B2B AI & Marketing Masterclass with Kristen Sesto
Getting busy professionals to register for a webinar is one of the hardest asks in B2B marketing. In this Influencer Strategists session, host Gordon Glenister talks with Kristen Sesto, co-founder of Custom Influence, a B2B influencer agency known for its LinkedIn work, about an AI in marketing masterclass campaign that drove registrations through a small set of trusted creators. She breaks down the tight timeline, why fewer multi-channel influencers beat a big roster, the talk-track format that made the messaging personal, and the benchmark-beating results. The highlights below capture the playbook.
Key highlights
Custom Influence built an AI in marketing masterclass campaign that worked well enough to be repeated five times to date, making it a proven, repeatable format rather than a one-off.
The campaign went from first client email to live in about a month, with Sesto noting B2B takes more manual research because far fewer platforms hold LinkedIn data than for TikTok or Instagram.
They used just 4 influencers combining LinkedIn and newsletters, a deliberate choice since personalized B2B briefs are more efficient with fewer people who each bring multiple channels.
The format gave creators one core session plus a choice of three talk tracks, briefing each to highlight the track most relevant to their own audience, which turned generic promotion into specific, personal messaging.
The campaign drove more than 250 registrations to the virtual event and a 2.4% LinkedIn engagement rate, well above the roughly 1% Sesto considers solid and far beyond LinkedIn paid-ad benchmarks that often sit below half a percent.
Sponsored emails hit a 58% open rate against a roughly 20% average, partly because they were not dedicated blasts but woven into each creator's regular newsletter alongside what they were already writing about.
On trends, Sesto expects B2B marketers to embrace social-first thought leadership, and stresses the power of human curation, picking the right people and processes, as something automation cannot replace.