UAE marketers lead customer experience initiatives, trends to navigate change

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 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.

Marketers are taking a real-time approach to customer experience because customers are demanding it. According to our report, 71 percent 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 percent) of marketers worldwide describe their cross-channel content as dynamic.

However, there is still room for improvement. Real-time customer engagement is the number one challenge for marketers. 69 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. 72 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.

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 percent describe their customer engagement as data-driven. They are turning to a myriad of customer data sources 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 percent 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.

92 percent of B2B marketers now have an ABM program. The rise of ABM programs is pretty recent – 64 percent were started within the past five years. But these programs have grown more sophisticated, as 68 percent use automation.

4. A new set of emerging technologies will guide an uncertain future

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 percent 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. 60 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. 60 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.