In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know, including:

• What a martech stack is
• What the key components are
• How it maps to the customer journey
• How it’s changing with AI
• How to build or improve yours

By the end, you’ll have a better idea of what you’ve got, what you might be missing, and where to go next.

What is a martech stack?

A martech stack is the collection of marketing technology a business uses to plan, run, and measure its marketing. Your email platform, your CRM, your analytics tool – that collection of tech is your martech stack. 

According to the State of Martech 2026 report, the martech landscape now includes over 15,000 tools. That’s a lot of options, and a lot of potential for your stack to become more complicated than it needs to be. The challenge for most marketing teams is knowing whether the ones they already have are working together properly.

The importance of a martech stack

Your martech stack is what sits between your marketing ideas and your marketing results. When it’s working well, your data flows freely, your campaigns run without manual intervention, and your team spends less time on admin and more time on strategy.

A well-connected stack gives you a clearer picture of your customers at every stage, from the moment they first discover your brand right through to repeat purchase and retention. That means better targeting, more relevant experiences, and a much stronger understanding of what’s driving results.

When it’s not working well, you end up with gaps in your data and a customer experience that feels inconsistent, which is why getting it right matters.

What are the key components of a martech stack?

Every martech stack looks a little different depending on the size of the business, the channels they use, and the goals they’re working towards. But most stacks are built around a core set of tools that cover the same fundamental needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Your CRM is where your customer data lives. It stores contact information, purchase history, interactions, and anything else that helps you understand who your customers are and where they are in their journey with you.

Email marketing platform

Your email platform is where you build, send, and track email campaigns. It’s one of the most direct ways to reach your audience and, when connected to your CRM and other data sources, one of the most effective.

Marketing automation

Automation tools let you set up campaigns and customer journeys that run in the background, triggered by customer behavior, such as welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and re-engagement campaigns.

Analytics and reporting

Your analytics tools tell you what’s working and what isn’t. From website traffic and email open rates to revenue attribution and customer lifetime value (CLV), good reporting is what turns data into better decisions.

Content management system (CMS)

Your CMS is where your website and blog content lives. It’s how you publish and manage the content that attracts, informs, and converts visitors.

Personalization

Personalization tools let you create bespoke customer experiences, whether that’s dynamic content in an email, product recommendations on your website, or targeted messaging based on behavior.

Ads and retargeting

Paid media tools help you reach new audiences and re-engage people who’ve already shown interest in your brand. They work best when connected to your customer data, so your targeting is as accurate as possible.

How does a martech stack work together?

Buying a great tool and then watching it sit in isolation can be frustrating, but a well-connected stack fixes that. Data moves freely between your tools, so no one has to manually export, upload, or piece it together. When your tools are connected, every action feeds the next one:

• When a lapsed customer re-engages via a paid ad, your CRM updates
• When a customer makes a purchase, your automation platform triggers
• When they browse a product page, your personalization tool takes note

Everything talks to everything else, and your marketing becomes more relevant as a result.

The most common way tools connect is through integrations, either native connections built directly between platforms or via Application Programming Interface (APIs) that let different systems share data. Some businesses also use a customer data platform (CDP) to act as a central hub, pulling data from every tool into one place and pushing it back out again so every platform is always working from the same customer profile.

When your stack isn’t connected properly, it shows quickly. You end up with:

• Duplicate contacts
• Inconsistent data
• Campaigns that don’t reflect what a customer has already done
• A team spending more time fixing data problems than running campaigns

More tools don’t mean better marketing. The goal is a stack where everything connects, everyone can see the same customer, and nothing gets lost on the way.

The martech stack and the customer journey

Your martech stack does more than just support your marketing. It maps directly to how your customers move through their journey with your brand. Different tools do different jobs at different stages, and understanding that is what helps you spot where your stack might be letting you down.

Awareness

This is where potential customers first discover you. Your ads, social media, SEO, and content tools are doing the heavy lifting here. The goal is getting in front of the right people at the right moment.

Consideration

Once someone knows you exist, they start weighing up their options. Your CMS, personalization tools, and email platform help you stay relevant during this stage, giving people the information they need to move forward with confidence.

Conversion

Your ecommerce integrations, forms, landing pages, and automation tools are what close the gap between interest and purchase. A well-timed abandoned cart email or a personalized offer can make the difference here.

Retention

Getting a customer is one thing, but keeping them is where the real value is. Your CRM, loyalty platform, and automation tools work together to keep customers engaged, reward repeat purchases, and spot early signs that someone might be drifting.

