80% of Digital Marketers Find It ‘Essential’ to Stay on Top of Martech Trends

As digital marketers forecast which solutions will provide the most benefits in the coming months, new research suggests that they believe it is becoming essential to keep up with marketing technology (martech) trends.

CallRail recently published “The 2023 Outlook for Digital Marketing Agencies” report, and statistics indicated that the majority of respondents (80%) think it is essential to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and martech. In 2022, about 82% said they adopted new technology or tools to track their return-on-investment (ROI) and other metrics. Approximately 81% stated that they feel confident that they have the right tools and metrics to support their decision-making process in 2023.

Most respondents (54%) believe that metaverse marketing will become a long-lasting trend. About 53% cited voice search, while 52% pointed toward personalization. Interestingly, the majority (67%) believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is primarily a fad.

Marketers Remain Skeptical of Artificial Intelligence

As marketers continue to view AI with skepticism, previous research indicates that the obstacles they are facing with this technology may be dampening their enthusiasm for its potential.

Pecan released its “State of Predictive Analytics in Marketing” report, and statistics suggested that most marketers (46%) wish that they could leverage AI to predict customer retention and churn. Approximately 40% want to use AI to estimate customer lifetime value, and the same percentage want to be able to identify upsell and cross-sell likelihood.

The data and analytics associated with AI have been pain points for marketers. Most respondents (51%) said they were leveraging predictive analytics for customer-level predictions of future behavior. However, 40% admitted that the high cost of manual data science has remained an obstacle.