What’s Working: Three Real AI Plays Driving Demand Gen Performance

AI is reshaping how marketing teams work, but its impact varies across marketing activities. One area where marketers are starting to get meaningful traction using AI is demand generation and growth marketing. This part of the marketing engine sits closest to revenue and data, where media, analytics, and experimentation connect strategy to measurable results. Marketers also have the benefit of objective inputs and measurable data here to feed into AI tools.

For CMOs, this is a high-impact part of the funnel where rapid, incremental improvements compound over time. Yet many teams remain early in their adoption curve, testing AI for one-off tasks instead of integrating it into their broader demand workflow.

Across our client work with a wide range of business models and stages of growth, we’re seeing AI bring new clarity to how marketing organizations allocate time, talent, resources, and spend - although the adoption is still in its earliest stages.

The ongoing opportunity lies in using AI to sharpen strategy and accelerate execution - while keeping human judgment at the center. These three areas stand out in how AI is driving measurable gains in demand gen and growth marketing:

1. Personalization That Converts

AI-driven personalization delivers clear, measurable impact - when built on strong foundations.

As Krupa Shah, a B2B demand gen and go-to-market strategist, explains:

“AI creates the most value when the audience framework is strong. With clear personas and content strategy, teams can extend campaigns across more channels and formats with consistency and speed.”

A recent 621 engagement illustrates this. An employee-benefits provider needed to boost outbound meetings but lacked SDR bandwidth for one-to-one research. Using Freckle’s AI research agent, the team analyzed Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) pages from hundreds of target accounts to identify each company’s sustainability priorities. Generative tools then produced tailored messaging that linked the client’s solution to each prospect’s initiatives.

The outcome: a 3x lift in booked meetings and a 60% reduction in manual research time. AI amplified precision; strong strategy and a disciplined process made it work. For CMOs, the takeaway is clear - automation performs best when teams anchor it in clean data, clear segmentation, and a defined success metric.

What to watch for:

The approach falters when audience data is fragmented or personas aren’t aligned across content and sales teams. Successful teams ensure data, messaging, and outreach teams collaborate around a single target segment

2. Creative Testing That Sharpens Results

Creative quality remains one of the strongest predictors of campaign performance, yet traditional methods for pre-testing have long been costly and slow. AI is changing that dynamic.

Ben Rose, a growth and marketing analytics expert, notes:

“AI has become an effective partner for variant creation, testing strategy, and automation. It’s helping mid-sized teams match the speed and sophistication once limited to large enterprise budgets.”

For one 621 client, our team deployed AI tools to evaluate 10 creative concepts before launch. Platforms such as Kantar Link AI, CreativeX, and DAIVID provided predictive feedback on message clarity, emotional tone, and visual impact. In addition to predictive feedback, the bigger advantage is scale. These tools make it possible to test far more variants than would be feasible with traditional methods. After applying targeted edits from the strongest-performing concepts, the campaign achieved significantly higher ROI while reducing production time and cost.

The real advantage wasn’t only efficiency - it was confidence. The CMO could make earlier, data-informed creative calls instead of relying purely on instinct. Faster validation cycles strengthened decision-making without sacrificing quality.

What to watch for:

These tools work best when creative, analytics, and media teams operate from shared metrics. Without that alignment, AI testing can produce more variations, but not necessarily better-performing ones.

3. Building Smarter Systems: The Force Multiplier

In demand generation and growth, performance improves when teams move from isolated AI tasks to connected systems. The teams getting the most lift from AI are weaving it into their workflows to streamline production, tighten feedback loops, and support faster, clearer decision-making across media, creative, and analytics.

Ben explains it this way:

“Transformation happens when teams move beyond experimentation and build AI into their operating rhythm. That might mean using one model for strategic exploration and another for execution, or developing lightweight custom agents with tools like n8n for recurring processes.”

Structure is what keeps this momentum pointed in the right direction. Krupa adds:

“AI can generate momentum, but human guidance keeps it on course. The structure - goals, messaging, and review - determines whether you scale quality or just scale noise.”

What to watch for:

Momentum stalls when plans and metrics lack clear owners or when creative and analytics teams operate in silos. Clear roles and consistent review points keep automation aligned with brand strategy and business goals.

What CMOs Should Be Watching Next

AI’s influence in marketing keeps widening, but the gap between experimentation and sustainable, scalable transformation remains. Demand generation and growth show how strong audience frameworks, disciplined testing, cross-functional structure, and shared metrics can turn AI’s potential into clear traction.

For marketing leaders, the opportunity is about defining where AI can make the biggest difference in how teams think, test, and operate. The next evolution will be less about speed, and more about how AI strengthens decision quality, campaign precision, and cross-team alignment.

Whether through an AI-readiness assessment, pilot programs, or training, 621 helps CMOs build AI capabilities and apply AI where it drives the most measurable growth.

Next in our series, we’ll map the parts of marketing where AI reliably accelerates outcomes, and where it has yet to earn its place.

AI can accelerate the work, but it requires knowledgeable practitioners to set the direction and harness it effectively. We partner with marketing teams to build systems where both can thrive. Let’s talk about what that could look like for your team.