• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, March 28, 2022

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%

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.