Marketing Automation Without the Noise: Marte Stenbro on Building Meaningful Customer Experiences Through Data, AI, and Strategic Silence

Marte Stenbro has spent two decades learning one critical truth about marketing automation: anyone can automate their marketing, but few can maintain meaningfulness and relevance. As Co-founder and COO of Homerun Customer Experience, Marte has led complex international projects across the Nordics, Europe, Asia, and the US, specializing in marketing technology, CRM, and e-commerce for ambitious companies ready to scale.

Homerun's philosophy is built on three pillars: laser focus on customer experience, actionable customer insights, and smart use of systems, data, and AI. But Marte's approach challenges the conventional "more is better" mentality in marketing automation. She warns founders about the Ferrari-driven-like-a-lawnmower syndrome—companies investing in powerful automation tools but using them to blast generic messages that damage their brand and exhaust their database.

In this Q&A, Marte shares her practical framework for knowing when to automate versus when to keep it human, how to turn customer insights into effective automated journeys (not just email sequences), and why clean data matters more than the latest AI tool. Her advice is grounded in real experience: she's seen companies obsess over short-term sales bumps while quietly destroying long-term customer relationships. For Marte, meaningful communication beats constant communication every single time—and sometimes, strategic silence is the smartest move a founder can make.

With two decades in Marketing Automation and CRM — and extensive experience leading complex international projects across the Nordics, Europe, Asia and the US — you’ve built Homerun Customer Experience around a core insight: anyone can automate marketing, but few can maintain meaningfulness and relevance. For female founders scaling their businesses, how do you know when you're ready to invest in marketing automation versus continuing with manual processes? What are the most common mistakes you see startups make when implementing automation too early or too late? How should founders think about the balance between automation efficiency and maintaining genuine customer relationships?

You’re usually ready for marketing automation when the volume or the complexity of your customer journey becomes too much to handle manually. If you have a growing contact base or a long, multi-step buying journey, automation can help keep things consistent, timely, and far less chaotic. If something is repetitive, predictable, or admin-heavy, automate it. It frees you to focus on the moments where human expertise genuinely matters.

But the biggest mistakes I see aren’t really about starting “too early” or “too late.” The real problem is starting without thinking. It’s very easy to get excited, hit the automation button, and suddenly send everything to everyone. And every time you push something out, you’ll usually get some results — which creates this illusion of success. But what you don’t see as clearly is the long-term cost: the people who tune out, unsubscribe, or quietly move your brand into their “annoying” folder.

This is where founders often go wrong: they own a Ferrari but drive it like a lawnmower.

We’ve seen companies — especially in B2C — become so obsessed with the short-term sales bump from each automated push that they completely mess up their database and damage their brand in the process. 

Finding the right balance is about understanding where human contact adds real value. Some customers are high-value. Some steps in the journey need reassurance, expertise, or a bit of human nuance. Build your automation so it leaves space for that — with shortcuts, exit points, and signs that tell you when a human should take over.

And honestly, if you’re unsure whether to send something, silence is better than irrelevant communication at the wrong moment. Meaningful beats constant every single time.

Homerun emphasizes that successful automated communication requires “laser focus on the customer experience, actionable customer insights, and smart use of systems, data, and AI.” For female entrepreneurs building B2B or B2C businesses, how should they approach gathering and leveraging customer data to create meaningful automated experiences? What’s the framework for turning customer insights into effective automated journeys rather than just sending generic email sequences? With AI evolving so quickly, what should founders invest in now versus wait to see how the technology develops?

To create meaningful automated experiences, start with your goals. Whether you're trying to reduce churn, grow existing customers, or acquire new ones, you need to know which moments actually influence those outcomes. These are your key conversion points — the real test-drive moments.

Once you’ve identified them, dig into what really happens around those moments:

• What questions pop up?
• What concerns or friction keep repeating?
• What do you know vs. what are you assuming?
• And from the customer’s point of view — what do they actually experience from you right then?

If you don’t know, find out.Talk to Sales and Support. Run a few microsurveys. And honestly: mystery shop your own journey. It’s one of the fastest ways to see the truth.

When you understand what’s going on at those crucial moments, then you can improve them. Automation might be part of it, but meaningful experiences usually come from removing friction, improving clarity, getting the timing right, or opening up a simple two-way dialogue.

And when it comes to AI, the priority is very straightforward: If your data isn’t in order — fix that first. (Yes, there’s AI that can help with that too.) Without clean, structured data, you can’t benefit from any of the AI developments coming your way.

After that, I’d invest in a powerful conversational tool or chatbot that can capture and structure unstructured customer input. It gives you real insight into what customers actually think, want, and struggle with — and it does it at scale.

Everything else can wait. Clean data + real customer signals = your entire AI foundation.

You've worked extensively on personas, customer journeys, and turning strategy into execution. For female founders who know they should map customer journeys but don't know where to start, what's your practical framework? How do you identify which touchpoints to automate versus which require human interaction? What are the warning signs that your marketing automation is hurting the customer experience? How should founders measure whether their automated communication is truly meaningful and relevant, or just adding to inbox noise?

If you’re unsure where to start with customer journeys, again, begin with the basics:What are you trying to achieve? Your goal tells you exactly which part of the journey to focus on first.

From there, recognise that B2B and B2C behave differently.In B2B, you often have several stakeholders involved in the buying process, all with different motivations and concerns. This is why narrowing the scope matters so much. Decide which market, company size, industry, and which stakeholders you actually need to understand for the outcome you’re targeting. Trying to map everything at once only creates broad, generic insights that don’t help you prioritise.

When gathering insights, direct conversations with customers are invaluable — and often far more effective when done by a neutral external interviewer. People are simply more open that way, and someone without preconceived notions will often pick up on things internal teams overlook. Aim to speak with at least 8 people per stakeholder group. And if you suspect two roles in the buying committee have conflicting agendas, interview both — these dynamics often reveal insights you didn’t expect.

Once you understand the real questions, concerns, and friction points that appear along the journey, compare that to how your business currently shows up. That’s where the gaps become visible: wrong timing, unclear steps, missing information, or touchpoints that don’t match how customers actually behave.

When deciding what to automate: Automate the predictable, repetitive, or informational moments. Use human contact when customers need reassurance, expertise, or nuance.

Warning signs your automation is hurting the experience:

• Engagement drops
• Unsubscribes spike
• Support keeps getting the same confused questions
• You read the messages yourself and wouldn’t want to receive them

If any of these show up, go back to the beginning:anchor to your goal, narrow your scope, and improve the specific part of the journey that actually drives that outcome. That’s how you create automation that adds value, not volume.

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