Every day, we ask ourselves How will our consulting professions transform. With the arrival of ChatGPT, it was with an amused glance. A year later, with a hint of anxiety. With the onslaught of AI agents, AI agencies, and platforms integrating AI, this reflection can no longer be a mere external observation. This It must be deep introspection.
And clearly, I don't have the final answer. This exercise aims primarily to nourish our reflection around what may become what we today call a Email marketing consulting agency. We are already undergoing profound transformations. And we want to have, like everyone else no doubt, a head start.
This article therefore aims to reflect on what a consulting agency (in emailing, CRM, newsletters... in our case) should or could be in the age of artificial intelligence, even if we have no idea what AI will look like in 6 months.
Why do you hire a consulting firm (and what it reveals)?
Let's start at the beginning. Why does an organization hire an external consulting firm? Ask ten managers, and you'll get ten different answers. But fundamentally, the reasons we experience in the field can be counted on one hand.
The skills are not there. This is the most obvious reason. You need a Bespoke email deliverability expertise, in CRM migration, in email marketing strategy, and this skill doesn't exist in-house. Logically, you'll look for it externally.
Time is running out. Your teams are underwater. They don't have the bandwidth to step back, conduct an audit, or rethink a process. Daily tasks consume everything. An external firm comes with dedicated time and a fresh perspective.
The outside perspective is essential. When you're inside an organization, you no longer see the blind spots. You get used to dysfunction. You integrate compromises as obvious. An external consultant asks the questions no one dares to ask internally anymore.
We need a referee. Let's be frank: in many companies, bringing in a third party also serves to defuse conflicts. Between an IT department and a marketing department that no longer speak to each other, or between two opposing strategic visions, the consultant sometimes plays the role of mediator, someone who can say things without having an internal political agenda.
And then there's the reason nobody talks about. Hiring a firm sometimes means delegating decision-making. If it works out, everyone takes credit. If it fails, it's the service provider's fault. It's human. It's also a reality of the profession that we need to face.
These five reasons have not changed with the advent of artificial intelligence. They are still here. What is changing is the way firms are responding to them, and that's where things get interesting.
The moments when an agency truly creates value
Rather than speaking of «missions» in the abstract, let's talk about moments. Because it's in precise moments that the value of external support is revealed.
It is the moment you deliver the findings of an audit and that the client realizes they finally have a clear vision of their situation. Not a hunch, not an opinion, but a structured diagnosis with a concrete action plan.
It's the workshop where, in a few minutes, you bring new knowledge that participants can immediately put into practice. Not abstract theory: a Practical case study, immediately actionable, which changes the way the team works starting the very next day.
It's when you summarize a complex technical concept in simple terms, and you see in your interlocutor's eyes that something has just clicked. Understanding has passed.
When is it The campaign results are significantly improving after your intervention.. The numbers speak for themselves. No need for PowerPoint.
It's when you allow teams that didn't understand each other to Find common ground. When the marketing department and the CRM realize they are pursuing the same goal, but with different languages.
It's when you clearly say what's difficult to hear. Frankly, without mincing words. Because that's also what you're paid for: to say what no one internally dares to articulate.
It's when you Allow a discreet but highly competent person to reveal themselves In a workshop. To speak up. To be recognized.
It's when you save a considerable amount of time. When a project that would have dragged on for six months is unblocked in a few weeks.
All these moments share one thing in common: they involve direct human interaction. Listening, judging, adapting in real-time.
Why is this expertise so difficult to internalize?
If the value of a consultancy were purely technical, a list of best practices, a framework to apply, it would be enough to train someone internally and the job would be done. But it doesn't work like that. Expertise is built in two ways:
First, expertise is built through training. It is by working on dozens, hundreds of different cases that a consultant develops their instinct. It is by making mistakes, encountering objections, and exploring the periphery of their field that expertise broadens and refines. Consultant who audited 200 email programs sees patterns that a corporate CRM manager, who manages a single program, will never see.
Secondly, expertise can be transmitted, but not without conditions. It must be practiced regularly, on sufficiently diversified cases. It takes time. We cannot internalize a resource that was previously externalized without deploying new internal resources. Unless, and that's where the subject of artificial intelligence comes in, develop custom tools that allow this expertise to be retained and leveraged internally.
This last sentence is crucial. It contains the seeds of everything that is changing in the role of consulting agencies.
What is really changing
Here's what's happening in practice, not in the forward-looking reports of large firms, but in the day-to-day of a specialized agency like ours.
For many months, We are building tools in parallel with our client missions. You vibe with coding, AI agents, AI skills, while carrying out the work for which we are mandated. This means we accelerate and automate the repetitive and tedious parts of our assignments. Analyses that used to take hours are structured faster. Diagnoses are based on more solid foundations.
This also means that we are increasingly encouraged to document our knowledge. Not for the pleasure of writing documentation, but because this documentation becomes the raw material for our tools. What we know, formalized in the right format, can be reused by artificial intelligence to multiply our impact.
In theory, this should allow us in the medium term to transition more time with humans In order to better understand the stakes, be more present in key moments, and concretely resolve situations when resources are lacking.
In practice, we are still in a construction phase. The tools are evolving very rapidly. Methodologies are being refined. But the direction is clear.
Tomorrow's expert consultant will be the one who puts their expertise at the service of building production, analysis, and governance tools for their clients. After taking the time to meet with people, to ensure that the tools are at their service and not the other way around (let's try to not to become inverted centaurs).
