DTC marketers: which AI tools have actually earned a permanent spot in your stack?

I spend most of my week talking to DTC marketers & agencies (from solo founder shops to top-tier) about how they actually operate, and the gap between the tools people demo and the tools they actually keep is bigger than I expected.

The creative and copy generators get all the noise, but lot of them get dropped after a month once the novelty wears off / the team realizes they can integrate those workflows into Claude. What seems to actually stick is less glamorous: certain measurement and attribution tools that earn a daily look, and a couple of retention and lifecycle tools that pay for themselves. Audience-building / targeting is an area I'm less sure about. Many teams still rely entirely on the platforms for it.

Curious where I'm wrong. If you're running DTC: what's earned a permanent spot, and what does it actually do for you? And what did you try, believe the hype on, and end up dropping?

I'll share more of what I'm hearing in the replies.