Babylist Went From 5 Million to 1 Billion Emails With AI

Babylist expects to send 1 billion emails and push notifications this year, up from 5 million emails two years ago, after rebuilding its email operation around artificial intelligence. CMO Jill Cress disclosed the figure at the Zeta Live conference in New York City on Oct. 8, where marketing executives from Babylist, PepsiCo and Sharp Electronics described how AI has moved from experiment to daily practice.

The scale increase solved one problem and created another. Babylist now struggles to keep its brand voice intact as machines produce more of its content.

"We are now starting to see that our tone, our edge, our authority is getting a little bit diluted because we're not necessarily doing the work of feeding back into the context layer," Cress said.

How Does Babylist Keep Humans in the Loop?

At Babylist, a universal baby registry, email marketers no longer build messages, write subject lines or run quality assurance. They manage AI agents (software systems that execute tasks with limited supervision).

"All of our email marketers are actually managing agents," Cress said. "They're becoming more embedded in product squads where they can actually lean into design and accelerate the more strategic work that needs to get done."

The shift is producing measurable results, though Cress offered no specific figures. "Our open rates are improved, our click-through rates are improved, and the impact to the overall business is better," she said.

The company draws a hard line on one content type. Independent product reviews stay human-written. "Babylist's moat is our trust," Cress said. "Ensuring that humans are writing [our independent reviews] is incredibly important, and we take that very seriously."

AI-generated imagery is replacing photo shoots, and Cress said the new imagery outperforms the old photography. She framed the operating principle simply: human oversight must stay close to the brand voice as volume grows.

What Does AI Search Mean for PepsiCo?

Mark Kirkham, CMO of PepsiCo Beverages U.S., argued that marketers should stop separating AI search from search altogether. The comparison he drew traces back two decades.

"I think we need to just stop talking about search and agentic search. It's just search," he said. "Like it was commerce and ecommerce 20 years ago. It's all just commerce now."

Kirkham pointed to TikTok's growing role in search behavior and questioned whether the distinction between traditional and AI-powered search still serves marketers.

"A search is a human behavior. That's the human behavior you're solving for," he said. "What's the technology that's going to make it quicker, faster, more efficient, more accurate?"

At PepsiCo, AI's most immediate payoff comes in discoverability — how easily consumers find a brand when they ask a platform for answers.

"For the most part, where we're getting the most impact is honestly in discoverability," Kirkham said.

He cited Gatorade as a brand whose scientific benefits require consumer education, especially as people turn to platforms like Reddit and Gemini for information. "If they're being educated through Gemini, then you've got to be smart, and you have to have very clear discoverability," Kirkham said.

The stakes rise as generative AI platforms recommend a limited selection of brands. On the creative side, PepsiCo uses AI to test concepts and produce animatics (rough animated versions of ads) faster, cutting work that previously consumed significant time and money.

Asked whether AI improves creative quality, Kirkham was blunt: "I don't know. I think we're getting better at the process."

How Does Sharp Turn Service Data Into Insight?

Sharp Electronics feeds customer service data into AI and distributes the findings across departments, said Grace Dolan, President of Sharp Electronics' U.S. Consumer Division. The company runs a nationwide repair team of 550 people and a call center with 35 employees, generating thousands of data points daily.

"In the past, they just kind of sat there," she said.

AI now identifies emerging customer issues and pushes reports to other teams. "Every day I'm able to get a report on what the newest issues are. Why are people calling?" Dolan said. Sales teams learn which problems to watch for. Marketing teams learn what belongs in FAQs.

Dolan described the work in modest terms: "it's just smarter use of information that always existed."

She also detailed an organizational change. Sharp assigned one employee to track AI developments, produce an internal newsletter and build case studies of AI use across the company. "It's not that he's the chief AI officer," she said. "He is just somebody on my team who has a tremendous passion for AI."

Dolan closed with a caution that applies across all three companies. "I think we're still figuring it out," she said. "We're learning, and we talk about it a lot, and we always feel behind."

For each brand, the pattern is the same: AI expands capacity, and the competitive question shifts from production volume to oversight, discoverability and trust.