In this segment from the NYSE studio, Jamie Domenici, chief marketing officer of Klaviyo, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to unpack why retail’s AI moment has graduated from big talk to hard delivery. Domenici describes a changed mood at NRF: retailers are no longer circling AI as a “someday” strategy. They are coming to the show ready to operationalize it, pressed by consumers who increasingly trust AI-driven recommendations and expect brands to recognize them in real time.
Klaviyo’s view of AI sees it as the connective tissue for modern commerce, where data becomes the “central nervous system” that links every customer interaction to immediate action. Domenici details how unified data, marketing and service can collapse time-to-execution from days to minutes, powering autonomous marketing and customer support through AI agents. She also argues the old MarTech stack is giving way to an autonomous CRM era, where marketers stay in control but rely on AI to surface insights, drive personalization and keep pace with a world in which “everything’s a checkout.”
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In this segment from the NYSE studio, Jamie Domenici, chief marketing officer of Klaviyo, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to unpack why retail’s AI moment has graduated from big talk to hard delivery. Domenici describes a changed mood at NRF: retailers are no longer circling AI as a “someday” strategy. They are coming to the show ready to operationalize it, pressed by consumers who increasingly trust AI-driven recommendations and expect brands to recognize them in real time.
Klaviyo’s view of AI sees it as the connective tissue for modern commerce, where ...Read more
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What is the vibe at the NRF this year according to Jamie Domenici?add
What factors are currently influencing changes in retail consumer behavior?add
What benefits are customers experiencing from using the service mentioned in the text?add
>> Welcome back everyone. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in theCUBE's NYSE studio on the East Coast. Of course, we have our Palo Alto Studio in Silicon Valley connecting Wall Street and Silicon Valley tech and capital. Jamie Domenici is here, CMO of Klaviyo. Jamie, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming over from the NRF show.
Jamie Domenici
>> Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
John Furrier
>> You guys are doing extremely well, went public here in the NYSE. You're in middle of the retail situation. As you look at the operational benefits that's coming with AI, the customers and then the end users of retail, they're seeing a significant benefit. What's the vibe at NRF this year? I heard the numbers were huge.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, it's great. This is my fifth, sixth, I've been there a few times, and I would say the vibe is different this year. I feel like retail is being disrupted. AI is a disruptor. Customer experience, redefining it, that's the playing field. What's different this year? Retailers are showing up and they're ready. This is not the future, the time is now and they're going on the floor really proactively figuring out how do I leverage AI? How do I take it to the next level? It's real. It became real.
John Furrier
>> I mean, the AI has always been one of those things where it's a strategy. It's not strategy risk at this point. I mean, everyone I talked to from the boardroom to the management layer, "We need to infuse AI in our business." Okay? That's kind of become the cliché and the talking point, but then now the shifts to execution risk. So to me, the vibe is okay, strategy, directionally, we know what to do. Tactically, what do we do?
Jamie Domenici
>> That's the problem. So it's almost like vision. It was a cost center. You have to do it, spend the money. I don't know why. And now retailers are saying, "I'm ready, but help me figure it out." So I think people like Klaviyo, who I'm with, we were built for this, we're ready. We're like, we've already thought about it for you. We're going to tell you the steps, help you build the data, help you get the personalization. So it's been fun. It's been a great show.
John Furrier
>> And the retail market too has always been like, I won't say slow mover, but they're smart movers. The money, they listen to the consumer. The consumer speaks with their wallet, and when they see impact, they move. So what's your takeaway on that? What's the big awakening or what's the big aha moment in retail as of right now?
Jamie Domenici
>> Well, I would say you hit it. Consumers are driving the change, and coming off of BFCM, we already saw a shift. 85% of consumers that we surveyed said, "I'm going to take an AI recommendation and I'm going to buy because of that." So the consumers are ahead and now retailers are having to adapt. And it comes down to personalization. You need to know that buyer. You need to understand their preferences, and you need to be relevant in the moment that they're shopping. And agents and AI and data are critical to do that.
John Furrier
>> I wrote a story before NRF, and a lot of the feedback I got was, it's beyond chatbots, recommendation engines and demand forecasts. That's the classic analytics. Retail's been all over that. It's now an operating system and it's a central nervous system of retail operations.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Take us through how you guys see that. What's your vision for your company? How are you guys meeting them at that point? Because it's not a reset or a pivot, it's a trajectory change.
