The new lifecycle marketer: Empowered by AI, focused on outcomes 

We’ve all built the octopus campaign. You know the one: a sprawling, multi-branch workflow with copy variants for every possible click path, a dozen filters per step, and so many segments that even the data team gets lost. It was the best we could do, and boy, was it time-consuming.

Good news: AI is changing that.

In our recent webinar, Raiders of the Lost Lifecycle, we explored how AI is changing what’s possible for lifecycle marketers. We're finally getting out of maintenance mode. Empowered by AI, we can design smarter strategies, test more effectively, and focus on what matters: content, context, and outcomes.

Meli Musson, Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Notion, summed it up: "AI is helping lifecycle marketers realize the promises of lifecycle."

We’ve always known what good looks like—timely, relevant, scalable journeys—but we’ve been stuck in tools that make it hard to get there.

With AI, marketers stay in control. We decide where to deploy it, test what works, and keep the creative voice intact. Start where you're blocked: complex segmentation, repetitive content creation, or time-consuming QA. AI can step in.

At Notion, Meli and her team started with a key campaign: their onboarding flow. They used AI to personalize the journey from the very first interaction, tailoring experiences based on onboarding survey responses and early product signals.

The AI helped them scale those variations without heavy overhead, dynamically routing users into relevant paths and testing different value propositions at once. Today, Notion’s onboarding flow creates a clearer, more intentional onboarding experience with measurable impact on user activation and engagement.

Think of AI as a new team member. It needs onboarding, a clear job description, and oversight. Once it’s trained, it unlocks real value.

Here’s what that can look like:

Use your preferred LLM to explore personalization strategies based on the data you already have.

Start by pasting in a list of user attributes like plan type, last login, region, or product usage, and ask: "What are some ways I can personalize onboarding emails using this data?" or "What content blocks would make sense to swap for different regions or activity levels?"

The model can help you identify segments you might not have considered or suggest ways to make your messages more relevant without manually creating dozens of versions.

Use AI to generate logic-based segments faster. With tools like Customer.io’s AI Segment Builder, create data-driven lists by searching for "People who signed up in the last 30 days and viewed the pricing page," and see the logic populate automatically. Add or adjust based on what you're trying to test or target.

Make optimization easier.JustWords’ AutoTune feeds learnings from past performance back into your content strategy. Start with 3-4 versions of a message with different tones or CTAs. Then let the system analyze what works best across personas and auto-refine over time.

Neha Mittal, CEO and co-founder of JustWords, puts it well: You don’t need AI to be perfect. Aim for an A-minus (logic that’s good enough to launch quickly), not an A-plus (looks shinier, but slows you down).

AI enables marketers to personalize without piling on extra work. At Notion, Meli’s team personalizes onboarding based on user goals, activity levels, and regional preferences (even language)! They use message variants to reflect user needs from the start.

If you’re just getting started, here are a few common data points you likely already have and what you can do with them:

AI is helping lifecycle marketers get more out of our programs without increasing our workload.

Teams are using it to:

• Personalize onboarding with real data from signup intent and early product usage
• Test multiple messages in a single flow and let the system decide which one to send
• Localize content by language or role without maintaining dozens of campaign versions
• See what’s working in real time and adjust without waiting for end-of-quarter reports

AI is useful for so much more than copywriting. We have the tools now to improve activation, retention, and re-engagement.

Want to see how other marketers are doing it? Our latest report, State of the Modern AI Marketer, highlights real examples and workflows from growth teams using AI to make lifecycle marketing more effective.