Brands expect to spend more on technology this year, according to marketing trends 2022, a study from Oracle, conducted by Ascend2.
Of those polled, 82% plan to
remove or replace parts of their current martech stack to improve performance, with 36% strongly agreeing with this statement.
Moreover, 64% are increasing their overall marketing
budgets, while 11% are keeping them intact and 25% are penciling in a decrease.
What are they investing in? Email platforms are among the top three martech solutions:
- Customer data platform — 37%
- Segmentation and targeting solutions—32%
- Email marketing platform —
32%
- Testing and optimization — 30%
- Content management system — 29%
- Artificial intelligence —
28%
- Marketing automation platform — 27%
- Loyalty marketing solution — 26%
- Video-editing software — 21%
advertisement
advertisement
Email is also one of the top two marketing solutions they say they cannot live without:
- Customer data platform — 36%
- Email marketing platform — 36%
- Content management system — 32%
- Marketing automation platform —
28%
- Testing and optimization — 25%
- Loyalty marketing solution — 24%
- Video-editing software — 21%
- Artificial intelligence — 19%
This occurs as 37% of marketers are
confident in their chances of meeting their objectives this year, while 31% are hopeful and 24% are excited. Only 4% are nervous, while 3% are indifferent and 1% say they are panicked.
But
they face challenges, including:
- Maximizing performance across channels — 38%
- Ability to change/adapt to circumstances as they
arise — 36%
- Delivering exceptional customer experiences — 35%
- Aligning marketing and sales efforts — 32%
- Segmenting and targeting audiences — 32%
- Proving marketing attribution and ROI — 31%
- Siloed,
incomplete data — 18%
- Poorly integrated martech stack — 12%
Still, 88% believe they have access to the right data to make
critical marketing decisions, with 42% saying they strongly agree.
They see the following first-party data sources as valuable as third-party cookies disappear:
- Customer purchase history — 36%
- Social media profiles — 32%
- Website registrations — 31%
- Survey respondents — 26%
- Mobile app usage — 26%
- CRM/call center interactions — 26%
- Loyalty programs — 26%
- User community members — 20%
- Newsletter subscribers — 17%
- SMS —
14%
Many firm are deploying artificial intelligence, particularly for email marketing. They would trust or already use AI to do the following:
- Target ads
— 47%
- Personalize content and offers in real time — 42%
- Optimize email send time — 39%
- Calculate conversion
probability — 37%
- Optimize email subject line — 33%
- Conduct a live chat session — 32%
- Score
leads — 30%
These capabilities will grow in importance as 43% add personalized content or offers to their strategy in 2022.
Meanwhile, 33% of
B2B and 43% of B2C brands are very bullish about customer loyalty programs
Measurement remains an issue for some companies. Extremely successful marketing organizations cite these as
their most difficult metrics to parse:
- Sales and revenue attributed to marketing — 35%
- Customer lifetime value — 31%
- Cost
per lead/cost per acquisition — 30%
Other marketing firms face difficulties with these metrics:
- Marketing ROI — 42%
- Sales
and revenue attributed — 37%
- Customer acquisition and retention — 31%
Ascend2 surveyed 853 marketers from the U.S., the U.K.,
India and Canada in firms with annual revenue equivalent of $250 million or more from January 10-22, 2022. Of these, 40% were from the U.S., while 27% were from India, 24% were from the UK and 9% were
from Canada.
In addition, 41% were involved in B2B, with 24% in B2C and 35% in both B2B and B2C.