to post-purchase loyalty. AI is helping marketing professionals understand their clients on a deep level, from what they like to how they feel about a certain product or service, and everything in between.
In marketing, AI delivers actionable insights to personalize campaigns, optimize ad spend, and predict buyer behavior. Thanks to advanced AI tools like sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, and automation, marketing teams can uncover meaningful data that makes for more targeted sales and marketing campaigns.
This article will dive deeper into AI in sales and marketing, including its benefits, marketing-first use cases, and smart tools like monday CRM that organizations are using to build customer relationships based on data.
Try monday CRMWhat is AI in sales and marketing?
AI in sales and marketing refers to the use of artificial intelligence algorithms and tools to plan, deliver, and optimize campaigns and customer touchpoints based on high-quality data. By automating routine tasks, predicting customer behaviors, and personalizing interactions at scale, AI helps organizations improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability while freeing teams to focus on strategy and relationship building.
Why should sales and marketing professionals use AI?
According to a study commissioned by ActiveCampaign and conducted by Talker Research, 82% of business owners, marketers, and salespeople using artificial intelligence in the workplace report using AI for marketing. Additionally, 77% say that the more they use AI tools for their business, the more confident they feel about their work.
Through the use of advanced technologies like machine learning (ML) and large-language models (LLMs), AI can gather and analyze vast quantities of data that are turned into actionable insights that inform marketing and sales strategies.
- For marketers, this means more precise audience segmentation, ad targeting, and creative testing.
- For sales teams, it means analyzing customer behavior and tailoring offerings to specific preferences.
Additionally, by processing information faster and more accurately than traditional methods, AI allows for real-time adjustments to marketing campaigns and sales approaches.
Benefits of using AI in marketing and sales
A lot of sales and marketing professionals are hesitant to adopt AI. According to the The world of work report from monday.com, sales teams remain one of the lowest adopters of AI technology (51%), although marketing departments have one of the highest rates (77%). Organizations see the best results when sales and marketing teams work together using the same AI tools so that data flows harmoniously. Here’s a closer look at how AI can help in sales and marketing.
- Speeds up marketing campaigns: AI helps teams work more efficiently with real-time data analysis and generative AI to create tailored content in an instant, reducing the time from idea to campaign launch.
- Improves customer experiences: While AI handles repetitive tasks like gathering and analyzing data and personalizing content, marketing and sales teams can focus on building long-lasting customer relationships and developing creative campaigns that differentiate the brand.
- Encourages stronger decision-making: AI can analyze big data related to customer preferences, campaign success history, and market trends. All of this together leads to reliable information that professionals can rely on to make critical decisions about marketing strategies — from which ad channels to prioritize to when to re-engage cold leads.
- Reduces campaign costs: Teams can see quicker ROI when using AI for marketing. It can target the right information right away, so that there’s less A/B testing, leading to marketing campaigns that get faster results.
- Personalizes content creation: Tools like generative AI allow marketers to create custom email campaigns, recommend specific products, and craft website experiences that are tailored to individual customer preferences for better engagement and conversions.
- Delivers advanced lead management: AI can qualify incoming leads based on a prospect’s behavior and engagement level. It can also assign scores, making it easier for teams to prioritize leads and focus marketing efforts on the most promising prospects.
How is AI used in sales and marketing?
While AI can be used for a lot of different processes in both sales and marketing, there are a few areas where it’s making a significant impact. Here’s a quick look at some common use cases for AI in sales and marketing:
| Use case | What it does | How it's used | Potential impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Predictive analytics | Analyzes historical and real-time data to forecast campaign performance and customer behavior | Forecast demand, plan seasonal promotions, and optimize ad spend | Improved targeting accuracy and higher campaign ROI |
| AI-powered personalization | Tailors content, ads, and offers to individual customers at scale | Deliver personalized emails, product recommendations, and web experiences | Higher engagement, conversion rates, and customer loyalty |
| Generative AI for content | Creates on-brand copy, images, and videos for campaigns in minutes | Produce ad variations, blog content, and social media posts quickly | Faster campaign launches and reduced creative costs |
| Social listening & sentiment analysis | Tracks brand mentions and gauges customer sentiment across platforms | Monitor social channels, identify trends, and respond to customer feedback | Stronger brand reputation and timely campaign adjustments |
| Chatbots & virtual assistants | Handles customer inquiries and guides them through the funnel 24/7 | Provide instant support, answer FAQs, and assist with purchases | Increased conversions and reduced support workload |
| Process automation | Automates repetitive marketing tasks like email sequences or bid adjustments | Streamline campaign management, reporting, and follow-up processes | Time savings, efficiency gains, and consistent execution |
Now, let’s dive deeper into each to give you a better understanding of how this technology is enhancing common processes and targeting businesses’ pain points.
Predictive analytics and machine learning
AI-powered predictive analytics tools can give teams the ability to forecast sales, demand, and customer behavior based on historical data and market trends. In marketing, this translates to predicting campaign performance, identifying emerging customer segments, and planning seasonal promotions with higher accuracy.