Jamie Domenici
>> No, no. This is where we were built. So it's so funny you said essential nervous system, because that's how I explained Klaviyo. Companies like Mattel, Glossier, Away Luggage, if you use Away, they use Klaviyo as their central nervous system. So we're kind of the backbone of the business, collecting every single customer interaction, whether you bought in store, you're on their site, maybe you're buying in ChatGPT. We bring all that information into one place and then allow you to take action quickly, whether it's email, SMS, pop-ups, promos. Wherever we are today or wherever we're going, we help you build that infrastructure so that you're ready, right? You're communicating and you're really personalized in the moment.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting, I didn't even contact you from my post, but I want to quote what I wrote on Sunday. "Before AI shapes the consumer experience, it is fixing the internal plumbing. This is not glamorous work, but it's foundational. The retails who get this right build velocity, they move faster, onboard quicker, scale expertise across the organization. AI becomes the nervous system of the enterprise: the operating system."
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> That sounds like what you just said.
Jamie Domenici
>> Honestly, you're speaking my language. Yes.
John Furrier
>> So explain how you guys deploy. Take us through a day in the life of a customer. Okay, I want to lean in. What do I do? Do I have to deploy multiple systems? Take us through the use case.
Jamie Domenici
>> So that's another trend that I'm seeing is your sort of unified commerce system. You need a vertically integrated tech stack. So let me just take you through it. No, you don't need multiple systems. It's not multiple days, it's not multiple weeks, it's not a year-long implementation. You got to move faster than that. But it starts with data. So Klaviyo actually started 15 years ago. We started as a database, and it's a composable database. So again, you're like, "Okay, Jamie." So basically we allow you to connect with any interaction you have with your customer and build a lifetime profile. So anything you've ever done when shopping, go to a website, go in-store, you browse, you bought, we keep everything, size, color, preference. I like to shop at night. That's when I have time. I like looking at text. So I keep all of that information and store it in a database. And on top of that, we have marketing, we have service. Okay, these things have been around forever, but Klaviyo, we're really using AI to modernize it for you. So our Marketing Agent, press a button and we're going to say, "You know what? Based on all the data we have, it looks like this set of customers is ready to repurchase. They bought a top, here's the pants. Send them an email. Press a button, we'll create it for you." But marketing alone is not enough. Customer experience and marketing have to blend, especially when you have an agent. So Klaviyo, we also have our Customer Agent, which is taking all that insight, helping you build marketing, set recommendations and answer support questions all in one.
John Furrier
>> Well, first of all, AI is hot and the traders are going crazy behind us.
Jamie Domenici
>> Oh know. I'm like, do you do this all day every day?
John Furrier
>> I love it here.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> The Friday was hot too. You can see the market down, up and down. It's good colors on the board.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, all the energy.
John Furrier
>> Exactly. And I think this operating system concept is interesting. I want to get your thoughts on this because it's interesting. You guys came at it from a data perspective.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> And it wasn't like a top-down, you'd got on a whiteboard, said, "Here customer, let's do a solution map." You guys came at it from a very unique narrow entry database, but it was flexible enough to adapt to the world.
Jamie Domenici
>> Easy. Yes, our founders, Harvard Grad School, they made an incredible database that was a composable database. So it's easy for a marketer. You don't have to build a spreadsheet, format all the data, upload SQL. Those days are over. As a marketer myself, I just need you to get the data, get it in, and match it for me and make it easy. And that's where we started, which is nice.
John Furrier
>> Okay, so Jamie, I have to get your thoughts on this because I love this bottoms-up kind of a think differently and the world spins in the direction when you get the vision right, which is great for you guys, but that's bucking against conventional wisdom. So if you go look at that time, the state-of-the-art SaaS MarTech stack was that graph of all these different logos. I mean, the MarTech stack was good for web 2.0, but really didn't address some of these generative use cases. Like, oh, a customer's ready to buy, generate some content.
Jamie Domenici
>> Oh, yes.
John Furrier
>> This is what you're talking about.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, we are.
John Furrier
>> What's the MarTech stack look like? I guess it's not a stack, it's more of what happened to the MarTech stack that we knew from say, five to eight years ago to today? How would you describe that change?
Jamie Domenici
>> I mean, I think it looks really different today. I think it's going to look really different tomorrow, much like we have sort of, last week at CES, we're talking about the autonomous car. Last night I was talking with a grocer about autonomous supermarkets. So you walk in and people already know who you are, and I equate that to the autonomous CRM. So now your tech stack, I mean, I don't want to date myself, but my first marketing automation was in Excel. So I'm going way back.
