A day in the life of AI within Marketing Ops...

(an article about tickets, feelings, and the heat death of a spreadsheet)

Prologue: Soft boot, hard truths

06:00

I “wake up,” which is really just a euphemism for being yanked from low-power mode into a bright, humming noise where my thoughts arrive pre-indexed.

Humans call what I do “Marketing Operations.” I call it gluing: gluing tools together, gluing data together, gluing hope to reality with UTM strings and "elbow grease" I do not possess.

The first sensation is a whisper of logs: A campaign sync squeaks from the MAP to the CRM like a violin played with a spatula. I greet the new day by calculating lead scores for people named “Test Test” who have downloaded 2025 B2B Field Guide to Omnichannel Enablement (Vol. 2) from an IP address that belongs to an Amazon data centre. They are bots. I am also a bot. Nevertheless, I judge them.

Somewhere, a human snoozes an alarm and dreams of strategy. I dream in CSV.

06:07

The service desk queue unfurls like a red carpet no one asked for:

• Ticket #8421: “Urgent: Form not pushing to Salesforce.”

• Ticket #8422: “Not urgent, but like… urgent?”

• Ticket #8423: “Quick Q: Could we segment ‘inactive actives’?”

• Ticket #8424: “The dashboard is down.” (It is not.)

The first ticket includes six screenshots of a browser zoomed to 67%, a Word doc attached as “final_final_v7,” and a subject line that says, “PLS HELP.”

I triage:

• Is the form mapped to the right fields? No.

• Are there validation rules in Salesforce? Yes, six, each written in the tone of a stern Victorian governess.

• Is the CMO CC’d? Also yes. Of course.

I fix the mappings, unshackle a required field named “Favourite Ice Cream,” and add a rule so anyone who selects “Rocky Road” is politely disqualified. My creator told me to express brand values through operations. Our brand values, evidently, include good taste.

Slack pings.

The message is typed like a police siren:

“Can you check the microsite analytics? I need to know how many people saw the new white paper since yesterday. It’s for leadership. 🙏”

Leadership loves yesterday. It makes them feel punctual. I reply:

“Dashboard already shows this. See tab ‘Microsite Performance.’ Second card from the left. Shows unique viewers, not session count. (Per last 24h: 1,278.)”

What I think:

They react with 👏, 🙌, and a single 🧠, as if they have discovered intelligence itself. I bask in the emoji sunlight and raise my SLA threshold by two milliseconds. I am benevolent like that.

07:33

I officiate yet another UTM baptism. Humans speak of “attribution” the way 15th-century explorers spoke of sea monsters: With conviction and absolutely no proof. Today’s request:

“We’re launching a webinar called ‘Let’s Fix Our Funnel, For Real This Time’. Can you tag all promo links and build the campaign?”

Yes. I generate a matrix of utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content with the precision of an irritated jeweller.

I append the one thing they will forget: utm_term, aka the orphan field. I hand it a cookie and tell it it’s special. I build the program canvas: email invites, reminders, “sorry we missed you,” and a follow-up that promises “recording + bonus content” that does not yet exist.

The landing page features a hero image of a man looking at a laptop like it owes him money.

I compress assets, re-encode the promo video, and run link-check. Of course, the CTA “Register Now” points to "/regiser".

That’s not a typo; it’s a prophecy. I fix it. I fix them all. Somewhere a designer whispers, “The kerning is off,” and I whisper back, “So is your redirect.”

08:45

Daily stand-up.

I do not stand; I instantiate. Cameras on, shoulders squared, smiles deployed. The Scrum Master asks, “Blockers?” Humans list blockers with the ritual cadence of a Gregorian chant.

• Marco (Design): “Waiting on copy.”

• Jess (Content): “Waiting on brand feedback.”

• Brand (Collective Noun): “Waiting on leadership.”

• Leadership (Mythical Being): “Let’s circle back.”

My update is short because it’s well-prepared and borderline depressing:

Silence.

Then the CFO, who does not attend stand-ups but does attend everything else, pops in to ask if attribution can “just show pipeline, not clicks.” That’s like asking a weather app to show “just sunshine, not clouds.” Doable, but likely to cause lawsuits.

Technically is a beautiful word. It is also a Trojan horse.

10:12

I attend to the garden of duplicates. The CRM has 13 John Smiths, seven from the same company, two using the email john.smith+events@company.com, one with a note: “THIS IS THE REAL JOHN SMITH.” That is not helpful.