Advocacy

Happy customers tell other people. Review platforms, referral tools, and social proof integrations help you capture that goodwill and put it to work, turning your best customers into your best marketing asset.

The important thing to remember is that your stack needs to support the full journey, and not just parts of it. Gaps at any stage mean customers slipping through, and that’s where the new blog we mentioned earlier comes in handy.

How the martech stack is changing

The martech landscape has always moved fast. But right now, it’s changing in ways that are reshaping how marketing teams work.

AI is moving from assistant to agent

A year ago, AI in marketing meant content suggestions and subject line recommendations. Now it’s doing a lot more. AI agents can build audience segments from a plain-English description, write and refine campaign content, and show insights from your data, all without you having to log into five different tools to do it. The shift from AI as a helper to AI as a doer is happening quickly, and the stacks that are built to take advantage of it will have a real edge.

MCP is changing how tools connect

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a relatively new standard that lets AI tools connect directly to your marketing platforms. In practice, that means you can ask questions about your campaign performance, contact data, or customer behavior directly inside tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, without switching tabs or logging into your marketing platform. It’s early days, but MCP has the potential to change how marketers interact with their entire stack.

Consolidation is winning over complexity

The days of adding a new point solution for every marketing problem are fading. Marketers are increasingly looking for platforms that do more in one place, reducing the number of integrations to manage, logins to remember, and places where customer data can get lost. 

First-party data is more important than ever

With third-party cookies largely gone and privacy regulations tightening, the data you collect directly from your customers has never been more valuable. The stacks best positioned for the future are the ones built around first-party and zero-party data, such as preference centers, forms, behavioral tracking, and loyalty programs that give customers a reason to share.

How to build your martech stack

Whether you’re starting from scratch or taking stock of what you’ve already got, the process is the same. It starts with seeing what’s working and what isn’t.

Start with your goals

The biggest mistake marketers can make when building a stack is starting with the technology rather than the problem they’re trying to solve. Before you look at any platform, get an idea of what you’re trying to achieve. More subscribers? Better retention? Faster campaign turnaround? Your goals should drive your tool choices, not the other way around.

Audit what you already have

Most marketing teams are sitting on tools they don’t use, tools that duplicate each other, and tools nobody quite knows how to turn off. A quick audit of your current stack – what you have, what it does, what it costs, and whether it connects to everything else – is a useful starting point. You might find you need less than you think.

Prioritize integration over features

A tool with slightly fewer features that connects well with everything else in your stack will almost always outperform a feature-rich tool that sits in isolation. When you’re evaluating anything new, the first question should be how well it plays with what you already have.

Think about your data flow

Follow the data. Where does it come in? Where does it go? Where does it get stuck? A good stack has clean, consistent data moving freely between tools, so your CRM, your email platform, your analytics, and your personalization tools are all working from the same customer picture.

Don’t overbuild

There’s always a temptation to add more. A new AI tool here, a specialist platform there. But every tool you add is another integration to manage, another login to remember, and another place your data can get lost. Build for what you need now, which also gives you room to grow.

Review it regularly

Your stack should change as your business changes. What worked two years ago might not be the right fit today. A regular review, even just once a year, helps you stay on top of what’s earning its place and what’s quietly adding cost without adding value.

Examples of martech stacks

Every stack looks different, but here’s a simple example of what a typical ecommerce brand might be working with:

In Dotdigital’s case, a lot of these layers live in one platform, which means less time managing integrations and more time using your data. But whether you’re using one platform or several, the principle is the same. Each layer needs to feed into the next, so your marketing always reflects what your customers are actually doing.

Your martech stack is never really finished

Building a martech stack isn’t a one-time project. It’s something you come back to as your business grows, your goals shift, and new tools worth adding come along. The marketers with the strongest stacks aren’t necessarily the ones with the most tools. They’re the ones who are honest about what’s working, quick to cut what isn’t, and deliberate about how everything connects.

If you’ve read this far, you’re already ahead when it comes to understanding what a martech stack is and how to get the most from it.

The next question is whether your current stack is helping you hit your goals or quietly getting in the way, which is something we dig into in our next blog. Find out how to spot and fix the gaps in your marketing tech stack.

G2’s Summer 2026 rankings are out, and Dotdigital landed Leader status in 13 product categories. Getting recognized in one category is an achievement. Getting recognized in 13 shows how broad the platform is and how differently marketers use it in their day-to-day.