Real-world example: Delta collaborated with Alembic, an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform, to measure the impact of its 2024 Paris Olympic sponsorship. Analytics using AI-driven attribution revealed $30 million in ticket sales directly linked to their Olympic marketing campaign.
AI agents for marketing and sales
Integrating AI agents into your current software, like a CRM, will help your human agents work more productively. For marketing teams, AI agents can recommend campaign adjustments on the fly, highlight underperforming segments, and suggest creative changes based on engagement data.
B2B sales and marketing
Organizations selling B2B are using AI to navigate complex sales processes. AI tools can identify high-value prospects, pinpoint industry-specific marketing messages that resonate, fill in data such as company firmographics and behavior insights, and then help sales teams with timely suggestions and reports to inform real-time decision-making.
Sales and marketing process automation
AI opens the door to multiple process automations, easing the burden of repetitive, manual work on employees. For marketing, this might mean automatically launching drip email sequences based on user behavior, scheduling social media posts optimized for engagement, or dynamically updating ad bids.
Create a data-based customer journey
Teams can harness the power of big data to improve the customer journey with AI systems on hand to deliver insights and analytics. This includes mapping where prospects drop off, identifying high-value customer paths, and tailoring outreach to keep audiences moving toward conversion.
AI chatbots and service databases
AI-powered chatbots give customers and leads 24/7 access to support, handling routine inquiries while collecting valuable data on customer preferences and pain points. Marketing teams can also use chatbot data to refine messaging, identify common objections, and craft more relevant follow-up campaigns.
New ways to sell and market with generative AI
While marketing and sales teams aren’t reinventing the wheel, genAI has definitely been enhancing lead generation and conversions. Research by McKinsey shows that 90% of commercial leads expect to use generative AI frequently in the coming years. Marketers are leveraging gen AI to test creative at scale, hyper-personalize website experiences, and generate audience-specific offers.
Campaign development and content creation
- Targeted content creation: Create targeted marketing content like emails, blog posts, social media content, and ad copy for different audience segments.
- Campaign optimization: Analyze performance data and generate A/B test variations for email subject lines, landing page copy, or social media ads.
- Multi-channel asset creation: Maintain consistent messaging across all channels and adapt the format and tone of your content for each for cohesive branding.
Lead generation and qualification
- Smart lead scoring: Analyze lead behavior, company data, and engagement patterns to single out high-priority prospects and reduce sales cycles.
- Automated insights: Gather comprehensive lead data for timely and relevant insights on pain points and areas to focus on.
- Lead nurturing: Create personalized email nurturing sequences and recommend content to leads in the pipeline to keep prospects warm.
Personalized outreach and communication
- Customized sales messaging: Craft personalized emails, LinkedIn messages, and sales call scripts based on prospect profiles to increase response rates.
- Follow-up automation: Create and schedule contextual follow-up messages based on conversation history, engagement levels, and sales stage.
- Real-time conversation support: Get real-time suggestions and sales strategies in live calls, meetings, or email chains.
Real-world example: Yum Brands — which includes Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC — used AI to customize individual emails based on factors like time of day and past behavior, dynamically selecting subject lines and content via reinforcement‑learning. The result? Double-digit increases in customer engagement, translating into more purchases and stronger retention.
Sales enablement and proposal creation
- Proposal generation: Create custom proposals, contracts, quotes, and presentations using case studies and tailored pricing for each prospect
- Training and coaching content: Generate role-playing sales scenarios, negotiation guides, and personalized coaching materials to improve sales performance.
- Competitive intelligence: Analyze market data and competitor information to improve positioning and stay aware of industry trends.
Customer engagement and relationship building
- Proactive customer insights: Analyze customer data and identify patterns to alert account managers to potential issue that could stall a deal.
- Self-service automation: Handle routine requests through chatbots, giving sales teams more time to focus on high-value relationship building.
- Personalized customer journey mapping: Track client interactions to build tailored experiences and identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Deal closing and contract management
- Negotiation support: Get real-time pricing recommendations along with contract terms to accelerate negotiations.
- Risk assessment: Analyze deal data and use forecasting tools to predict a deal’s likelihood to close.
- Contract optimization: Create contracts in seconds and find opportunities for additional services to increase value.
Top AI tools for sales and marketing teams
Aside from the AI staples like ChatGPT, there are endless AI tools out there, with new ones popping up all the time. It can feel overwhelming to pick and choose the right ones that will have the biggest impact on your bottom-line sales. To help steer you in the right direction, here’s a shortlist of some AI tools sales and marketing teams should consider using to ramp up productivity and kickstart efficiency.