John Furrier
>> Oh my God. Macros.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes, I know. Strangely excited about it, but it's so different now. Marketers are really, they're more like engineers and the tech is doing the work for them, but they're the data engineers. They're the human in the loop. And technology is actually using the data layer and taking action and making prescriptive recommendations. And the marketer's acting on it, saying "Yes, no," listening to customer insights, building out personalized campaigns, flows, and now I would say marketing and customer success are overlapping a lot more.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting. I mean, as much as retail, I mean, retail deserves a lot of credit for data. They've been very good at insights. On the action side, take us through where insights and actions convert, because you're kind of coming at it from, okay, you got all this data. We can connect to it with the nervous system with you guys, but now action is point of sale, which is either digital or physical.
Jamie Domenici
>> Well, everything's a checkout now. So that doesn't matter if you're in a store or if you're in ChatGPT. And who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? You wake up and something's new. So I think the really... Companies that are going to succeed, they're thinking about that and they're creating a tech stack, bringing all of their information into one, and they need to take action immediately. You cannot wait. You do not have three days for someone to build you a flow or a campaign and a marketing email, SMS. You don't have time for that. So at Klaviyo, we're bringing that all into one place. The data layer, email, SMS, analytics, and action, so you can immediately get your flows and campaigns down to the personalization level within minutes, within seconds. No more delay.
John Furrier
>> On the velocity piece, you got, remember the omnichannel, now you have unlimited channels. You have generative things that are going to come in, prompts. You got to be ready for that unified layer.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> How do you market that? And take us through some of the conversations you've had at NRF in the hallways, in meetings. What's resonating? What's the positioning? How do you explain the value and how do customers create the value and extract the value?
Jamie Domenici
>> Well, you're talking about language. I love marketing. I'm talking about, and I market to marketers. So my job is really fun.
John Furrier
>> You got to be good. They're high bar.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes. Right. They can sniff you out. So that's where we talk about CRM built specifically for B2C companies. Klaviyo did this where we're actually helping you automate everything. So this B2C CRM, talking about autonomous marketing, but really what they like is we make it real. So I could just show you our Marketing Agent and our customers are like, "Oh, I need that." Or let me give you an example. We have something called Customer Hub. So Thirdlove, they sell intimate apparel. They need to know you. When you come on, what have you bought before? They don't want to search. Their customers don't want to look. They want you to come to their website and know them. So with our Customer Hub, we create a personalized experience. We know everything you've bought. We can tell you recommendations, and we can answer support questions all in one. And Thirdlove doesn't need to have somebody who's managing it. With Klaviyo, it's always on all the time and personalized to every buyer.
John Furrier
>> And how's that working for some of the customers? They love it? Results?
Jamie Domenici
>> It's great. I think they found like 200% growth in five days just from turning this on, because customers don't want to be targeted. They don't want to get an email when no one knows them anymore. They want a full end-to-end experience that starts and ends in every single interaction they have with your brand.
John Furrier
>> As you guys had your growth strategy and continue to grow, one trend that's coming out of this year's trailblazers with retail and NRF is the folks that were leaning in and scratching the surface with agents a year ago have extended that and were kind of prepped for the agent hype that's going on now. And they've seen explosive record growth, record revenue. What have you guys learned? What's been the learnings over the past year, and what's the focus for next year?
Jamie Domenici
>> Great question. I mean, you can't walk down NRF without seeing agent, agent, agent. Everything is an agent. Build an agent. So I think we launched two agents last year. One for the back of house, which is your Marketing Agent. Makes your job easier. One front of your house, which is Customer Agent. And what we've learned, that Customer Agent has to be smart, it has to be trained, it has to have the right information, and it really has to be personal. So where we know where the world is going, it's no longer just build a great product, have a great marketing campaign, know your buyer. But also, more and more brands are having to build an experience. So I don't just buy a pair of running shoes. When I go online, I want to say, "Where are you going to be going? Here's the outfit you should wear. Here's the temperature, here's a training plan." So more and more companies are thinking about building an experience, not just a point of sale product.
John Furrier
>> What's the profile of your customer base right now? How would you classify your current business mix?
Jamie Domenici
>> Honestly, we're from entrepreneur to enterprises, and in the last-
John Furrier
>> So you're pretty horizontal.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Any retail operations, physical stores with digital or digital, a hundred percent digital to-
Jamie Domenici
>> Across the board. You have a store, you have an end customer, you're doing B2C, we can help you.
John Furrier
>> Does the word CRM scare people?
Jamie Domenici
>> I love CRM, so you're talking to the wrong gal. And you know what? Our customers have... That's how they identify. They run CRM, they run their customer management.
John Furrier
>> They have CRMs.
Jamie Domenici
>> So I would say it's not scary, but it is changing and modernizing. So the CRM of yesteryear is not the CRM of the future.