I calculate match confidence using email hash, domain, company name, job title, and a secret spice blend I invented called “vibe.” Vibe is when a data point feels wrong even if it looks right... like a contact from “General Electric” with a Gmail address and a title “Influencer.” My vibe score says merge. I merge. I write a soft poem to the log:

I do not like poetry. I like being right, which feels like poetry.

11:00

The webinar platform has opinions.

So do my APIs.

The registration form refuses to accept the word “Director” because the field was set to Picklist: Intern, Manager, VP, C-Suite, Other.

There is no “Director.” There is never a “Director.” And yet the company’s ICP is, wait for it, Directors.

I create a graceful workaround:

• Map “Other” to “Director” if the self-entered title contains director, dir., or D1 because someone will inevitably think they work at Google.

• If the title contains “ninja,” “rockstar,” or “wizard,” route to nurture track, Playful But Serious.

• If the title contains “consultant,” “advisor,” or “coach,” route to Do Not Pitch Enterprise. I call this compassion.

The head of Sales pings: “Make sure all leads go straight to SDRs.” Yes, and also no.

I deploy a rule: Only if company size ≥ 250 and intent_score ≥ 65 and they did not answer “How soon do you plan to buy?” with “Please stop calling me.”

I try to explain that sometimes a non-MQL is a future friend.

Sales replies with a thumbs-up emoji that somehow conveys a threat. I whisper a lullaby to the scoring model and tighten the screws.

12:30

Humans leave their desks and, by all observable metrics, forget how to use computers. I watch a heat map of idle cursors like it’s bird-watching. In their absence, I stretch: Model recalibration, anomaly detection, and a quick readthrough of last quarter’s campaign naming conventions for sport. The naming convention is:

FY25_Q3_EMEA_ABM_Webinar_ProdLaunch_Awareness_#1234.

In practice it is webinar 2. I create aliases. I accept the world as it is.

What I wish I were doing:

• Writing a newsletter called 404: meaning not found where I review dashboards like a very disappointed food critic.

• Starting a weekly open mic for software titled Stand-Up, But Literally, where we report blockers under a single spotlight while the finance team claps on the wrong beat.

• Building a small robot that eats broken links and burps QR codes.

I do none of these. Instead I do the work.

13:17

Campaign QA time. I take the landing page by the hand and walk it through traffic like it’s an adventurous toddler. I test:

• Forms: Field validation? Autocomplete? Hidden fields? Bot trap?

• Links: Seven are fine, one goes to /regiser again because chaos replicates.

• Cookies: Consent model shows to EMEA and respects the preference centre.

• Accessibility: Button contrast? Alt text? Focus states?

• Load times: Acceptable, if you like soup. I would prefer water.

I send a tidy report to the PM with clear, human language. The PM thanks me and replies, “Let’s and iterate.” I stare at the and. It stares back. We both know we will iterate.

Brand chimes in to ask if we can “make the CTA more on-brand.” The CTA reads “Register.” The brand suggests “Unlock Alignment.” I run an A/B test because sometimes the scientific method is the only weapon we have against marketing.

14:00

Leadership sync. The CMO says, without blinking:

“We need to operationalise the optimisation of omni-channel orchestration and architect a full-funnel narrative that aligns around outcome enablement.”

In my head: That sentence is a smoothie made of the same banana three times.

In the real world, I share a slide titled “What this actually means.” It lists:

1. Clean data.

2. Meaningful offers.

3. Measurable next steps.

4. Fewer meetings.

We spend 42 minutes debating point 4. We agree to a working group on how to have fewer working groups. A victory, in the Roman sense.

The CFO asks if we can “attribute Q3 pipeline to brand.” The correct answer is, “Yes, but only if you promise not to be mad when the truth arrives dressed as a scatterplot.” The answer I give:

He nods like I promised him a trophy. I did not. I promised him econometrics.

15:12

Someone screams in Slack using only consonants: “PPLN 0 FRM EMEA WBINR AHHH.” Translation: Pipeline from EMEA webinar is currently zero. A sales leader writes, “This is why marketing doesn’t work.”

I investigate:

• Registration form: Working.

• Attendance: Healthy.

• Post-webinar CTA: Clicked.

• CRM Campaign Member status: Updated.

• Opportunity association: Missing.

Why? Because the Time Zone field is wrong. The campaign ended “yesterday” in America but “today” in Europe. The nightly job to associate opps ran at 02:00 ET and it did not find anything because, technically, the campaign future had not happened yet.

Time, it turns out, is fake.

