Salesforce, a global leader in CRM, released the new State of Marketing report. This report includes insights from over 4,800 marketing leaders in 29 countries, including 250 from India. It discusses how marketers are using AI in their work, managing data, and ensuring customer trust.

AI's Growing Role

Generative AI is new, but marketers are quickly adopting it. Globally, more than half of marketers use predictive and generative AI. Nearly all plan to use both within the next 18 months. AI helps marketers personalize services at scale and improve efficiency.

Key Insights

Marketers are adapting to a competitive market. They see AI as a tool to help personalize and boost efficiency. Implementing AI is their top priority and challenge worldwide. In India, marketers focus on improving their tools and technologies. Building and keeping customer trust is their biggest challenge.

Data Management

Marketers need to connect different data points to create personalized customer experiences. With the decline of third-party cookies and the rise of AI, this task is becoming more critical. In India, only 28% of marketers are fully satisfied with their ability to unify customer data. About 66% have access to real-time data for campaigns, but 59% need IT help to use it. Marketers in India use nine different methods to collect data, with customer service data being the most common.

AI and Trust

Marketers want to use AI effectively while ensuring data security. In India, 79% of marketers are experimenting with or have fully implemented AI. High-performing marketing teams are more likely to have fully implemented AI. The top AI uses in India are performance analytics, content generation, and programmatic advertising.

Personalization Progress

Marketers aim to meet customer expectations with full personalization. High-performing teams in India personalize across six channels on average, while others manage five.

Unified Analytics

Marketers face challenges in using data effectively. In India, 58% track customer lifetime value, and 92% see a clear link between marketing and revenue.

Building Relationships

Companies use account-based marketing (ABM) and loyalty programs to improve customer acquisition and retention. However, many of these programs' data sources are not well-integrated. In India, only 58% of marketers say loyalty data is fully integrated, and 50% say loyalty programs are accessible across all touchpoints. B2B marketers use ABM for customer acquisition but less for upselling and cross-selling.

Expert Insight

Nishant Kalra, VP of Digital at Salesforce India, said, "Data and AI can help marketers reach customers in engaging ways, but there is more to achieve. Marketers need to build and retain customer trust while using AI and data to drive growth. Insights from this report can help marketers in India outdo their competition."