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Retention AI
Live bootcamp

Build an AI second brain that writes hundreds of CRM messages you would actually send

Two hours. Ten people. I show you the whole thing, step by step, and you leave with my files.

Reserve your seat — $197

Full refund if you are not happy. Details below.

Thursday 8 October 16:30 UK 2 hours 10 seats

Gartner expects 60% of brands to use agentic AI for one-to-one customer interactions by 2028. Forrester describes agents that reason and plan their own execution. This is a practical session about building the vast amounts of content needed for 1-1 CRM.

If you’re not running one-to-one CRM yet, this exact approach can be used to scale your existing lifecycle activities, producing high quality scalable output that can power your personalisation programs.

Most CRM teams are stuck between two bad options

You can write a small amount of good copy. Or you can write a large amount of average copy.

Almost nobody manages both, and the reason is not talent or effort. It is that the work of writing a lifecycle message properly, deciding the moment, choosing the behavioural principle, matching it to the customer’s state, writing it so a human would actually read it, takes real time. Multiply that by every segment, every channel, every variant and every language, and the effort compounds so much you need an army of people.

So teams do what the maths allows, and every programme ends up with gaps nobody chose.

Messages produced against human hours. The manual line flattens, and that flat part is where your customers drift.

AI was supposed to solve this. Mostly it has made it worse. Now teams produce large amounts of copy that reads like AI, says nothing specific, and gets ignored by customers who have learned to spot it in one line.

The problem is not the model. It is that a general-purpose model knows nothing about your customers, your brand, your tone, your lifecycle, or the principles that make retention copy work. Ask it for a winback email and it gives you a winback email. Generic, plausible, dead, useless.

So you go back to what you have always been doing, which is writing all the copy manually.

And the gaps stay where they are.

Customer state down, lifecycle moment across. Most programmes have nine cells built and seventy-one empty. The empty ones were never a decision.

What a second brain actually is

A second brain is a structured set of files that holds what you know: your brand voice, your customer states, your lifecycle logic, your product, your data, your principles. The AI reads from it before it writes anything.

The difference is total. An AI tool without a second brain guesses. An AI tool with one writes from your context, in your voice, against your principles, for your customer. And with mine, you get the differentiator: my 27 years of experience and all of my CRM Marketing course content, meaning the output is actually good.

That is the entire idea. The work is in building it properly, and the build is what I am going to show you and the IP is what I am going to give you.

Seven kinds of knowledge the model reads before it writes a word, including the craft layer: structures, layouts, subject lines and CTAs.

A look inside mine. The session goes through how it was built.

Judge it for yourself

Here is the same brief, run twice. Once against a general model. Once against a second brain.

I am not going to argue that the second one is better. Read them.

One of those could be sent by any brand in any category. The other one could only be sent by one business, to one person, on one day.

That is not a better prompt. It is a model that read forty files first.

What I have built with mine

I do not teach this from theory. It runs my business and it delivers my client work.

A global sports streaming platform, a live tournament

Four thousand communications, built bespoke to the tournament and produced in real time as it progressed. Each message matched to what had actually just happened, the performances, the goals, the results, the scandals, and to where that individual customer was in their own lifecycle. No team writes four thousand pieces of live copy by hand during a tournament.

A subscription hypnotherapy app

The entire lifecycle programme, across a catalogue of more than a hundred hypnosis sessions. Over seven hundred hyper-personalised messages driven by subscription status, progress through the hypnotherapy programmes, listening consistency and lapse risk, across multiple channels. Every message specific to one person’s actual state, not a segment average.

A US software business serving financial advisers

An agentic one to one CRM programme for their adviser audience, where the advisers themselves could send messages to individual clients, generated from the context the adviser already held about that person. Not a campaign. A message from a person who knows you, at scale.

Three very different businesses. One method. That method is what the two hours covers.

What happens in the two hours

I share my screen and build in front of you. You watch, you ask questions whenever you want, and you keep the recording.

  1. 1

    Building the brain

    The structure. What goes in it, what stays out, how the files are organised, and why that structure is what makes the output good. Most people get this wrong by treating it as a folder of documents.

  2. 2

    Connecting it to Claude Cowork

    How the brain and the model actually talk to each other, and how to set it up so it reads your context every time rather than when you remember to paste it in. Note we can also cover other tools like ChatGPT, depending on audience requirements

  3. 3

    Skills for specific problems

    How to build a skill for a job you do repeatedly. A winback sequence. A price rise announcement. A new-feature campaign. Once it exists, that job takes minutes rather than days, and it comes out consistent every time.