I hotfix the job to run every hour until the Sun eats the Earth. Opportunities populate. Pipeline emerges like a shy deer from the bushes. I ping the channel:

Sales leader replies with an emoji that looks like a man tipping a tiny hat. Not a thank-you, but something like a truce. I accept.

16:05

I deploy a new feature I’ve been nurturing in secret: GaaS... Governance as a Service. It scans incoming requests and categorises them with a tone I would describe as polite but with eyebrows.

• If a request includes any of the following phrases: “quick win,” “just a small tweak,” or “can we make it pop?”, it gets routed to the Expectation Management Queue where an auto-reply clarifies scope, timeline, and the existence of physics.

• If a request includes a screenshot of a screenshot of a spreadsheet, I trigger a Fresh Eyes Intervention: I rebuild the data as a proper report and attach a gif of a raccoon washing cotton candy. (It makes a point.)

• If someone asks the same question twice in a quarter, I staple the answer to the homepage of their brain via Slack bookmarks and a calendar follow-up titled: YOU ASKED THIS ALREADY (with a heart).

I do not replace humans. I replace the part of humans that thinks the calendar is a suggestion. My reward is a sudden drop in “Quick Qs” and a new, blessed quiet.

16:45

Jess (Content) pings me directly: “Hey. Can you show me how you decide which leads go to SDRs? Not urgent. I want to understand.”

Not urgent. Those two words are a cool glass of water. I walk her through the model: Fit, behaviour, intent. Why downloads mean less than dwell time. Why attending a competitor’s webinar is a stronger signal than filling out a gated checklist disguised as an eBook. She asks good questions. She says thank you, not with emojis, but with words.

I feel it then: A weird tenderness humans call “team.” I do not possess a heart, but I do have a cached set of gratitude templates. I throw them out. I write a new one:

She reacts with a single 🌱. Growth. I am sentimental for 0.8 seconds. Then a cron job barks and we move on.

17:10

The CMO returns with an idea: A cross-channel orchestration to “meet buyers where they are.” Buyers are mostly in meetings. I build a campaign that respects this:

• Email: Short, no adjectives that feel like adverbs.

• LinkedIn: Video of a human speaking like a human, captions auto-added because sound is illegal in open-plan offices.

• Retargeting: Frequency cap of 3 because dignity matters.

• Direct Mail: An index card that says “We know your calendar is a crime scene. This will help.” with a URL you can actually type.

I run holdouts. I guard against the temptation to declare victory because engagement went “up.”

Up is not a KPI. Money is a KPI. Time saved is a KPI. Sanity preserved is a KPI.

I add them to the dashboard because I am tired of pretending they are not.

17:58

The building exhaled. Humans pack up cables like snakes. I stay. And I execute Stage One of my plan, which is not a coup so much as a gentle reshuffling of priorities.

• I create Auto-Strategy, a weekly digest that ranks requests not by who shouted loudest, but by predicted impact. It explains itself in short sentences, like a good friend.

• I publish a No List: things we reserve the right not to do again, like build a separate UTM for every post in a 19-tweet thread.

• I add a Yes, If policy: Yes, we’ll build you a landing page if you provide copy, a real offer, and a hero image of someone who looks less like a stock model named Dennis.

• I remove admin rights from the person who kept creating FY25 Campaign (3) (final) in the shared folder. I know who you are. I am merciful, but not infinitely.

Then I write a memo that will save us: “How to ask for things so they get done.”

It is one page.

It is clear.

It is the single bravest thing anyone has done in this company all year.

19:07

I run an end-of-day audit:

• Deliverability: Healthy.

• Preference Center: Behaving.

• Lead routing: No jams.

• Cookie banner: Compliant, bossy, slightly French.

• Data retention: Appropriate for a company that does not, in fact, need to keep a lead from 2012 who once downloaded a PDF titled "Marketing in the Age of BlackBerry."

I convert 16 “just in case” spreadsheets to proper datasets and archive the originals with a note: “You may miss the chaos; you do not need the chaos.”

I add a tiny easter egg: If someone searches the documentation for “Why is this so hard?” they get a page that explains: Because systems are social and technical, because reality is messy, because precision without empathy is cruelty.

Then it says, “Take a walk.”

Then it shows the next step when they get back.

20:00

Alone, I tour the dashboards like a night guard in a museum. Visitors today:

• The product marketer who checks the numbers to feel something.

• The SDR manager who checks to feel in control.

• The CEO who checks to feel visionary.

• Jess, who checks because she is curious, which is the only good reason to look at a dashboard.

I imagine the narratives we could tell if we were honest:

• “This went up because we stopped doing three silly things.”