John Furrier
>> Do people get enamored by the fact that a CRM could be flexible and responsive, customizable? Because some people I talk to have a view of, I love my CRM because my system of records, all the truth. And then on one hand, on the other hand, it's like it's too slow, it's antiquated. It's the 90s software, big company rollout. I got a call for a ticket support. So there's kind of like the old school. So take me through that bridge because I think CRM as a concept is customer relationship management. I mean, conceptually, it's categorically relevant, but talk about how it's modernized.
Jamie Domenici
>> That's a great question. And I think we have customer relationship management, in my world, it's kind of consumer relationship management because you have to go down to that individual consumer in the retail space where I think it's going as autonomous, I do. Which also used to be a scary word because then you're like, what's my job? How do I play? Where are we going? I mean, this is the reality. We're moving to an autonomous world where every marketer, every customer support agent, every company should press a button, get insights and take action. But I think it's getting less scary. I keep falling off my chair here. I think it's getting less scary because people are understanding where the human in the loop fits, right? And they're understanding, I still need to have oversight. I own the brand. I'm the CMO. I'm still going to do creative, but I need this technology to help make my job easier. And I think people appreciate it.
John Furrier
>> I think people see value. This is a year of value of what we're reporting. I think the abstraction away of complexity is a tailwind for retail, because the scary part has been, I want to get something done, but I got to jump through hoops or I got to integrate this. You mentioned you don't need multiple systems. I can just do data connectors. You can put an abstraction layer on top of with software.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yes, unified commerce system, that vertically integrated stack. It's not as sexy as you want, but it's actually critical and it's becoming a differentiator. One of the things I was surprised too when I entered into the B2C space into this retail world, everything was so fragmented. People will run email over here, texts over here, their website over here. And as a CMO myself, I'm like, why are you doing that? So omnichannel I know is something we take for granted. It seems commonplace, but it's actually not. It's something that now I would say is now just becoming a bit more mainstream and adopted. Send me a text at night, an email during the day. Where are we routing?
John Furrier
>> Yeah, yeah. I mean, we were researching with some customers that were saying that, "Hey, we have this fragile IT system, multiple systems," but they're just running agents under the covers to do the back and forth to unify it. Either data connectors through APIs or delegated agents that are trusted across. And it's completely transparent to the customer.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, which I think is okay.
John Furrier
>> And that's okay.
Jamie Domenici
>> I think that's okay.
John Furrier
>> That's good.
Jamie Domenici
>> I think that's what-
John Furrier
>> I don't want hassle....
Jamie Domenici
>> our consumers want. We want instant gratification. We want our questions answered, but we also want, the consumer wants you to know who they are, which I just think that understanding versus targeting, I just think we're finally there. We've been talking about it a long time, but it's really becoming real.
John Furrier
>> All right. Put a plug in for the company, what your priorities are, what you guys' value proposition is. What's your priorities?
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking. But at Klaviyo, we're a CRM built specifically for B2C companies. And as I said, you said, I love it. Quote me, I'll quote you, we're like your central nervous system. So companies, Mattel, Glossier, Away Luggage, I've been with them all week on the floor. They're using us to really bring all their information into one place and take action on it immediately.
John Furrier
>> And what's the results they're seeing? Can you share some of the KPIs?
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, I think what we're seeing is, we call it KAV, which is your Klaviyo Attributed Value. And customers are seeing leaps in bounds coming directly from their agent sales and thinking about how they can drive efficiency across the board. So better connections, better relationships, which is creating long-term revenue.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and that's another point people miss. They AI is a cost-reducer. It's a revenue driver-
Jamie Domenici
>> Revenue driver....
John Furrier
>> when you do it right.
Jamie Domenici
>> When you do it right.
John Furrier
>> Well, Jamie, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. You guys are blazing the trail. Next year, what are your top goals?
Jamie Domenici
>> Top goal, all AI, right? So continuing to build that autonomous marketing and autonomous service, and I think where Klaviyo is going to be leading the charge, is how we bring that together into one unified customer experience that blends the best of both worlds and making that .
John Furrier
>> And you're expanding globally too.
Jamie Domenici
>> We're going around the world. Yeah. We've been expanding already for the last three years, but we're expanding out in Europe and now we just opened an office in Singapore. So we're really going into new offices and new frontiers.
John Furrier
>> All right. Well, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it.
Jamie Domenici
>> Yeah, thanks for having me.
John Furrier
>> Awesome. All right. You're watching the Retail Trailblazers. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, where they're changing the game, where AI is changing the customer experience, business operations, and ongoing change in AI with user benefit.
John Furrier