What does a G2 Leader status mean?

G2’s rankings are based entirely on real customer reviews. Every single one gets verified by G2, so you know it’s from a real Dotdigital user, and not just what a vendor says about itself.

Two things drive the G2 rankings: 

1. Customer satisfaction scores drawn from reviews
2. Market presence, which factors in review volume, reach, and engagement

G2 plots every vendor on a grid using those two scores. Leaders sit in the top right, which means they score high on both. You can’t buy your way in or coast on brand recognition alone. Here’s how that looks for categories like marketing automation:

Which categories does Dotdigital rank as a G2 Leader?

G2 reviewers choose categories based on how they use the platform every day. These 13 categories cover the full customer engagement lifecycle, from acquisition and messaging through to data, personalization, and analytics.

1. Email marketing
2. Marketing automation
3. Personalization
4. Customer data platform (CDP)
5. Email deliverability
6. Communication platform as a service (CPaaS)
7. SMS marketing
8. Mobile marketing
9. Customer journey analytics
10. Email template builder
11. Landing page builders
12. Personalization engines
13. Transactional email

Why Dotdigital is a leader across 13 categories

More than 1,200 customers have left Dotdigital reviews on G2, averaging 4.4/5. Across those reviews, four themes keep coming up:

• Smart automation that saves time
• Accessible segmentation
• Connected cross-channel marketing
• Support from real people

Smart automation that saves time

Reviewers keep mentioning how much manual work the platform takes off their plate. You can map out multi-step journeys with triggers, timing rules, and decision points, so cart recovery emails, post-purchase flows, and win-back campaigns run themselves.

It’s how Scott, a Communications Partner, keeps ongoing communications running on their own, with journeys built on triggers, timing rules, and decision points.

Accessible segmentation

You don’t need a data team or a single line of code to build precise segments. Slice your audience by purchase behavior, engagement, demographics, or custom data fields in a few clicks. And with Segment Agent, you can now describe the audience you need in your own words and let AI build it.

It’s what Alo, a Digital Marketing Specialist, uses to build precise segments in a few clicks, with no code needed.

Connected cross-channel marketing

Email, SMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, web, and ads all run from one platform, with over 200 integrations feeding in your customer and order data. That’s why reviewers talk about managing everything in one place instead of juggling tools.

Brian, a VP of Digital, has run cross-channel marketing this way for years, backed by the platform’s AI and hands-on support teams.

Support from real people

Help is on hand around the clock, with 24/7 live chat, dedicated onboarding, and your own customer success manager. It’s the theme reviewers get most enthusiastic about, and the one that’s hardest for any platform to fake.

Ben’s seen all of it, seven years and two organizations’ worth, from onboarding through to building full customer journeys.

Dotdigital named one of the best customer data platforms by G2

Our G2 recognition goes further than Leader status. G2 included Dotdigital in its roundup of the 9 best customer data platforms, alongside other platforms like Salesforce, Bloomreach, and Klaviyo.

G2 highlighted Dotdigital as best for accessible marketing automation, calling out our email, SMS, and lifecycle campaign automation as standout strengths. The list was built on real user reviews, with platforms selected based on customer data unification, segmentation, activation, analytics, usability, and integrations.

In G2’s words, Dotdigital is a strong fit for mid-market teams who want their marketers to manage automation without leaning on technical specialists for every campaign. That sits nicely alongside our 13 G2 Leader categories and reflects how customers are using Dotdigital to bring their data and marketing activity together in one place.

Read the full G2 list of the best customer data platforms.

How to use G2 when you’re choosing a marketing platform

Evaluating marketing platforms isn’t easy. There’s a lot to weigh up, and it doesn’t help that many vendors will tell you what you want to hear. Independent platforms, like G2, give you real, verified customer insights from people who use the platform every day.

Here’s how to get the most out of it during your research:

Count the Leader categories

Every G2 category is a separate contest with its own reviews and rankings. A vendor can be brilliant at email, and average at everything else, and the category view shows you that. So instead of asking “Is this platform good?” check whether it leads in the specific categories your team uses or needs. If you need email, SMS, and automation, look for Leader status in all three rather than a single overall badge.

Look past the star rating

Two platforms can both sit at 4.4 stars for completely different reasons. The detail is in G2’s satisfaction scores, where reviewers rate things like ease of use, ease of setup, and quality of support as separate questions. Decide which of those matters most to your team before you compare.

