How do agentic workflows work?
Powered by agentic AI, these workflows continuously learn and adjust their strategies based on data. AI agentic workflows use intelligent reasoning, collaboration, and continuous learning to achieve complex goals.
Below is a breakdown of their core mechanics:
1. Goal interpretation and task decomposition
AI agents start by interpreting high-level objectives (e.g., "Increase email campaign conversions by 15%") and breaking them into smaller, actionable subtasks.
For marketers, this might involve:
Scheduling send times
Allocating budget across channels
Identifying target audience segments
Generating personalized content variants
While these steps might traditionally take days or even weeks to coordinate, an AI agent can accomplish them in hours or minutes.
2. Data collection and contextual analysis
When using the data cloud as a single source of truth for agentic workflows, agents can use data gathered from diverse sources (like CRMs, analytics tools, social platforms) and analyze it to inform decisions.
For example, an agent might:
Monitor real-time campaign performance to flag underperforming assets
Pull customer engagement history to predict optimal contact times
Analyze competitor ad spend to adjust bidding strategies
3. Dynamic planning and execution
Using machine learning and LLMs, agents create flexible execution plans and adapt them as conditions change.
For example, an AI agent launches a holiday campaign but detects a sudden shift in customer sentiment due to a global event. The agent understands context by analyzing data, from both the company’s systems and external sources like social media or news feeds, so it can respond to changing conditions.
It autonomously pauses the campaign, generates new creatives aligned with the updated context, and redeploys them.
4. Continuous feedback and optimization
After execution, agents review outcomes, learn from successes and failures, and refine future actions.
If A/B tests show shorter subject lines boost open rates, agents update content guidelines for future campaigns.
If certain customer segments consistently ignore emails, agents exclude them from future sends or test new messaging strategies.
How do agentic workflows and AI agents work together?
Agentic workflows rely on a coordinated team of specialized AI agents, each handling specific tasks to achieve a broader goal. Instead of acting as standalone components, these agents operate within the structure of an agentic workflow, which orchestrates their actions in sequence or in parallel to deliver an adaptive outcome.
AI agents
Autonomous software entities that perform individual tasks
Focus on specific actions (e.g., data analysis, content generation)
Operate independently within their domain
Agentic workflows
Orchestrated sequences that coordinate multiple agents and systems
Manage end-to-end processes (e.g., campaign execution, customer journey optimization)
Ensure cross-agent collaboration and goal alignment