AI, our vision and the elephant in the room

Session Summary

This talk set out to address both the excitement and the reality around AI adoption in customer engagement. Ravi Dodda, CEO & Co-founder, MoEngage began by confronting the “elephant in the room”: that 95% of AI pilots fail to deliver results despite the hype

From there, the vision for AI at MoEngage was outlined: embedding AI agents directly into marketers’ workflows, reducing manual effort in segmentation, campaign design, and decision-making, and improving over time through feedback loops

The talk showcased practical AI applications, including Segment Assist (natural language–driven audience creation), In-App Template Builder (using generative AI for campaign assets), and Campaign Decisioning Agents (reinforcement learning to optimize channel, timing, and frequency of customer interactions)

The message was clear: AI must be purpose-built for marketers, embedded in their day-to-day, and focused on measurable ROI.

Thought-Provoking Quotes 

• “95% of AI pilots are failing to deliver results. Only 5% achieve what they set out to do.”
• “The real challenge isn’t building AI—it’s embedding AI into marketers’ workflows so it drives real outcomes.”
• “Decisioning is about matching the right customer with the right offer, channel, and timing—and letting reinforcement learning improve that loop every day.”
• “AI ROI isn’t about new vanity metrics—it’s about outperforming the benchmarks your leadership already tracks.”

Top Takeaways

1. Why AI pilots fail: Lack of high-quality data, absence of brand context, and failure to integrate into marketer workflows.
2. MoEngage’s solution: Merlin AI embeds AI directly into marketing workflows to help lean teams scale impact.
3. AI agents in action: Segment Assist, Copywriter with Brand LLM Kit, Jinja Assist, and In-App Template Builder all solve real marketer pain points.
4. Deterministic & explainable AI: Decisioning must be reliable, avoid hallucinations, and provide transparency on “why” an action was taken.
5. Vision for the future: Democratize advanced decisioning (like Amazon-style personalization) so all brands can deliver next-best actions and offers across channels.