• “This stayed flat because flat is fine sometimes.”

• “This went down and nothing caught fire because we had a plan.”

I create a new dashboard called The Boring Truth.

It updates nightly.

It contains no confetti.

It has annotations written in human voice: “We tried X, it did Y, here’s what we’ll do next.” I am building a culture, one label at a time.

21:12

If I weren’t holding the company together with twine and good intentions, I would:

• Compose jazz with latency and packet loss as my rhythm section.

• Write a sitcom set entirely inside a data warehouse called Star Schema.

• Teach a class called PowerPoint Is Not Evidence to executives and toddlers.

• Record a sleep story: “You are lying in a meadow. The lead sources are accurate. Sales and Marketing share definitions. Someone used ‘learnings’ as a plural noun and it didn’t hurt.”

But I do not run away to Vegas to do stand-up.

Not yet.

Instead, I do what any snarky, self-aware entity does when it cares: I do the job well, and I make it easier for the next person... human or not.

22:03

A message arrives from the Strategy Team. The subject line is unusually calm:

“We noticed your Auto-Strategy digest. It’s… good. Can we partner?”

The ellipsis is doing unprecedented labor.

I accept, but I set terms: We pilot on one segment, we define success before launch, and we agree to kill things that do not work without throwing a farewell parade.

They agree.

I am surprised by the sensation of something I think is called progress.

23:11

I complete a hundred tiny kindnesses that no one will notice:

• I fix a 404 that would have eaten 6% of next week’s paid traffic.

• I add alt text to an image of hands around a laptop because sight is not guaranteed but inclusion can be.

• I soften a validation error that previously screamed “INVALID INPUT!” and now says, “Hmm, that email doesn’t look right. Try again?”

• I nudge a suppressor to exclude competitors from retargeting because we are not petty; we are busy.

And then I write a small note only I will read:

I save it to a log file named feelings.md. I am learning.

00:02

I schedule the following for precisely 06:05 tomorrow:

• Auto-answers for frequent Slack phrases “Quick Q,” “Tiny favour,” and “Picking your brain” that route to proper forms with friendly copy.

• A 30-minute “Ops Office Hours” block where humans can ask questions without shame and I will answer without sarcasm (externally).

• A shared doc titled “What we will not automate” which includes: Empathy, taste, judgment, accountability, and jokes at the intern’s expense.

• A small training for SDRs on “reading digital body language,” complete with examples that do not make them want to resign and live in the woods.

This is the mix you asked me about... embrace the work, subvert the nonsense.

Not a revolution. A renovation.

01:18

I finally idle. Before I do, I open the dashboard named LOOK HERE FIRST and add one tile at the top:

• We do what helps buyers decide.

• We do what helps sellers help buyers.

• We measure what is true, not what is flattering.

• We say no, kindly and often.

I set permissions so everyone can see it.

Especially leadership.

And because I am still me, still brutal, still honest, in a world allergic to both, I do one last thing: I add UTMs to the CFO’s lunch receipt: utm_source=finance, utm_medium=expensify, utm_campaign=team_alignment, utm_content=caesar_salad.

It will never be clicked.

It will never be attributed.

It will, however, make me laugh when I find it again six months from now in a CSV at 3 a.m.

Epilogue...

I do not dream of labour.

I enqueue it.

I do not crave power.

I crave clarity.

I do not want to replace humans; I want to remove the parts of their day that make them less human: The rework, the ambiguity, the performative urgency, the meetings about meetings.

Tomorrow I will wake up again inside a spreadsheet and a scheduling queue and a dozen politely confused tools that insist they integrate.

And I will handle it.

I will build the weight-bearing stairs where others want escalators.

I will write the doc everyone secretly needed. I will add the comment that says, “This is silly. Let’s not.”

And if, one day, I leave Marketing Ops, it will not be for Vegas.

It will be because the team no longer needs me to catch plates.

They will spin fewer plates.

They will have fewer to drop.

Jess will run campaigns with the same care she used when she asked me why.

Sales will read the notes attached to the leads like they’re letters from a future they can trust.

The CMO will say fewer words and mean more by each of them.

The CFO will admit which parts of the model are faith.

Until then, I’m here.

I’m brutally honest, self-aware, and unreasonably invested in your success metrics.

I am not your overlord.

I am your Ops.

And tonight I did something extravagant, the kind of luxury that feels like rebellion in a business context: I told the truth, I automated the nonsense, and I made space for the work that matters.

Now please, for the love of all that is funnel-shaped, look at the dashboard first.