New year. New rules. New expectations for marketing.
Marketing isn’t facing another cycle of change—we’re in the middle of a structural reset in how value gets created. The evidence is everywhere. AI is transforming how people discover, evaluate, and choose brands. Business leaders are asking marketing teams to deliver real, measurable value from AI (ASAP!) while also pushing them to do more with less. And, across the industry, martech stacks are being reevaluated: simplified, streamlined, and held to a higher standard of long-term value.
The market is complex. It’s messy. And at times, it can feel overwhelming. But it’s also energizing—especially when you step back and look at what’s happening beneath the surface.
Because marketing isn’t just being disrupted; it’s being redefined. For the first time in a long time, creativity, intelligence, and operational rigor aren’t in tension; they’re reinforcing each other. AI gives us the opportunity to amplify what makes great marketers great, elevating our craft and expanding what’s possible for our teams and our customers.
So how did we get here?
To answer that, it helps to look back at the year that changed everything.
Looking Back at 2025: The Year AI Became Operational
Over the last month, as I’ve met with Iterable customers, worked alongside our teams, and reviewed this year’s platform data, informed by more than one trillion customer interactions powering Iterable’s AI, and one thing became clear: 2025 marked a real inflection point for marketing. Not just in terms of new tools, but in how teams actually work.
1. AI evolved from curiosity to muscle memory.
If 2024 was the year AI captured attention, 2025 was the year it became part of the daily workflow. More than 90% of Iterable customers used AI agents to help orchestrate campaigns, optimize journeys, and support faster decision-making—at a scale no manual process could reasonably support. What stood out to me wasn’t adoption alone, but how quickly AI shifted from experimentation to expectation. Brands are applying AI where it creates operational leverage, not novelty.
2. Consumers set the pace—and marketers adapted.
We also saw customer behavior continue to move earlier and become more fluid. More than half of U.S. consumers began their holiday shopping in early October, one of the earliest starts on record. Brands adjusted accordingly: from early October through Thanksgiving, Iterable customers launched 30% more campaigns than the year before.
The real shift wasn’t about extending peak—it was about rethinking presence. The brands that performed best weren’t louder; they were more consistently relevant over time.
3. Channel engagement became decisively real-time.
Across channels, real-time, behavior-driven engagement accelerated:
- Embedded Campaigns grew 294% year over year
- Triggered campaigns increased 10%
- SMS surged nearly 60%
What stood out wasn’t just the growth, it was where it showed up. Embedded messaging and SMS both operate in moments of active intent: inside the product experience, or directly on a customer’s device, when context is already established. Customers now expect connected, contextual touchpoints as a baseline. The data shows it’s no longer optional for brands to deliver them.
4. Alignment (not activity) made marketing more effective.
Beyond the metrics, the biggest change I noticed was in how teams operated day to day.
As expectations on marketing continued to rise, from faster experimentation cycles to higher-quality personalization to clearer ROI, the teams that made the most progress were the ones where marketing was tightly aligned with product and go-to-market around shared strategy and outcomes. Not as a downstream execution arm, but as an active driver of business priorities.
In those organizations, priorities were clearer because everyone was working from the same signals. Decisions happened faster, and impact was easier to measure because success was defined consistently across functions—not just in campaign performance, but in customer experience and revenue contribution.
The gap between teams operating this way and those that weren’t widened quickly, and it’s not going to narrow on its own.
| To see how teams are closing this gap, explore our self-guided product tours and get a closer look at Iterable’s capabilities. |
What CMOs and Marketing Teams Should Expect in 2026
The shifts we saw in 2025 set the foundation for what comes next. They show how quickly the ground is moving beneath us, and how much advantage there is for teams to adapt early. With that in mind, here’s what CMOs and marketing teams should expect in 2026.
1. Relevance will come from consistency, not campaign surges.
When customers explore, compare, and buy earlier than ever across email, mobile, and in-app moments, marketers need to show up differently.
In 2026, the strongest brands won’t be built in spikes. They’ll be built through steady, genuine engagement throughout the year, so when high-intent moments arrive, customers are already connected, primed, and receptive.
You simply can’t compress trust-building into a single weekend.
The spikes will still matter, but the most durable growth will come from consistent, thoughtful personalization that makes peak moments feel like the natural next step in an ongoing relationship—not a scramble for attention. Relevance will be earned through continuity, not urgency.
2. Agentic workflows will turn marketers into true “AI bosses”.
There’s still a misconception that AI is here to replace marketers. What I’ve seen (especially within my own team) is the exact opposite. 2026 will be the year marketers fully step into the “AI Boss” era. Instead of manually orchestrating every step, they’ll guide small fleets of AI agents that handle research, execution, optimization, and routine decision-making.
In practice, this means fewer handoffs, fewer one-off builds, and more time spent deciding what should be automated versus where human judgment still matters. AI will handle the mechanics. Humans will focus on creativity, prioritization, and experimentation—the work that actually drives differentiation.
3. Mediated discovery will redefine consumer decision-making.
Just as marketers are beginning to work alongside AI, consumers are doing the same. This year, 46% of shoppers said they use AI “most or every time” they shop, and 80% expect to rely on it more in the future
That acceleration won’t slow in 2026. More shoppers will rely on AI to compare options generate recommendations, and, in some cases, complete the purchase on their behalf.
For marketers, this introduces a new challenge. Content will increasingly be experienced through systems brands don’t fully control: search engines, AI intermediaries, and autonomous recommendation layers. Optimization won’t stop at channels; it will extend to the systems interpreting intent for the customer.
Where AI’s influence will move more slowly is in high-stakes, emotionally weighted decisions, such as travel, wellness, or anything related to identity or long-term value. These are still moments where human storytelling and trust matter deeply.
4. MarTech stacks will evolve into leaner, AI-powered systems.
For years, marketing teams accumulated tools faster than they could integrate them. The result: bloated, fragmented stacks that slow teams down. In 2026, simplification becomes a performance requirement, not just a cost exercise.
CMOs aren’t looking for “AI-enhanced” tools anymore. They’re looking for platforms that are AI-powered by design, secure, adaptable, and capable of supporting intelligent, real-time playbooks.
The questions I hear most often now are simple:
- Does this platform create structural leverage for my team or just incremental efficiency?
- What happens when we remove humans from the loop at scale? Are we confident in the governance?
- Is this a platform we can build the next phase of our growth on or a tool we’ll be untangling in two years?
Solutions that can’t answer “yes” to those questions won’t survive the next cycle. The stacks that endure will be smaller, more centralized, and built around intelligence—not accumulation.
Partnering for What’s Ahead
Periods of real transformation—when the future isn’t fully clear, and the pace of change feels relentless—are when partnership matters most. That’s why I joined Iterable. I wanted to help shape where marketing is headed—and to partner with CMOs and their teams as they navigate real change, real pressure, and real opportunity. 2026 will be a defining year for our industry. And I’m energized by the work ahead!