If there was one thing that became clear during our latest ELA™ Loyalty Brunch, it’s that loyalty and CRM professionals aren’t debating whether AI matters anymore.
That conversation is over. The real conversation is what happens next.
Bringing together loyalty, CRM and marketing leaders from organisations across Europe, including Rituals, FedEx, A.S. Watson, The Times & Sunday Times, Ahead, Douglas and others, the discussion was hosted by long term Founding Contributor, Pauline Van Dongen-Deckers and ELA member, Matt Royal at MBP. The session explored where AI is genuinely creating value today, where it still falls short, and what marketers need to do to stay relevant in the years ahead.
Interestingly, the pre-event survey revealed that whilst AI is now firmly on the agenda, most organisations remain at an early stage of adoption.
42% said they are using AI in a few specific areas, whilst 33% described themselves as still experimenting with tools and use cases. Only a small minority felt AI was fully embedded into regular workflows or scaled across multiple teams. Content creation remains the dominant use case, followed by CRM, personalisation, customer service and data analysis. At the same time, unclear use cases, integration challenges and internal barriers remain significant hurdles.
In other words, nobody feels they’ve mastered it.
And that was reflected throughout the discussion.
Everyone is Learning in Public
Perhaps the most reassuring aspect of the conversation was how openly attendees spoke about uncertainty.
Despite the constant stream of headlines suggesting AI is transforming everything overnight, the reality inside many businesses looks very different.
As Matt put it:
“I start to feel comfortable with where I am and the progress that I’ve made, and then a month later I find myself needing to relearn something.”
That sentiment resonated across the group.
AI is evolving so quickly that even organisations actively investing in it struggle to keep pace. New tools emerge weekly, capabilities change monthly, and many teams are still figuring out how AI fits within existing workflows, governance structures and customer engagement strategies.
Rather than confidence, the dominant feeling in the room was curiosity. Nobody claimed to have all the answers.
Most of the Value Today is Behind the Scenes
One of the more surprising findings was that the majority of successful AI applications discussed weren’t customer-facing at all.
Whilst personalisation and customer engagement are often positioned as AI’s ultimate destination, most organisations are currently finding value in operational improvements.
Examples shared included:
- Automated competitor intelligence gathering
- Workflow automation
- Research and insight generation
- Content production
- Decision support
- Process optimisation
Matt shared how AI has transformed competitor analysis at MPB, turning a previously manual process into an automated system capable of generating significantly deeper and more actionable insights than would have been possible before.
Meanwhile, attendees discussed using AI to identify gaps in customer communications, streamline campaign creation and uncover opportunities that would otherwise have taken days to find manually.
The conclusion was difficult to ignore.
Today, AI is helping marketers become more effective.
Tomorrow, it may help them become fundamentally different.
The Next Frontier is Decision-Making
As the discussion progressed, attention shifted away from content creation and towards something far more interesting.
Decision-making.
Jakob Hummelen, Program Lead Customer Loyalty, from FedEx raised a challenge many marketers are wrestling with:
“I feel like there’s more… a more fundamental change enabled by AI.”
The room largely agreed.
Whilst AI-generated copy, imagery and campaign assets are useful, they are unlikely to represent the technology’s biggest impact.
More exciting possibilities emerged around:
- Personalisation at scale
- Dynamic offer selection
- Automated decisioning
- Lead prioritisation
- Predictive customer engagement
- Intelligent journey orchestration
One attendee shared how AI-powered decisioning was being used to determine which subscription offer customers should see based on their behaviours and engagement patterns, resulting in stronger conversion performance whilst reducing manual effort.
These examples point towards a future where AI doesn’t simply help marketers execute faster.
It helps them decide smarter.
The Human Element Isn’t Going Anywhere
Despite enthusiasm for the possibilities, attendees were equally clear about the limitations.
Data privacy, governance, security and organisational readiness continue to slow adoption in many businesses. Concerns around customer data, legal frameworks and internal policies remain significant barriers.
There was also broad agreement that AI works best when combined with human judgement rather than replacing it.
As teams become more comfortable with the technology, success will depend less on access to tools and more on the ability to ask better questions, challenge outputs and apply commercial judgement.
Or as one attendee described it, the challenge isn’t getting people access to AI.
It’s getting them comfortable enough to experiment with it.
So Where Are We Now?
The answer seems to be somewhere between excitement and uncertainty.
AI is already delivering value.
It is already saving time.
It is already changing how loyalty and CRM professionals work.
Yet most organisations still believe they are only scratching the surface.
Perhaps the most telling result from the discussion came from a simple poll during the session.
When asked whether AI in marketing is overhyped, underhyped or underused, the overwhelming feeling was neither.
It was underused.
And that may be the biggest opportunity of all.
Want to hear the full discussion?
ELA™ members can access the complete recording including practical use cases, tool recommendations and peer-to-peer insights from loyalty and CRM leaders across Europe.
Email hello@the-ela.org to for the recording link.
*We promote Chatham House rules, so please do not share the recording with anyone outside of the ELA membership.
