- Tension: CMOs at high-growth firms are under pressure to automate at scale while still championing long-term brand strategy.
- Noise: Trend cycles push automation as a magic fix, glossing over the operational and cultural shifts required to make it work sustainably.
- Direct Message: The CMOs getting it right aren’t choosing between automation and strategy—they’re using a shared pattern of alignment, discipline, and orchestration to scale both.
To learn more about our editorial approach, explore The Direct Message methodology
We’re past the point where automation is optional. In 2025, it’s expected. Customer journeys move across dozens of channels. Personalization is table stakes.
Industry surveys reinforce the priority: 76% of marketers describe real-time marketing as tailoring content the moment a customer clicks, scrolls, or hesitates — essentially personalizing every touch in active response to live behavior.
Budgets need to stretch, teams need to move faster, and AI-enhanced everything is already reshaping how we think about marketing execution.
But here’s the catch: automation makes scaling easier—but only if the strategy behind it doesn’t collapse under the weight of rapid growth.
During my time working with tech companies in California, I saw this play out firsthand. One firm had integrated multiple marketing automation platforms, each promising streamlined performance. But without internal alignment, the result was fragmented messaging, inconsistent customer experiences, and an overwhelmed team.
On paper, they had every tool. In practice, they couldn’t make those tools sing.
That’s the crux of today’s challenge. High-growth CMOs must expand capacity, complexity, and customer intimacy all at once. And increasingly, they’re turning to automation—but only succeeding when they’re clear about what automation can and can’t do.
The CMOs getting it right aren’t racing toward the newest tool. They’re solving for orchestration. And their playbook is emerging.
When speed meets strategy
What happens when the pressure to move fast collides with the need to think long?
According to the Hinge Research Institute’s 2025 High Growth Study, firms growing 20%+ annually are more likely to have embedded automation into multiple areas of their marketing stack—from lead nurturing to client onboarding. But automation isn’t what causes the growth. It’s what sustains it.
These CMOs aren’t automating for automation’s sake. They’re guided by the tension between two critical priorities: speed and strategic depth. They know that scale can’t come at the cost of brand coherence or market positioning. So, they treat automation not as a replacement for marketing thinking but as an amplifier of it.
That tension—move faster, think deeper—is where the best operators thrive.
High-growth CMOs don’t start with the tech. They start with the story. Then they design systems to scale it.
The rush and the risk
If automation is the answer, why are so many firms still getting it wrong?
The marketing industry runs on trends. One year it’s chatbots. The next, it’s predictive scoring.
Then, AI content engines.
Each promises to solve the same problem: doing more with less. And while the tools keep changing, the pattern doesn’t.
Here’s what often happens:
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A new automation platform is adopted across teams without a shared operating model.
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Content, campaigns, and customer journeys become increasingly complex—but without unified oversight.
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Teams build faster but drift from strategy. The “why” behind their messaging blurs.
This is what I’ve seen across clients and startups alike: trend cycle fatigue.
Not because automation doesn’t work, but because the organization wasn’t ready for what it demands—alignment, consistency, and a data-informed feedback loop that keeps marketing tethered to strategy.
According to a 2024 PwC Pulse Survey, 78% of CMOs say they’re investing in generative AI and automation tools to “transform” their marketing functions. Yet only a small fraction reported full confidence in their ability to govern these tools cross-functionally. The risk isn’t that automation will fail.
It’s that it will succeed — just not in the way you intended.
Direct Message
The CMOs getting it right aren’t choosing between automation and strategy—they’re using a shared pattern of alignment, discipline, and orchestration to scale both.
They aren’t picking sides in the speed vs. strategy debate. They’re reframing the question: How can we use automation to protect what makes our brand work—and scale it in a way that still feels personal, intentional, and consistent?
That’s the real lesson from high-growth leaders in 2025. And it’s one we can all act on—tool by tool, decision by decision, team by team.
What we can learn from high-growth CMOs
The CMOs getting it right aren’t choosing between automation and strategy—they’re using a shared pattern of alignment, discipline, and orchestration to scale both.
When we examine what these leaders do differently, we see recurring patterns that aren’t about tools—they’re about decisions.
Let’s break down 3 of the most actionable.
1. Strategy first, automation second
Before implementing new automation layers, high-growth CMOs map the core customer journey and clarify their strategic narrative.
Automation is used to reinforce consistency, not override it. Personalization, for example, is grounded in brand values—not just in behavioral data.
Example: A retail fintech brand launched a multi-touch email flow for its most engaged users. Before building anything in the platform, the CMO worked with brand and product teams to ensure every message laddered back to a clear positioning: “banking as empowerment.” The campaign scaled fast—but stayed coherent.
2. Cross-functional design beats siloed execution
The most effective automation isn’t owned by marketing alone. It’s co-designed with sales, product, and ops. High-growth CMOs invest in shared dashboards, joint planning cycles, and integrated customer data infrastructure to ensure each touchpoint reflects a unified vision.
Expert Insight: As Lauren Vaccarello, former CMO at Salesloft, explained in a panel earlier this year, automation doesn’t mean the same thing across departments. You need a shared vocabulary and success metrics—otherwise, you’ll end up optimizing different things in different directions.
3. Automate for signals, not just output
Rather than just accelerating delivery, the best CMOs build systems that generate insight. They use automation to test hypotheses, detect friction, and adapt in real time.
Every campaign is a feedback loop, not a one-and-done.
Case in Point: At a health-tech scaleup I worked with last year, the marketing team automated a content journey based on behavioral segments—but what really moved the needle was tracking drop-off points and adjusting narrative tone. Automation gave them the speed to learn what worked—and the structure to evolve it quickly.
Building automation that scales with you
The CMOs shaping 2025 aren’t trying to remove human thinking from their marketing—they’re using automation to protect and extend it.
They understand that scale without strategy is just noise at volume. And automation without orchestration leads to chaos, not growth.
If you’re leading a team, here are three starter questions worth asking:
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Are our automation tools aligned with our brand narrative—or drifting from it?
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Do we have shared ownership of the customer journey across departments?
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Are we learning from our systems—or just using them to move faster?
These questions don’t have one-size-fits-all answers. But asking them now can prevent expensive missteps later. Because in the end, automation should make room for better strategy—not bury it under complexity.
The CMOs who will win the next wave of growth already know that. And they’re designing for it now.