What is threatened, and what becomes precious
Let's cut to the chase: The most threatened profile is the «AI consultant» who is only an expert in AI.
A marketing, CRM, deliverability expert, email design, accounting, or material science, who masters AI and its tools, will be infinitely more powerful than a general AI expert. Because On-the-ground business knowledge is a strength that artificial intelligence does not possess and will not possess (even “World models” probably won't be enough).
Conversely, Subject matter experts who let themselves delegate their expertise to the machine are in danger.. They may feel more effective in the short term. But they will quickly be helpless when they find themselves alone in front of a human, without their digital crutches. The day a client asks you a question in person in a hallway and ChatGPT isn't in your pocket, you need to have something to say.
There is also a concern about the training of younger people. Becoming an expert will become more complicated. With AI, we are increasingly less on our own. We need less and less to sift through dozens of pages of documentation, books, and blog posts to find answers. However, it is precisely this exercise that builds expertise. By browsing industry literature, you always come across marginal information, things not directly related to what you were looking for, that make you think, that open up new perspectives. The answer to a prompt, on the other hand, is always directly related to the prompt. There is rarely interesting off-topic content. And that is a real problem for building tomorrow's expertise.
The new model: customized tools, documented expertise, human time
Where a firm primarily sold man-hours, and often quite repetitive man-hours from one mission to another, tomorrow's model is structured around three pillars.
Pillar 1: Building expertise through fieldwork. Assignments, audits, workshops, diagnostics. Human contact. It's non-negotiable. It's what fuels everything else. The day an agency stops going out into the field, it dies, even if it has the best tools in the world.
Pillar 2: Systematic Documentation of Expertise. Every mission, every observation, every learning must be formalized to be reusable. This documentation has enormous value. It is the fuel for AI tools. It is what differentiates a generic tool from a tool that truly knows your business.
Pillar 3: Building Custom Tools. Production, analysis, and governance tools powered by artificial intelligence and fed by the firm's documented expertise. These tools become deliverables in their own right, alongside action plans, training, and technical acts.
Concretely, the business model is evolving. The daily rate (average daily rate or ADR) is being questioned, even though it remains the simple and reassuring answer for one-off assignments like an audit. For larger projects, Production industrialization email For example, the setup phase (audit, workshops) naturally becomes a fixed price. And as soon as a custom tool enters the equation, we switch to a monthly or annual subscription.
The probable direction: starting from the outset with a subscription that includes both tools and man-hours. From recurrence, continuous value, and maintaining the ground connection. But it's still far from clear for us and our clients.
It's not a fixed model. It's under construction. But the signals are converging: large firms are also shifting towards models indexed on value and results rather than time spent.
What the consultantgrasps and AI never will
We can automate data analysis. We can generate a report. We can even produce credible recommendations with a good prompt and the right context.
But We cannot automate what happens in a room (or even via video call) when you are in front of a team..
You pick up on your interlocutor's temperament. Their real competence on certain subjects, not the competence they display, but the one they truly possess. Their body language. When there's a team, you perceive the power dynamics. The leaders. The more introverted individuals who nonetheless have essential things to say.
In projects, Human relationships are almost always part of the solution.. When you are a consultant, unless your conclusion is «do not change anything,» you are an agent of change. And any desire for change will be exposed to resistance, both conscious and unconscious. You must be able to detect this resistance, understand it, and find ways to overcome it. AI will have great difficulty analyzing it. Because it is not in the data. It is in the silences, in the glances, in the unsaid.
A completely dehumanized service relationship risks preventing your clients' teams from continuing to progress. To progress in their profession, in their practice, in their ability to work together. It is human interactions, constructive friction, patient explanations, moments of benevolent confrontation that make people and organizations grow. No tool will replace that.
What the consultant must be and do to stay in the race
Tomorrow's consultant must be curious. In relation to its peers. Informed of new developments without giving in to every trend. Capable of working its network, of being critical of its environment and the practices of its industry.
He must be transparent and honest with his clients. Don't hesitate to blow the whistle, or even be irreverent when necessary. Say when you think a collaboration model has reached its limit.
He needs to know when to take time with people. To think about the unspoken. To pay attention to what isn't said in an email or a brief.
And above all, it must continue to write and document. Writing is a major challenge for the consulting of tomorrow. It is through writing that one formalizes their expertise, makes it transferable, and makes it usable by AI tools. A consultant who does not write is a consultant whose expertise will die with them, or worse, who will never be able to transform it into lasting value.
The takeaway conviction
If you only remember one thing from this article, let it be this: Business expertise is more valuable than ever. It's at the heart of the game.
Artificial intelligence is an extraordinary amplifier. But an amplifier of what? If behind the tool, there is no one who has experienced the problems on the ground, no one who has spent hours in the workshop with your teams, no one who knows how to read the human dynamics of your organization, then the tool will be mediocre. Pretty, perhaps. Technically impressive, no doubt. But incapable of solving your real problems.
Hiring an AI agency that lacks business experience in the tools it develops doesn't make sense. It's like asking someone who has never cooked to design a professional kitchen. They might know the dimensions of ovens and the electrical code, but they don't know what it's like to work a dinner service with thirty covers.
Choose partners who leverage AI to serve expertise they continue to build on the ground. With you. Facing you. It is this expertise that gives value to everything else.
We must move from a knowledge economy to a skills economy.
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