The 2021 Connected Experiences Modern Marketing Study

Taking the pulse of marketers on the value—and impact—of integrated marketing and engagement strategies.

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Marketers still trying to engage customers through standalone engagements are living in the past. Modern marketers need to break down silos in their organizations, thereby enabling connection and integration among touch points and across marketing functions.

Welcome to The 2021 Connected Experiences Modern Marketing Study, which analyzes how leading Fortune 1000 marketing teams are increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing mixes and engagement strategies by connecting their marketing channels.

For purposes of this report, the vocabulary of connected experiences, integrated marketing, and a campaign approach all describe one thing: marketing functions working in concert with one another to achieve shared objectives. Before beginning this study, we hypothesized that marketers who connected their marketing strategies in such a way—that is, coordinating their activities to optimize experiences across channels—would reap significant rewards. And our work bore that out, as is seen throughout the report.

This unique study includes insights and data points on:

– How connected engagement drives brands and businesses

– The benefits of integration for brand-side marketers

– The marketing channels leading the connected revolution

– ROI trends and benchmarks

– Integration obstacles and pitfalls to avoid

– Insights from exclusive CMO-only response breakouts

The contents of this report are based on a survey of more than 300 brand marketers from Fortune 1000 companies. The marketers span disciplines and departments, and the data is analyzed as a function of both. The survey was completed in fall 2020.

Integration Is Everything

The revolution of integrated marketing has been one of the biggest trends impacting the corporate marketing landscape, as marketers in nearly all sectors push harder to create campaigns that leverage all of their channels in a coordinated way.

Such integration is an ongoing process that requires collaboration across teams that are often navigating different objectives and workflows. It is not always an easy process, but the findings of this study show it’s well worth it. An overwhelming majority of corporate marketing executives agree that marketing approaches that connect across touch points perform better than the non-integrated counterparts.

Yet this study shows there is still work to do. Less than half of brand marketers are fully integrating marketing efforts, even while fully realizing the value of doing so. The main challenges tie to siloed marketing team structures, discrete budgets and resources, and technology and data integration issues. That said, this study clearly shows that responding to these challenges, connecting brand experiences, and deploying a more integrated marketing mix results in better business outcomes.

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