In the world of marketing, AI isn’t just knocking at the door—it’s already inside, rewriting how business works from the ground up.
Most CMOs today view AI as more than just a tool for automation. It is a force multiplier for innovation, enabling marketing teams to scale what works, explore what’s possible, and reimagine how brands connect with people.
In Twilio’s sixth annual State of Customer Engagement Report of more than 7,600 consumers and 600+ business leaders across 18 countries including Australia, the report found almost all Australian companies (97%) say AI is improving customer-facing operations such as support, marketing, and personalisation. Businesses are also already reporting positive outcomes from using AI to personalise customer experiences, including higher customer spending (34%), and greater customer retention and repeat spending (34%).
Innovation, at Speed and Scale
For CMOs, the value of AI is clear. It’s not just about doing more with less—it’s about doing better with more. The most effective marketing teams today use AI to:
- Automate content creation, optimise ad placements, and analyse performance data without significantly growing headcount.
- Adapt campaigns in real time, personalise messaging at scale instantly, and respond at the speed of the market.
- Deliver hyper-relevant, data-driven interactions that build trust and boost conversions.
Rather than replacing marketers, AI empowers them to think more strategically, move faster, and create more relevant, high-performing campaigns.
The CFO-CMO Divide: Where Tension Rises
Despite these possibilities, not everyone sees AI through the same lens.
For many CFOs, AI is an efficiency play. Their lens is financial: Does it improve ROI? Cut costs? Streamline workflows? In many cases, it does. AI can score and route leads with precision, forecast revenue with greater accuracy, and reduce manual reporting, unlocking both immediate savings and long-term margin gains.
But this mindset, while valid, is limiting. When AI is treated solely as a cost-cutting tool, innovation stalls. Marketers face resistance when championing high-potential, long-term initiatives. And companies risk underinvesting in the very capabilities that drive top-line growth.
Efficiency is only one side of AI’s value. It doesn’t just replace human effort—it reallocates it. Automating customer interactions may reduce manual service requests, but it also speeds up response times, improves resolution accuracy, and strengthens customer retention. AI-powered analytics might cut down time spent on reporting, but it also enables faster forecasting and smarter resource planning.
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However, globally the State of Customer Engagement Report found that only 45 percent of consumers feel “understood” by the brands they interact with, a clear signal that internal AI efficiency doesn’t always translate into meaningful customer impact. In Australia, 85% of local consumers prefer to have a choice in how brands communicate with them, rather than having AI agents make assumptions about their preferences. Furthermore, 61% of Australian consumers find it crucial for AI-powered interactions to feel human, and 46% want the option to escalate to a human agent when necessary. Without alignment between finance and marketing, companies risk focusing on cost at the expense of connection and leaving significant value on the table.
The Solution Starts with a Shared AI Strategy
To unlock AI’s full potential, CFOs and CMOs need to align—not around efficiency vs. growth, but around efficiency in service of growth.
That means reframing the conversation from “How can we save money with AI?” to “How can we drive smarter efficiencies that fuel long-term value?”
Both marketing and financial leaders have a critical role to play in this shift. The most successful CMOs today aren’t just pitching new tools; they’re tying AI investments to business outcomes finance leaders care about. CFOs and CMOs should be working together on:
- Revenue & ROI Maximisation – Show how AI-driven personalisation and automation increase conversions and lifetime customer value.
- Operational Efficiency Gains – Highlight how AI reduces wasted spend through smarter ad placements and data-driven insights.
- Risk Reduction – Demonstrate how AI helps mitigate churn, optimise pricing strategies, and improve forecasting, benefiting both finance and marketing.
- Go-To-Market Acceleration – Showcase how AI-powered automation enhances sales and marketing alignment, ensuring that inbound leads are efficiently qualified, routed, and engaged—not just cutting costs, but driving revenue growth.
When we partnered with OpenAI to launch 1-800-ChatGPT, success depended on more than technology. It required tight coordination across teams—marketing to build awareness, product and engineering to scale the experience, and operations to prepare for a 6000% spike in throughput. That kind of execution doesn’t happen without alignment and a shared commitment to move fast and learn along the way.
That’s why we’ve created a new role at Twilio: Marketing Innovation Leader. Their mission is to rethink our marketing strategy through an AI lens: mapping the next year, identifying where to build, buy, and apply AI for maximum impact. All while ensuring the strategies are moved across the whole organisation.
That mindset is just as important as the technology itself. CFOs should be backing marketers to foster a culture where innovation is expected, failure is part of the process, and every campaign is tied to clear, measurable business goals like revenue, retention, and long-term growth.
The Moment is Now
The companies making meaningful progress with AI aren’t trying to transform everything at once. They’re focused on a few high-impact areas like campaign production, budget allocation, or forecast accuracy where applying AI can drive immediate, measurable gains.
That kind of focus only works when leaders are aligned. Not just on vision, but on the day-to-day decisions: what to prioritise, where to invest, and how to evaluate success.
It’s not about having the most AI tools but about knowing where they move the needle, and having the structure in place to act on them with speed and clarity.
In the end, the companies that win won’t be the ones with the most AI. They’ll be the ones that knew what to do with it—and did it together.
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