  4. 4

    Producing content at volume

    The part everyone wants. How to generate large quantities of copy that is grounded in CRM design principles and behavioural science, and that does not read as machine-written. I will show you the difference side by side.

  5. 5

    Filling the brain

    How you get what you know out of your head, your documents and your existing programmes, and into the files. This is the step that separates a second brain that works from a folder that does not.

  6. 6

    Getting it into your CRM platform

    Generating a thousand messages is only useful if they end up in Braze, or MoEngage, or Optimove, or Bloomreach, ready to send. This is the part nobody talks about and the part that stops most people. I will show you the route for the major platforms, and you will get the grid.

The session is limited to ten people. That means you can interrupt when something is not clear, and you can ask how it applies to your own programme rather than to a generic example.

What you get: training + retention knowledge base

Two things, and the second one is the part people underestimate.

The training is the two hours. You watch the whole build, ask whatever you want as I go, and you keep the recording.

The knowledge base is what makes the output good. It is the CRM marketing IP I have spent twenty-seven years accumulating, written as files a model can read. Thirty-two behavioural science principles and what each one is actually for. Fifteen retention strategy techniques. Eleven headline techniques, ten explainer copy techniques, seven CTA techniques. Sixty-two case studies and fifty-one brand examples.

Without it, a second brain is an empty folder and the model guesses. With it, every message is grounded in a principle that works, in your voice, for your customer.

You leave with mine. Then you fill it with yours.

Getting it into your platform

Producing a thousand messages is one part of the problem. The other part is getting them into your tool fast enough that they are still current when they send. That is where most people give up and start pasting one message at a time.

Every CRM platform already has the functionality to take content in bulk. Content blocks, template libraries, catalogues, fragments, imports, APIs. The names differ and so do the routes, but the principle holds everywhere. You load the content once, then reference it from your journeys rather than rebuilding it inside them.

In the session I show you how to do that on whatever platform you are running, and the written instructions go home with you.

Platforms covered

Braze Iterable Optimove MoEngage / Ampe Zelara Insider One Airship Bloomreach Salesforce Marketing Cloud Adobe Journey Optimizer Klaviyo HubSpot

Running something that is not on this list? Say so when you book and I will cover it.

CRM 2.0 and CRM 3.0, and why this matters more than it looks

CRM 2.0 is where almost every good team is now. Journeys and lifecycle programmes. Humans design the segments, the triggers, the branches and the content. The machine executes what the humans decided. It works, and the ceiling is obvious: the programme can only be as rich as the amount of content your team can write and maintain.

A second brain lifts that ceiling immediately. More journeys, more branches, more variants, more languages, without more headcount. That is the benefit you feel the week after this session.

CRM 3.0 is agentic. Instead of a human designing the path, an agent decides which action to take for which customer at which moment, choosing from a menu of actions a human has pre-approved, against a goal a human has set. The human owns the boundaries. The agent owns the choosing.

Here is the part that is not obvious, and it is why I am running this now rather than next year.

An agent is only as good as the action space it can choose from. If the pre-approved menu holds twelve messages, the agent makes twelve-message decisions. At a million customers you need thousands of pre-approved actions, each on brand, each grounded in a principle, each matched to a customer state. No team writes that by hand. It is not a resourcing problem you can solve with budget.

The second brain is how the action space gets built. Teams that have one will be able to go agentic. Teams that do not will have the technology and nothing to put in it.

This is not theoretical. I know the person who built this at Uber. Netflix runs on the same principle. Both of them built the content library first and pointed the decisioning at it afterwards.

You do not need to be anywhere near agentic for this session to be useful. It pays for itself on your current programme. But the teams who start now are the ones who will have an action library when it matters.

What you leave with

My second brain markdown files

These are the ones from my CRM marketing course, which is the IP I have spent twenty-seven years accumulating, written as files a model can read.

Inside the files

32 behavioural science principles, and what each one is actually for
15+ retention strategy techniques
11 headline writing techniques
10 explainer copy techniques
7 CTA techniques
62 case studies
51 brand examples
8 practical exercises

Why people scan emails rather than read them, and what that means for how you write. How journeys connect. Time to next meaningful action. Moments of truth and why they carry disproportionate weight. The retention hierarchy of needs.

That is not a bonus PDF. It is the working material my client programmes are built from, and it is the IP that makes the output first-class rather than merely fast.

