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AI Insourcing & the Future of Marketing: 10 Things You’ll Insource (and Brag About) Soon

AI Insourcing & the Future of Marketing: 10 Things You’ll Insource (and Brag About) Soon

AI Insourcing & the Future of Marketing: 10 Things You’ll Insource (and Brag About) Soon

Thought Leadership

The future of marketing is AI-first! And in this AI-first future, “outsourcing” will start to feel like showing up to a Zoom call in a fax machine costume. Not cute, and honestly, not practical.

Enter AI insourcing: your secret weapon for building a nimble, AI-first marketing strfategy that’s not just keeping up with the future of email marketing, but setting its course. 

With the rise of accessible insource solutions, insource service and insource tech, DTC and retail brands are discovering they can bring more in-house than ever, all without burning out the team or breaking the bank. AI adoption is accelerating the shift to in-house marketing operations. Brands are using AI for hyper-personalization, real-time customer segmentation, predictive analytics and content creation. This allows them to optimize performance and respond rapidly to market changes without relying on slower timelines or creative discrepancies of external partners. In regards to email marketing, in particular, there has been a clear upward trend in insourcing it over the past decade, with approximately 75% of brands already doing so.

With all this momentum building behind AI insourcing, it got us thinking about things your team will probably (and maybe should definitely) insource asap. 

Some are serious. 

Some are silly. 

But all are part of the future of email, marketing, and brand brilliance.

10 Things You’ll Be AI Insourcing & Bragging About Soon

1. Email Automations Will Direct Your Campaign Strategy

Why have a human guess your best email segments and personalized content when AI already knows Karen prefers neutrals and Todd loves bold florals? This is one example of what agentic email AI can do! 

Agentic AI is a new class of artificial intelligence systems that autonomously make decisions, plan and execute complex tasks. For example, AI agents specializing in email can personalize contents per subscriber, with minimal or no human intervention. 

The future of email marketing shows that employers are asking marketers to do more with less, 10xing their outputs and skill sets. Leaning into the data-rich insights of agentic email AI is one way to meet those expectations without losing your mind (or all your time).

2. Automated Office Coffee Ordering

A well-fueled team is a winning team. While we can't invent this type of AI innovation at Backstroke, we'd like to use this opportunity to pitch it to a brand who can. It’s not marketing per se, but the perfect coffee order is essential to everything that is. 

we wish agentic ai could make our daily coffee order


Can the machines handle the beans? Then you can handle the big ideas.

3. Writing Your Best Email Subject Lines

Your AI agents can generate hundreds of personalized subject lines, while you’re still debating if “moist” is acceptable . (It isn’t.)

Personalized subject lines can boost open rates by up to 50%. Meanwhile, 65% of email marketing pros use subject line personalization in >50% of their campaigns. Tools like AI subject line generators make this ridiculously easy to incorporate into your routine.

4. Generating Product Images

Insourcing this with AI means faster launches, higher consistency and no more design freelancers trying to make “elevated yet approachable” happen. Nowadays, DTC marketers can upload an image of a product, add a short prompt with your messaging, and Backstroke will generate on-brand, professional-grade graphics in seconds.

ai generated product images by backstroke

5. Mood Boards & Creative Direction

Speaking of visuals . . . Why outsource your vibe—or spend hours crying into Canva—when AI can generate 50 pitch-perfect options in minutes?

6. Customer Segmentation & Predictive Analytics

Up to 70–75% of email subscribers are considered inactive, having not opened or clicked emails in the past six months to a year. That number’s not only staggering, but it’s actually pretty scary! 

We like to call these people zombie subscribers. Cleaning them out of your list—and bringing many of them back to life—is easier than you’d think! Check out our guide How to Spot, Survive & Re-Engage 5 Zombies on Your Email List to see how.

7. Retention Marketing Playbooks

AI that spits out triggered win-back flows while you sleep? Simply put, you can insource that.

ai insourcing results

8. Creative Performance Predictions

Imagine a world where you never again argue over which shade of beige converts better. Yes, that sounds like heaven and AI insourcing makes it possible. 

Marketers can now combine descriptive prompting of their emails’ desired elements with performance insights into 12k+ ecommerce brands. Watch below to see Backstroke’s Head of Creative demo how this works.


9. Social Listening & Trend Forecasting

Be the brand that jumps on the right trends (and gracefully avoids the cringe ones) with AI-powered trend forecasting.

AI powered trend prediction meme


10. Competitive Analysis

Competitors probably love to copy you. Every time you innovate, they’re right behind you with a watered-down version, acting like they thought of it first. Insourcing your competitive analysis flips the script and keeps you ahead of the curve of professionals who run standard competitive analyses on a quarterly basis.

Insourcing this work and powering it with AI means you can stop relying on generic third-party reports that arrive three months late and tell you what you already knew. Instead, you’ve got eyes everywhere, in real time. You can spot when competitors are creeping up on your strategy, mimicking your UX or lifting your creative ideas. You can also innovate, clap back or choose to buck big trends before they costs you.

The Future of Marketing is Yours to Insource

The future of email marketing and the future of digital marketing at large is clear. It’s smarter, faster and more human . . . thanks to the right insource solutions and AI-first tech. You’ll stop throwing money at agencies to “leverage synergy” and start bringing the magic in-house.

Sounds great, right? So let’s insource like it’s 2025!