Remember when building a website required knowing HTML? Today, platforms like Wix and Shopify let anyone create professional websites with a few clicks. Now, the same revolution is happening with AI automation – and it’s about to transform how businesses are ran.
A tell-tale sign was the $17 million Series A round Vancouver-based startup Gumloop secured earlier this week. This seems to have been the starting shot for a raft of AI automation product announcements from players like OpenAI and Microsoft.
AI Automation Tooling Is Becoming More And More Accessible
With these tools, creating complex AI workflows is now easier than building a PowerPoint presentation. Platform like Gumloop, Make.com (affiliate link) and Microsoft's Copilot Chat offer drag-and-drop AI automation that doesn’t require a single line of code.
But they are not alone. A whole ecosystem of user-friendly AI automation tools is emerging. These tools offer easy drag-and-drop integration with with your business apps (like email or spreadsheets), databases (anything from CRM to analytics), and AI tools (the ChatGPTs and Copilots of the world), and let you craft automated workflows that run at set times or on set triggers.
Think of it as the “Canva moment” for AI automation. Just as Canva transformed graphic design from a specialized skill to something anyone could do, these new tools are making AI automation accessible to every business leader.
Automate Or Perish
If you’re a business leader or marketing executive, this trend presents both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity? You can now implement AI automation solutions without depending on technical teams or expensive consultants. The challenge? You will need to get your hands dirty 🤓
The companies that will win in 2025 aren’t necessarily those with the biggest tech budgets, but those who move quickly to embrace and implement these new no-code AI tools.
Slack? Send Me a Gumloop!
We think that 2025 will be the year when AI automation becomes as common in business operations as having a company Slack or Teams message chat. The teams that don't adopt these kind of tools will quickly fall behind and lose out to those that do.
PS If you're interested in a more in-depth look at how to set up these kind of automations, check out this Youtube video and accompanying blogpost on how I set up the automations for this newsletter:
AI-Powered Cold Email Outreach: A Game-Changer For Small Businesses?
In this week's case study I wanted to share some experiences implementing Luna.ai for my own digital marketing agency's outreach campaigns.
The Big Wins
Goodbye Full-Time Sales Reps
One of the most significant advantages has been eliminating the need for a dedicated sales representative. Luna.ai effectively handles a volume of work that would typically require a part-time sales position, dramatically reducing operational costs while maintaining consistent outreach efforts.
Infrastructure on Autopilot
The platform takes care of all the technical heavy lifting that would to take countless hours - or days and weeks - to set up yourself:
- Email domain management
- Email warm-up sequences
- Deliverability optimization
- Sender reputation monitoring
A 300 M People Contact Database
You read that right - I couldn't believe it the first time I read it either. Luna has access to roughly 300 million highly relevant email business addresses from across the world, allowing you to craft highly targeted email campaigns.
The AI Automation Sweet Spot
90% Automation Reality
In all, Luna automates about 90% of the cold outreach process. This level of automation allows small agencies to punch well above their weight class in terms of outreach capacity.
The Strategic 10%
But all that automation doesn't mean you're free to spend your day at the beach. Your email campaigns won't do anything without strategic guidance and hands-on attention to detail.
For high-performing campaigns, you still need to
- Craft compelling subject lines
- Refine your calls-to-action
- Monitoring campaign performance
- Making strategic adjustments based on response patterns
Customer Intelligence
While AI excels at lead research and email crafting, the magic happens when you combine this with deep customer understanding. The most successful campaigns emerge from:
- Clear audience segmentation
- Tailored value propositions
- Strategic messaging alignment
- Targeted CTAs that resonate
Initial results
When I started the campaign I relied too much on Luna's defaults, so I haven't had any positive responses yet. I'm currently actively crafting the emails to improve both the messaging and my agency value proposition.
I can imagine that businesses that have been around longer and have a more established strategic brief would get results a lot faster... Will report back when I have a more sizeable sample of responses 📨
This week in AI
- ChatGPT Launches Scheduled Tasks: OpenAI has released a new beta feature for Plus, Pro, and Team users that allows ChatGPT to run automated tasks on schedule. The system supports up to 10 concurrent tasks that can run at specific times or recurring intervals, even when users are offline.
- Microsoft Launches Free Copilot Chat: Microsoft has unveiled a new tier of their AI assistant, making Copilot accessible to all Microsoft 365 commercial customers. The free version includes GPT-4o-powered chat, file analysis capabilities, and AI image generation.
