The Monthly Marketing Minute: Adobe's AI Report for 2025, B2B Influencer Marketing Report, Online Shoppers Worried About Privacy
Marketing and Business stories for March
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Let’s dive into this edition of the Monthly Marketing Minute. Each month we look at few key business and marketing stories that will be impacting marketers and creators in the coming months:
Adobe’s AI Report for 2025
Adobe has released its AI report for 2025. It covers several areas, but for our purposes, I want to focus solely on the takeaways for customer engagement.
First, here’s how the respondents were selected:
The survey collected 3,400 qualified respondents from November 11 to December 4, 2024, including 3,270 client-side and 130 agency executives.
Seniority and market: 39% were senior director, VP/SVP/EVP, or above (“Senior Executives”), with 61% being “Practitioners” (directors, managers, and junior executives). In terms of market focus 33% served B2B, 23% B2C, and 43% equally.
Geography and industry: APAC led with 37% of respondents, followed by Europe (32%) and North America (31%). Key sectors included Retail (24%), B2B Tech (23%), Financial Services (20%), Healthcare (17%), and Media and Entertainment (10%).
Function: Respondents span various departments, with strong representation from IT (25%), Marketing (13%), Advertising (12%), and Digital/Technology (8%).
And here’s the key customer engagement takeaways:
78% of customers want consistent brand experiences.
56% of the most advanced users of generative AI in marketing and CX use data and analytics to predict customer needs, and 54% use it to personalize the web experience.
61% of senior executives believe that delivering personalized experiences and fostering deeper engagement will be critical for growth.
87% of organizations leveraging AI-driven personalization have already seen boosts in customer engagement.
So let’s unpack these data points and distill some insights.
First, customers want a consistent experience across all brand touch points. In contrast, companies are focusing on customer personalization, and delivering it via AI. Consistent personalization across touch points? That’s gonna be tough to deliver, but the companies that can do this will very likely greatly benefit.
It’s also going to lead to many botched personalization attempts that irritate the customer more than provide convenience to them. As AI evolves, you will improved customer personalization efforts, but at some point the lack of human input for the company side will be felt. It will be interesting to see how companies navigate this.
TopRank Marketing’s B2B Influencer Report
This one is for my B2B marketers such as
and . Key takeaways from TopRank’s B2B Influencer Marketing Report:47% of marketers struggle with measuring and reporting influencer ROI
53% of respondents reported that their budgets for B2B influencer marketing are growing
82% of the most successful teams use an always-on approach
So the first and last points likely are related. The most successful companies aren’t viewing influencer marketing as being a stand-alone campaign, but an ongoing business process that must be maintained and nurtured. I suspect the majority of the companies who are struggling to measure ROI of influencer marketing are the B2B companies who are launching campaigns versus viewing influencer marketing as being a consistent investment.
Online Shoppers Are Still Worried About Privacy
We’ll close with a recent study by Soti into attitudes toward online shopping. Here’s some of the key takeaways:
76% of respondents are in fear of data breaches when shopping via social commerce sites
64% prefer personalized shopping experiences
70% worry about their data security when purchasing items through social media
A couple of thoughts. First, that 64% of shoppers want personalized experiences finding dovetails nicely with the finding in the Adobe study that 61% of executives believe personalized experiences are a key to growth. It seems customers and executives are on the same page when it comes to the importance of personalized shopping experiences.
Second, the third point that 70% of online shoppers have data security concerns over purchasing via social media. I cannot remember where, but I recently saw a study that found the same thing. If I remember correctly, that study found that millenials and Gen z in particular were very reluctant to purchase via social media. Given that the social media platforms themselves are frequently dealing with security issues, I can see why.
So that’s three recent research studies that I wanted to share with you. If you love data and studies as I do, check out Mark Levy’s Decoding Customer Experience as he weekly shares some great CX links:
So that’s it for this month, thanks for reading! Next week, The Brand Diaries debuts with
(!) sharing what she loves about In N Out Burger, and in particular about its CEO. Then on Thursday, I am gonna go on a bit of a rant here. Building my soapbox this weekend to handle it :)See you next week, have a great weekend!
Mack
Backstage Pass teaches you how to better connect with your customers, readers, clients, or donors. The lessons shared here draw on my experience over the last 20 years building customer engagement strategies for companies like Adobe, Dell, Club Med, Ingersoll-Rand, and countless others. I give you real-world research, examples and tactics that show you how to create customer engagement efforts that drive real business growth.
That’s one of the biggest frustrations with customization. It lacks nuance. Just because you click on something once doesn’t mean you want to be flooded with similar content forever. Whether it’s movies, products, or anything else, relying too heavily on basic algorithms misses the bigger picture. Companies that don’t find a more sophisticated approach will lose out. Algorithms are great… until they aren’t.
Hey Mack, a bit of an alternative musing: Are there any insights on the long-term effects of customer personalisation? Specifically from two perspectives: 1) Whether giving customers too much personalisation ratchets up expectations that make it difficult for businesses to fulfil (i.e. are we teaching customers to be entitled?) and 2) Whether that personalisation results in genuine long-term repeat purchases and loyalty.
The reason I'm asking these questions is because I wonder if people really do want such a high degree of personalisation. Speaking purely for myself, I sometimes appreciate a level of consistency in terms of my expectations when I engage with a business; almost like a social contract for how I want to buy something from someone. Thus to the point about data privacy, I wonder if it's less about: "Oh no my data is being shared." and more: "You're getting too intimate with my personal boundaries in this business transaction."