Klaviyo used K:LDN to launch its new AI capabilities, including Composer and new features for Customer Agent. But when Commerce Voice spoke to Ben Jackson, the company’s managing director for EMEA, he went beyond product launches and talked about a more practical question: what should AI actually do for marketers?
His answer was simple. It should take on the repetitive, time-consuming work that gets in the way of strategy, creativity and decision-making.
Describing his long-term vision for Composer, Jackson said: “Wake up in the morning, open Klaviyo and tell me what to do as a marketer.”
“We’ve got 14 years of experience across more than 200,000 customers globally,” said Jackson. “Here in EMEA alone, we now work with more than 70,000 customers, which gives us an incredible depth of experience and data to inform what we’re building.”
That has helped develop Composer, Klaviyo’s new AI marketing agent. The aim is not to have marketers manually review every campaign, customer journey and audience segment, but to direct their attention to where it is most needed.
“It’s the simple things that save people a lot of time. Some of the brands we work with have hundreds of flows and campaigns. Auditing all of that becomes incredibly complex. It’s not very sexy, but it is time-consuming.”
Composer is designed to analyse campaigns, identify underperforming journeys and suggest improvements before marketers decide whether to act. Jackson sees that as a more useful application of AI.
Context over content
That emphasis on usefulness also shapes how Jackson thinks about AI more broadly. While plenty of platforms can generate copy, he argued that the real differentiator is access to customer data.
Jackson said the strength of Klaviyo’s data platform was one of the main reasons he joined the company.
Having spent much of his career working in marketing technology, he believes the industry’s ambitions haven’t really changed, but “the technology has finally caught up with the vision,” he said.
“The reason why I joined Klaviyo was because of the data platform. We were a database company to start off with,” he said. “If you don’t have that availability or access to the data, it’s very hard to do any of this.”
That context allows marketers to work with live customer information rather than wait for reports or manually build segments.
“There are still providers where it can take weeks just to get access to the data and build a segment,” said Jackson. “We’re building those segments in real time.”
The same principle sits behind Customer Agent, which is designed to help brands create AI-powered service experiences that can take account of purchase history, behaviour and previous interactions before responding.
Taking admin off marketers’ desks
Jackson is unconvinced by the idea that AI reduces the need for marketers. In his view, it changes the shape of the role rather than replacing it.
“Most people I speak to are excited,” he said. “The work people don’t enjoy doing is the time-consuming work. It frees them up to actually do the creative work. Most marketers are creatives.”
Jackson believes that’s particularly important for people starting their careers.
Using his daughter as an example, he said universities are still adapting to the pace of AI. “I would say if people are starting out in their career, they need to embrace it,” he said. “She’s got these creative skills that not many people have, but now she has the ability to really deliver on them.”
He also explained that adopting AI is not just a technology challenge, but a human one. That point came up elsewhere too throughout the day, with speakers stressing that new tools only deliver value when teams understand the change and are willing to adapt to it.
Trust still matters
Even so, Jackson does not believe brands will be handing over complete control any time soon. Brand voice, customer experience and reputation remain too important.
“For a long time to come there’s still going to be that human eye,” he said. “A lot of our customers’ USP is around their brand. They want to be really particular about that. Are we going to get it right every time? Probably not, but we might get you 90 or 95% there.”
That balance between automation and human oversight was a recurring theme throughout the day. Klaviyo co-founder and CEO Andrew Bialecki said in the opening keynote that brands should start introducing customer agents now, not because the technology is already perfect, but because those interactions help build the context that will make them more useful over time.
Looking further ahead, he believes retailers also need to prepare for the rise of agentic commerce, where AI agents increasingly become part of the shopping journey.
While he expects brands to continue managing their own customer experiences, he believes building direct, one-to-one relationships with customers will become even more important as those journeys evolve.
For Jackson, the argument comes back to practical value. If AI is going to earn marketers’ trust, it has to do more than generate content. It has to save time and help people focus on the work that still depends on human judgement.
