التكنولوجيا وأخبارها بوابة الإمارات لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والإتصالات
As 76% of UAE Marketers Lead Customer Experience Initiatives
, Trends to Navigate Change
Thierry Nicault, Salesforce – 1b
The 6th State of Marketing Report: Among UAE marketers,
94% use AI, 44% track customer lifetime value, and use an
average of 10 customer data sources
By Thierry Nicault, Executive Vice President for Enterprise
Business Unit – Middle East, Africa, and Central Europe,
Salesforce
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – 8 June 2020 – Marketers in
the Middle East have always been at the forefront of
change. A few months ago, their focus was on trying to
innovate and stay ahead in a new decade where every
industry, region, and customer experience is being
disrupted. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI)
along with increased customer expectations presented both
incredible opportunities and hefty challenges.
And now marketers face even bigger changes stemming
from a global pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis is forcing
them to rethink everything – in a socially distanced world.
The sixth edition of the State of Marketing report presents
the insights of nearly 7,000 marketing leaders across the
globe. Our research highlights the strategic priorities,
challenges, and technologies that are transforming the
profession. These are especially important to consider as
businesses navigate from crisis mode to back-to-work to growth.
Here are four key takeaways from the report.
1. Innovation is the number one priority
Our research found that the expectations for how
marketers interact with customers are continuing to rise. A
related study of consumers and business buyers found that
84% percent of customers say the experience a company
provides is as important as its products and services. This is
up from 80% in 2018.
Marketers are taking a real-time approach to customer
experience because customers are demanding it. According
to our State of the Connected Customer report, 71% of
customers have used multiple channels to start and
complete a transaction. Customers now expect dynamic
interactions – where the content they see on one channel is
tailored based on their actions from a previous channel. For
the first time, more than half (51%) of marketers
worldwide describe their cross-channel content as dynamic
– up from less than a third (31%) in 2018.
However, there is still room for improvement. Real-time
customer engagement is the number one challenge for
marketers. Sixty-nine percent say traditional marketing
roles limit customer engagement. There is also a disconnect
between two divisions that are key to customer
engagement success: marketing and IT. Seventy-two
percent of marketers say they are aligned with their IT
organizations, yet a separate study of IT leaders ranks
insufficient business unit alignment as a top challenge.
Solving these issues was critical even before the pandemic
hit. Marketing leaders ranked innovation as their number
one priority, followed by real-time engagement. Those two
things are now more crucial than ever, with digital
transformation being a critical part of business success in
the years ahead. Marketing innovators are seeking to
engage customers in new ways across digital touchpoints.
Since 2018, for example, marketers report a 34% increase
in their use of mobile apps and a 21% increase in their use of video.
2. Marketers’ use of AI has skyrocketed
Once a hyped-up buzzword, artificial intelligence is now
making a real-world impact. Ninety-four percent of UAE
marketers report using AI.
With the world in crisis, the use of customer data for
empathetic marketing has come to the forefront. It’s
essential to have a clear understanding of customer needs
as they evolve. AI helps marketers achieve this type of
personalization at scale by distilling insights from data and taking action.
Most marketers are on board with this tactic – 78% of
them describe their customer engagement as data-driven.
They are turning to a myriad of customer data sources
(median number: 12), with the top three being
transactional data, declared interests/preferences, and
known digital identities.
As the amount of available data has grown, so has the
number of platforms to manage it. Marketers in the UAE
now use an average of 10 data management tools. This
explains why marketers cite data unification and activation
among their top five challenges.
These trends are having an impact around the world. And in
the technology industry globally, marketers plan to use
60% more data this year than the overall industry average.
3. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a cornerstone in B2B
B2B customers now expect the same type of empathy and
engagement as their B2C counterparts. Data and AI are
helping B2B marketers accomplish this through account-
based marketing (ABM). Marketers use ABM to build
multiple highly personalized campaigns that connect with
the accounts that are most important to them. It also
increases the lifetime value of their customer relationships.
Ninety-two percent of B2B marketers now have an ABM
program. The rise of ABM programs is pretty recent – 64%
were started within the past five years. But these programs
have grown more sophisticated, as 68% of them use automation.
4. A new set of emerging technologies will guide an
uncertain future
What’s next for marketing? No one can truly predict what
will happen next week, let alone next year. But the good
news is that the COVID-19 crisis has forced businesses to
figure out how to better connect with customers and
deliver what they need, when they need it. It has pushed
ahead many of the ideas that we have been talking about
for years. Marketers can be at the forefront of this
innovation – 76% of them in the UAE say they lead
customer experience initiatives across their organizations.
Worldwide, marketers expect the next 10 years to bring
even greater impacts from new technologies and societal
developments. These include online access to more of the
global population, the implementation of 5G networks, and
virtual reality becoming mainstream. Sixty percent of
marketing leaders believe 5G will have a major impact on
marketing in the decade ahead. Faster speeds mean other
innovations such as virtual reality can become a greater
part of the customer experience. Sixty percent of marketing
leaders also see opportunity with millions of people in the
digital darkness expected to get online access over the next ten years.
As we lead through change and figure out how to get
businesses back to full speed, a combination of next-gen
tech and sound strategy will help push us into growth mode.
I invite you to dig into the results of this year’s State of
Marketing by downloading the full report and to join us for
a webinar that digs into the findings with ex
