From Prompts to Personalization: How AI is Rewriting Email Marketing - with Villads Leth, CEO and Founder of Alvas.ai

What happens when the Content Crisis meets AI creativity?

In this episode of the Hello $Firstname podcast, I sat down with Villads Leth, CEO and Founder at Alvas.ai, to explore what fully individualised, AI-written email content looks like in practice. And why it’s forcing marketers to rethink what content is, how it’s created, and what it means to personalise at scale.

🎯 Here’s what makes this conversation so relevant:

Villads and his team are enabling brands to go far beyond segmentation. They’re generating email content that’s 100% unique—based not just on the products in a customer’s basket, but also their behavioural history, preferences, and context. It’s 1:1 communication, built in real time by AI.

But this isn’t just a story about scale.

It’s a story about what happens when content creation becomes decisioning—and when marketing teams have to shift from writing to prompting, from planning to QA.

🧠 Key Topics We Cover:

• The Two Modes of Content Production:
  • Hyper-individualised 1:1 emails for triggered flows
  • Efficiently produced, semi-personalised content for broader segments and campaigns
• Prompting ≠ Briefing: Why marketers need to learn to talk to machines—and teach them to speak brand.
• Content QA at Scale: What internal processes are needed to safely roll out GenAI-driven content.
• When Not to Personalise (or at least individualise): Yes, really. Villads makes a strong case for restraint when intent is fuzzy.
• The New Content Pipeline: How GenAI transforms not just what content gets made—but how, when, and by whom.

Villads also reflects on how fast things are moving: 🧠 The cost of content creation with AI has dropped by a factor of 200. ⚠️ But trust is fragile—one bad AI-generated message, and the damage is done. 💡 That’s why they’re big on guardrails, education, and starting small.

📺 Watch the full video here 📥 Download the CX Layers & Content Crisis Manifesto

📚 As always, this episode is grounded in:

• The book 'Hello $Firstname – Profiting from Personalization'
• The Content Crisis Manifesto

📘 Buy the book 📄 Download the abstract 🎧 Get the audiobook (free) 🖼️ Download all illustrations & models 🎤 Book me for a talk or workshop