Acoustic reveals AI and machine learning are top marketing trends in new report

Acoustic, headquartered in New York City, is a marketing cloud platform that offers AI-powered products built for marketers. Acoustic recently released a report which details nine top marketing trends for 2019. The report, Marketing Trends: Nine factors reshaping marketing and how you can stay ahead of them, covers everything from the emergence of tech-savvy marketers to AI and machine learning and more.

Some findings are surprising, like the assessment that GDPR is helping marketers. Some seem inevitable, like the fact that MarTech and AdTech are finally fusing.

Some findings are surprising, like the assessment that GDPR is actually helping rather than hurting some marketers. Others seem inevitable, like the fact that martech and adtech are finally starting to fuse together.

In this post, we’ll give a high-level summary of five of the trends in the report, though you can drill down into much more detail in the report itself.

Content produced in collaboration with Acoustic.

Marketers are growing more tech savvy

Acoustic notes that there is a skills gap with corporate marketers versus digital-native marketers. The latter have technical marketing talent, an important skill in the era of customer experience and marketing technology. They even coined a new word for this type of sought-after marketer, the “martecheter.”

Per Acoustic: “In a General Assembly marketing assessment, for example, digital-native marketers outscored corporate marketers by 73 percent. Bottom line? Today, the greatest marketing advantage is technical marketing talent — the martecheter.”

Smart organizations have a dedicated director of marketing data

The rise of martech as a driver of successful data-driven marketing initiatives requires expertise and leadership. Acoustic reveals that, as a result of this need, a growing trend is that companies must hire a Director of Marketing Data who can create and oversee all processes, rules and procedures around data collection and integration.

Additionally, machine learning and AI are playing larger, more prominent roles in enterprise-level solutions for companies across all industries. Per Acoustic: “61 percent of company executives surveyed by MemSQL indicated that machine learning and AI are their companies’ most significant data initiatives for 2019. “ This brings us to our next marketing trend: AI and Machine Learning technology.

Hyper-personalization is driven by AI and Machine Learning

AI and machine learning aren’t just buzzwords, they’re the foundation of the growing trend in hyper-personalized marketing. “The promise of one-to-one marketing has been around for two decades, and brands still send consumers an overwhelming amount of marketing messages that are irrelevant, generic or only mildly segmented or personalized,” writes Acoustic. AI and machine learning-driven tools automatically analyze, process, and deliver personalized content to consumers, leaving more time for marketers to focus on strategy, creative, and implementation.

Acoustic reports that over 90% of companies feel personalization is critical to current and future success, but nearly 50% are hindered in their personalization efforts by IT roadblocks and legacy technology.

AI-based systems facilitate personalization by incorporating machine learning into each customer interaction across multiple touchpoints, enabling marketers to deliver the right content when it is contextually relevant based on the customer’s real-time engagement.

The role of digital marketing agencies is changing

As technology changes the way companies market to consumers, so must the role of the agency change too. Acoustic identified the transformation of marketing agencies as a key trend for 2019. Specifically, agencies are taking on the role of consultancies (dubbed “consulgencies” by Acoustic). Consulting-based agencies are thriving in this new environment, with four consultancies listed in Ad Age’s 2017 ranking of the 10 largest agency companies in the world.

Per Acoustic, “With combined revenue of $13.2 billion, the marketing services units of Accenture, PwC, IBM and Deloitte sit just below WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic and Dentsu.”

GDPR is helping to improve data hygiene and build customer trust

GDPR has had a big impact in the marketing world, with over $9 billion in fines levied to Google, Facebook, and Instagram since it was passed in April 2016. GDPR puts the rights of consumers in the forefront and that’s had a big effect on how companies approach data privacy, transparency, and collection. New privacy regulations are slated to be passed in California in 2020, so marketers will need to reevaluate current business models and strategies.

Acoustic predicts this trend toward transparency and data privacy is a good thing and will have help, rather than hinder, companies’ marketing efforts.

“Instead of viewing GDPR as an impediment or compliance issue, a study from IBM reveals that nearly 60 percent of organizations surveyed see GDPR as a catalyst for new business models or an opportunity to improve processes including privacy, security and data management,” writes Acoustic.

Some marketers are already seeing positive results from a new focus on consumer privacy, with marketers in Canada reporting the highest mean and median email open rates since Canadian anti-spam rules passed in 2017.

Acoustic’s Marketing Trends: Nine factors reshaping marketing and how you can stay ahead of them contains even more exciting marketing trends and detailed information about each of the above-listed trends (including statistics and predictions). Download the free report on ClickZ for a limited time.