Data trends report 2020

The 2020 trends report provides direction for the growth of marketing technology, and where efforts will be focused over the next five years. The report examines the survey results of 300 campaign and marketing professionals from a wide variety of industries coming from a range of different business sizes. MarTech trends include the rise of chatbots, how the social media landscape has changed, and other key findings. For now, let’s focus on AI and CDPs.

The impact of AI on marketing activities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the trend with arguably the biggest impact, not just by crunching data. 63% of the respondents see AI taking a role in business factors like personalised pricing. 73% of marketers believe AI / machine learning will add value to their marketing through building segments. Yes, decision making is no longer just up to humans. As the marketplace changes and functionality progresses, the role of AI evolves too. You thought chatbots were dead? Far from it. 44% of respondents have them on the 2020 action plan, that’s a rise of over two-thirds from 2019.

Real-time, all the time, every time

Customers live moment to moment and marketers want to be there for everyone. 61% want marketing to develop towards real-time, digital interactions. Real-time has long been a marketer’s friend and something that marketing tools have been working hard to incorporate into their standard functionality in order to deliver timely and responsive messages. Customer Data Platforms, although around since 2013 when David Raab first defined the category, have become increasingly more important and present in marketers’ minds.

It’s all about platforms

What is a CDP? ‘A Customer Data Platform is a marketer-managed system that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems’, according to David Raab. CDPs are a hot topic of discussion these days amongst marketing, marketing operations, and IT leaders. 46% of respondents say that CDPs are an important trend for their organisation in 2020. Looking at the future, 63% see the MarTech of 2025 as a platform ecosystem – many apps that plug into an open platform.

Do you want to read more? You can download the complete Data Trends Report 2020 here.