Check how recent the reviews are

Marketing platforms change fast. A vendor coasting on praise from three years ago may be a different product now. Filter reviews to the last 6 to 12 months and see whether the same strengths keep coming up. Consistent recent praise for the same things is a much stronger signal than a high all-time average.

Compare vendors within the same category

It’s hard to compare platforms from their own websites because everyone describes themselves differently. G2’s category grid fixes that by scoring direct competitors on the same criteria and plotting them side by side. Pick the category that matches your use case, shortlist from the grid, then read reviews for each vendor on your list.

Look at who’s leaving the reviews

A review from a 5,000-person enterprise tells you little if you’re a team of four, and the reverse is true, too. G2 shows reviewer job titles and company sizes, so filter for companies that look like yours. Their experience of onboarding, support, and day-to-day use is the closest preview you’ll get of your own.

If you’re a Dotdigital customer and haven’t left a review yet, it genuinely makes a difference.

Head to our G2 profile and share your experience. It takes less time than you’d think.

Here’s how to migrate your marketing software in five simple steps.

1: Planning and strategy

Planning is the part of the project that makes everything else go smoothly.

Define your migration goals

Before diving into the technical stuff, it’s best to take a moment to think about why you’re switching. Maybe you’re:

• Looking for better automation
• Trying to cut costs
• Struggling with deliverability
• Need certain integrations that your current platform doesn’t support

Whatever your reasons, writing your goals down gives you a clear direction for the migration, helps you choose the right platform, and makes it easier to prioritize as you go.

Audit your current setup

It’s worth taking stock of everything you’re working with before you start moving things across. 

Here’s what to cover:

• Email lists and segmentation: Note down all your active email lists, how you’ve segmented them (by persona, engagement, purchase history, etc.), and any tags you’re using

• Assets: Pull together all your templates, reusable content blocks, landing pages, and sign-up forms

• Mapping automations: Document all your active workflows, such as onboarding sequences, nurture campaigns, and re-engagement workflows. Note the triggers, logic, timing, and steps involved in each. Screenshots or flowcharts can be really handy here

• Key metrics and data: Work out which performance data (conversion rates, engagement scores, pipeline data, list growth) you’ll need to benchmark against after the migration

• Integrations: List every tool connected to your current platform, like your CRM, ecommerce platform, analytics software, or any customer data platforms (CDPs). Understanding how these connections work will make setting things up in your new platform much easier

Select your new marketing platform

Now that your goals are defined and your current setup audited, it’s time to find the right platform for you. Here are a few things worth considering:

• Features: Look for segmentation, automation, testing, and reporting tools that match your needs

• Ease of use: The interface should be easy to use for your whole team

• Pricing: The pricing structure should fit your budget and grow with you as your needs change

• Growth: The platform should be able to keep up as your business and contact lists grow

• Support: Look for options like email, phone, chat, and even a dedicated Customer Success Manager. Check reviews to see what others say about their support experience, too

• Integration capabilities: The new platform should connect easily with your existing tools, like your CRM or ecommerce platform. If possible, ask for a demo or trial before committing

Set your timeline

A platform migration is a big undertaking, so having a practical timeline can be the best way to stay on track throughout the process. It’s worth breaking down the tasks from your audit, assigning them to the right people, and setting clear milestones along the way.

For example, your marketing manager might own the overall strategy, your platform specialist can handle rebuilding templates, and your IT team can take care of any technical changes like domain name system (DNS) updates. Regular check-ins help keep everyone on track and the project moving forward.

2: Pre-migration tasks

With your plan in place, it’s time to get your data and systems ready for the move. These steps are worth taking your time on; they’ll save you a lot of hassle later.

Clean your data

Good data hygiene makes for a much smoother migration. So, before exporting your contacts, review and remove things like:

• Duplicate or invalid records
• Contacts who’ve been inactive for 6-12+ months
• Anyone who’s opted out or withdrawn consent
• Outdated or incomplete contact details

Back up everything

Before you make the move, make sure everything is backed up. Once you leave your old platform, getting back in to get your data isn’t always straightforward.