- monday CRM: AI-powered CRM that allows teams to generate and manage leads, create custom AI automations and workflows, generate content with AI, access predictive analytics, and more
- Brand24: AI social listening tool to help teams monitor and analyze sentiment in online conversations of your brand on social media, news sites, blogs, and forums
- Gong.io: AI platform for revenue teams that offers conversation intelligence, sales coaching, and marketing content generation
- Apollo: AI outbound engine that helps teams locate and research leads, personalize messaging, and launch marketing campaigns
- Copy.ai: AI go-to-market agent platform for sales teams to facilitate SEO content creation, inbound lead processing, account-based marketing, and more
- Jasper AI: AI writing platform that produces copy in a range of tones and styles using natural language to help teams create sales and marketing content like emails, blog posts, landing pages, and more
- Brandwell: AI SEO and writing tool that’s ideal for writing SEO blog posts that sound human and help brands rank on Google and get cited by LLMs
- Fullstory: AI-driven digital experiences platform that helps teams craft memorable journeys using AI to gather insights, analyze sentiment, and collect behavioral data based on users’ website activity
- Zapier: AI platform that allows users to connect automations between different apps and systems, where AI works behind the scenes to trigger actions without any coding
- Surfer SEO: AI content optimization tool that allows users to create copy that ranks with the help of AI content scoring and smart recommendations to make improvements
Streamline sales and marketing efforts with monday CRM
While the list above is a great starting point for sales and marketing tools looking to dip their toes in AI platforms, it’s a good idea to opt for a platform that both teams can use simultaneously. An AI solution like monday CRM provides an all-in-one solution for sales and marketing teams to make the most of every customer interaction, from acquisition to closing a deal.
Packed with advanced AI features, monday CRM helps teams bridge the gap between traditional sales and marketing practices and an advanced platform with AI enhancements you’ll use daily. The platform itself is intuitive and easy to use, meaning there’s no long onboarding time, so teams can get started right away. Additionally, monday CRM is entirely customizable to every team’s unique needs, making it a versatile and flexible platform that fits anyone from small businesses to large enterprises.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the main AI features in monday CRM that sales and marketing teams can use to get more leads and close deals sooner.
Deep AI predictive analytics
Teams can leverage powerful AI predictive analytics and forecasts to inform campaign timing, content strategy, and ad spend allocation. When marketing and sales professionals can better understand how their customers behave and what leads them to engage, they can craft personalized content for every stage of the sales cycle.
Custom AI-powered automations
Complete tasks and supercharge standard processes with AI automations and custom workflows. For marketers, this could mean automatically adjusting ad budgets based on performance, scheduling personalized follow-up emails after webinar attendance, or generating campaign reports for weekly meetings.
AI assistants and timely suggestions
The platform’s smart AI assistant, monday sidekick, can take action and complete tasks based on natural language prompts. Marketers can ask sidekick to segment leads by engagement, draft ad copy variations, or suggest content topics based on trending search queries.
Lead sentiment detection with AI
It’s hard to understand how leads or customers feel when you’re handling hundreds or thousands simultaneously. In monday CRM, users can use AI to detect sentiment from emails, call logs, or other communications to make it easier to detect when a customer is ready to move to the next stage or when a marketing message needs to be reworked for better resonance.
What’s next in AI trends for sales and marketing
The future of AI in sales and marketing isn’t just bright — it’s rapidly evolving toward hyper-personalization, deeper predictive capabilities, and fully autonomous campaign management. We can expect to see current tools get refined for even deeper personalization and accuracy, such as more sophisticated predictive analytics, virtual sales representatives, and hyper-personalization at scale.
In marketing, emerging trends include AI-generated video ads, real-time personalization on websites, and AI-driven creative testing that adjusts campaigns automatically based on live performance data. While these technologies are getting smarter by the day, businesses that adopt AI early and upskill their team frequently with emerging AI tools will come out ahead.
Try monday CRMFAQs
How can a business get started with using AI in its sales and marketing efforts?
Businesses can start using AI by identifying specific pain points, like lead qualification or content creation. For marketing teams, an easy entry point is AI-powered email marketing, ad targeting, or social listening tools. Begin with user-friendly platforms and integrate these gradually with existing CRM systems. For instance, a retail brand might start by testing AI-generated ad copy across two audience segments before expanding to AI-driven SEO optimization.
How can you measure if AI is helping your sales and marketing results?
To check if AI is making a difference in your sales and marketing strategies, make sure you’re tracking key metrics before and after AI implementation. Some KPIs and metrics to follow include lead conversion rates, sales cycle length, customer acquisition costs, and revenue per lead. For marketing, also track engagement rates, click-through rates on AI-optimized ads, and ROI from personalized campaigns.
What are the privacy and data security concerns with using AI in sales and marketing?
AI systems raise additional concerns for data privacy and security since these platforms often require access to customer data. This raises concerns about data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance with regulations like GDPR. Businesses need to ensure secure data storage, obtain proper consent for data usage, regularly audit AI systems, and choose vendors with strong security protocols and transparency.
Will sales and marketing be replaced by AI?
No, AI isn’t going to replace entire departments, but rather enhance existing workflows. While AI handles routine tasks like data analysis and content generation, human creativity, relationship building, strategic thinking, and complex problem-solving remain essential. The focus will shift toward higher-value activities that require emotional intelligence and strategic decision-making.
Can AI generate sales leads?
Yes, AI can identify and generate sales leads by analyzing website behavior, social media activity, and company databases to find potential customers. AI tools can score leads based on conversion likelihood, research prospect information, and even initiate contact through personalized outreach, significantly improving lead generation efficiency.
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