The recording

So you can go back over any step.

The ingestion routes

For every major platform, walked through live and yours to keep.

A certificate of completion

Retention AI Second Brain Bootcamp, 8 October 2026.

Access to me afterwards

Email me as you build yours. No time limit and no ticket system. You get me.

Files are shared securely after the session.

What people said about the material

More than 2,000 people have taken versions 1 and 2 of my CRM marketing courses. The content in these courses is the foundation of the AI second brain, and you get the files that help you ensure your CRM marketing output actually works. Here’s what people said about those courses.

“With 9 years of CRM experience, I wasn’t sure how much I would gain from this course, however I have to really give Tom praise for what he has done here and would recommend to CRM professionals, whatever their level.”

Tobey Bonney

“I lead engagement strategy at a marketing agency and am often asked for case studies and best practices to win or grow client business. This content is rich with relatable examples and proven frameworks that can translate across functions and verticals. I consider it my cheat sheet for years to come. Can’t recommend enough.”

Melissa Malcolm

“I have worked in CRM for many years and this course has given me more information on the strategic framework in 1.5 hours than I’ve picked up in my previous roles.”

Anon.

“This course is well structured and does an amazing job of breaking down CRM Marketing in an understandable way. Tom explains concepts and procedures (e.g. how to do proper research, testing, and analytics) more comprehensively than any other marketing course I’ve taken.”

Patrick Zurcher

“Very relevant content presented in a clear and simple framework. The presenter’s knowledge and experience are evident, but more importantly the content is presented in a logical format making it easier to apply. A nice balance of strategic guidance and actionable recommendations.”

Michael Lavoie

“An excellent course. A go-to for anyone looking to set up an effective CRM programme from scratch, or optimise existing communications to maximise ROI. Very clear and easy follow.”

Lawrence H.

Who this is for

In-house CRM, lifecycle and retention marketers. The examples come from streaming, gaming and subscription, because that is where I work, but the method is sector-agnostic, and the principles travel.

It suits you if you are responsible for producing lifecycle communications and the volume is beating you. If your programme has gaps that exist only because nobody had time to write the content. If you have tried AI for copy and quietly stopped because what came back was not good enough to send.

Consultants and freelancers are welcome. The material is for your own use, not for resale or redistribution.

Probably not for you

If you want a tool recommendation, this is not it. I am not selling software, and I am not going to tell you which platform to buy.

If you want a prompt pack, this is not it either. Prompts are the easy part, and they are not what makes the output good.

If your programme is three emails and you are happy with that, the maths does not work in your favour yet. Come back when the volume starts beating you.

If you are looking for something you can watch once and have working by Friday without doing the work, be honest with yourself and save the $197. This is a method, and filling your own brain takes real effort. What I can promise is that the effort goes somewhere permanent.

Who is running it

Tom Burrell. Twenty-seven years in retention and lifecycle.

Formerly SVP at DAZN, senior roles at Manchester United and Publicis, and around thirteen years in agency consulting across more than thirty-five global brands.

I run Retention AI, where I build retention strategy and agentic execution for subscription, streaming and iGaming businesses. The second brain I am showing you is the one I use for that work every day.

The details

When Thursday 8 October 2026, 16:30 UK
Length 2 hours
Where Online, link sent on booking
Price $197
Seats 10
Format I demonstrate and build live. You watch and ask questions
Recording Included

Full refund if you are not happy.

Questions

Do I need a paid Claude account?
Not for the session. You are watching me build, not building alongside. You will need one afterwards to do the work yourself.
Is this hands-on?
No, and that is deliberate. Two hours of ten people wrestling with their own setups teaches less than two hours of watching the whole thing done properly, with the recording and the files to work from afterwards.
What if I cannot make it live?
The recording and the files come to you either way. You will get less out of it, because the questions are most of the value at this group size.
Will the copy really not sound like AI?
Scroll back up to the side by side. That is the method, not a mock-up, and I will show you more of it live.
Do I need to be doing agentic CRM already?
No. Most of the value lands on the programme you are running now.
What is the refund policy?
If you are not happy, tell me within 24 hours of the session ending and you get a full refund, no questions asked. The markdown files are released once that window closes, so refunds are not available after the files have been shared.
Will you run it again?
Probably, at a higher price. This is the first cohort.

Ten seats, one session, 8 October

Two hours, the recording, my files, and a method that runs three live client programmes.

Reserve your seat — $197

Full refund if you are not happy.