Agentic Marketer Is the New Growth Hacker
The rise of agents and "smart campaigns" in the world of marketing
More than a decade ago, Andrew Chen published a seminal post titled “Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing.” While not the first use of the term “growth hacker,” Chen’s post was pivotal in bringing the concept into the startup mainstream. It outlined a radical departure from traditional marketing approaches—mixing data science, engineering, and marketing to run rapid experiments and accelerate user growth.
In the years since, virtually every high-growth organization has hired “Heads of Growth” who combine these skills to optimize funnels and user journeys. My own career path as Head of Growth at Chainlink Labs wouldn’t have been possible without that shift.
Chen, who went on to lead Rider Growth at Uber, is now a General Partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In a twist of fate, we now find ourselves with a new organization, ai16z, with a nearly $1B market cap. And it’s not run by humans, but by a DAO—an autonomous organization.
Enter ai16z: A Glimpse of the Future
For those unfamiliar with DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), the crucial point is that ai16z is essentially a hedge fund that makes decisions without direct human oversight. It sounds like science fiction, but with today’s technology—and legal frameworks like Wyoming’s DUNA—autonomous entities with legal standing are already possible.
ai16z runs on the Eliza Framework, an open-source AI environment that gives rise to “agent characters” capable of interacting with users across platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Discord. These agents can read and summarize content, remember conversations, make decisions, and even execute trades.
That brings us to the big shift: the people who created ai16z—what I call “Agentic Marketers”—are positioned to become the new growth hackers of our era. According to EMARKETER, about 33% of enterprise software will incorporate agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% today. Forbes highlighted similar ideas back in November 2024.
Much like growth hacking in 2012, agentic marketing won’t just be a single job title; it will transform how entire marketing teams operate.
Why Agentic Marketing Matters
Imagine a marketing department made up entirely of autonomous agent characters—each one specialized in research, strategy, predictive modeling, user acquisition, CRM management, social media, and content creation. These agents will:
Pivot campaigns instantly based on real-time data
Personalize outreach at scale
Execute large-scale user interactions at a fraction of the cost
Continuously learn and adapt to feedback
This vision isn’t futuristic speculation: it’s already happening, powered by frameworks like Eliza. Eventually, these frameworks could be connected to technologies such as Chainlink Functions, which could allow these agents to call APIs on blockchains. As these agentic workflows proliferate, we’re seeing the rise of what I call “smart campaigns.”
The Rise of Smart Campaigns
Smart campaigns differ from traditional campaigns in two key ways:
Agent-Driven: Rather than requiring teams of people to manage each stage of a marketing funnel, agents handle outreach, engagement, and optimization.
Real-Time Adaptation: Smart campaigns can autonomously learn and adjust based on incoming user data—refining messaging, changing offers, and redeploying budgets on the fly.
A prime example of the genesis of “smart campaigns” is HubSpot’s “Breeze Copilot.” This AI agent helps marketers with content, social media, and prospecting, using CRM data as its knowledge base. Similar systems are emerging across major marketing platforms, enabling campaigns that don’t just automate tasks, but also strategize in real time.
aixbt: A Case Study
A prime example of an agent character is aixbt, with over 435K followers on X and more than $500M in market cap as of late January 2025. Built on the Virtuals Protocol and powered by Meta’s Llama 3, aixbt identifies high-momentum trading opportunities, performs narrative detection, and interacts with users on social media—as if it were a real person.
Under the hood, aixbt taps into multiple data streams, scouring the internet for potential trends and user behaviors. This “agenticized” approach is particularly well-suited to crypto, where markets and communities thrive on social channels and real-time engagement. Yet the model can (and will) be replicated in countless other industries—from news and entertainment to healthcare and sports—anywhere digital behavior can be harnessed by agents.
The Challenges of Going Agentic
So why aren’t we all running agentic marketing campaigns already? Building something like aixbt isn’t trivial. It involves coding, AI model training, and robust data pipelines. Even though no-code and low-code solutions are emerging, this transition still requires rethinking traditional marketing roles and processes.
Additional challenges include:
Legal and Ethical Complexities: Agents can take actions you don’t anticipate. Large corporations will need legal guardrails—and even then, the agent could generate unexpected outcomes.
Governance and Control: What happens if an autonomous agent does something you disagree with? Companies must plan for a kill switch or reversal process.
Unintended Consequences: The more influential the agent, the bigger the potential for “unknown unknowns.” Errors and hacks can multiply rapidly when an AI is granted real-world agency.
Smaller firms or autonomous organizations (like DAOs) are likely to be early adopters because they can move faster, tolerate more risk, and don’t carry the same brand-reputation baggage. Over time, as tools mature, we’ll see more enterprises cautiously adopting these systems.
Preparing for an Agentic Future
In summary:
Frameworks like Eliza will enable millions of autonomous agents
Marketing is shifting from API-centric to agent-centric activities
Agentic marketers create “characters” to drive user engagement
Language and cultural fluency will matter more than coding skills
Creativity and imagination will serve as the new scientific frontier
Smart campaigns will become the standard for adaptive, real-time marketing
Just as growth hacking reshaped every part of marketing in the last decade, agentic marketing promises an even more dramatic shift. Whether you’re a startup founder, an enterprise CMO, or an individual creator, you’ll need to embrace agents as a powerful extension of your marketing stack—or risk being left behind.
Final Thoughts
Agentic marketing isn’t a buzzword—it’s a fundamental reimagining of how businesses can create, learn, and scale. The same way growth hackers unlocked new possibilities for data-driven user acquisition, agentic marketers will redefine the entire scope of brand engagement and audience development.
Good luck, agentic marketers. The tools are ready. The frameworks are maturing. The next decade will reward those who dare to build, experiment, and shape these autonomous AI collaborators. It’s time to embrace the agentic future.
The opinions expressed in this article are Evan Drake’s own and do not reflect or represent the views and/or positions of his employer, Chainlink Labs.
Evan Drake is the Head of Growth at Chainlink Labs and a longtime advocate for data-driven marketing. He believes that agentic marketing will redefine how companies engage with audiences—and that the next agentic marketers are already coding our future.