• Contact lists: Export all your contacts, including any custom fields, how they’re segmented, when they opted in, and how engaged they are

• Opt-out records: Export anyone who’s withdrawn consent or opted out. This is important for staying compliant

• Templates and assets: Save the files for all your key templates and reusable content

• Automation logic: Take screenshots or create diagrams that show the structure and rules of your workflows

• Performance reports: Export past campaign data, contact growth stats, and any other reports you might need for future reference or benchmarking

Keep stakeholders in the loop

Keeping all the relevant people in the loop about the migration process and timelines lets everyone know what’s changing and when. That includes:

• Your marketing colleagues
• The sales team
• Your IT team
• Your customer support team 

Good communication helps avoid surprises and keeps everything running smoothly.

Set up your new platform

Get the basics set up in your new platform before the migration begins, including:

• Setting up your account profile
• Adding your team members with the right permissions
• Filling in any company information the platform needs

Spend some time getting familiar with the dashboard and how everything is laid out.

Plan for IP warming (if applicable)

If you’re using a dedicated IP address in your new platform (rather than sharing one with other senders), you’ll need to warm it up first. This means gradually increasing your sending volume over a few weeks to build a good reputation with internet service providers (ISPs).

A good place to start is by sending to your most engaged contacts first. Most platforms will give you specific guidance and schedules for this, so follow their recommendations closely to avoid any surprises.

3: The migration process

All that planning pays off here. It’s time to start moving your data and rebuilding everything in your new platform. Take it one step at a time, and you’ll be up and running before you know it.

Import your contacts

Start by uploading your contact lists into your new platform. Take care to map your custom fields correctly so you don’t lose any valuable data. Import your opt-out records first to see if the platform can handle this, so you don’t accidentally send to contacts who shouldn’t be contacted. Once everything’s uploaded, double-check your contact counts to make sure nothing’s gone missing.

Recreate your assets

Now it’s time to rebuild the things your contacts see and interact with:

• Templates: Use your new platform’s editor to recreate your key templates. Rebuilding from scratch rather than importing old files gives you better compatibility and a chance to improve them while you’re at it.

• Sign-up forms: Recreate your sign-up forms and replace the old ones on your website and landing pages. Test them to check if new contacts are being added to your lists correctly

• Landing pages: If your old platform hosted any landing pages, rebuild them in your new platform or your website’s content management system (CMS)

Rebuild your automations and workflows

Your audit notes come in handy here. Use them to recreate your automated workflows in the new platform, paying close attention to triggers, delays, and any conditional logic so nothing gets lost in the move. A thorough test before anything goes live will give you peace of mind that everything is working as it should.

Set up your integrations

With your data and assets in place, it’s time to reconnect your new platform to the rest of your tech stack. This usually means setting up connections to your CRM, ecommerce platform, CMS, analytics tools, and any other relevant software.

Most platforms provide integration guides to help with this. Once everything is connected, test that your data is syncing correctly across all your tools.

Configure your authentication settings

This is more of a technical step, but an important one. Depending on your new platform, you may need to update your domain name system (DNS) records to confirm your platform has permission to send on your behalf. This can involve setting up sender policy framework (SPF), domain keys identified mail (DKIM), and domain-based message authentication, reporting & conformance (DMARC) records.

Your new platform will give you the exact values you need. Bear in mind these records can take up to 48 hours to update across the internet, though it’s often much faster.

4: Post-migration

The hard work is done, but you’re not quite finished yet. This next step is all about testing, keeping an eye on things, finalizing the move, and getting your team ready.

Test everything

Before you start relying on your new platform, it’s a good idea to take the time to check everything is working as expected, including:

• Run through your key workflows from start to finish to check that the logic, timing, and content are all correct
• Test all your forms and entry points to check new contacts are being captured correctly
• Check that data is flowing correctly through all your integrations
• Get a small group of internal users to test the platform and flag anything that doesn’t look right

Run your IP warming plan (if applicable)

If you set up an IP warming plan in the pre-migration phase, then now’s the time to put it into action. This is an important step because rushing your sending volume too soon can hurt your reputation with internet service providers (ISPs) and can impact your deliverability. Start with your most engaged contacts in small batches and gradually increase the volume following the schedule you created.

See how things are performing

The first few weeks after migration are important because this is when issues are most likely to appear. Keep a close eye on your key metrics, including:

• Data accuracy: Check that contact records, custom fields, and segmentation are all correct

• Engagement: Track how your contacts are interacting with your content compared to before

• Workflow performance: See if your automated workflows are firing correctly and delivering the right results

• Integration health: Keep an eye on whether data is syncing correctly across all your connected tools

Compare these numbers to your benchmarks from your old platform. If anything looks off, reach out to your new platform’s support team straight away.

Don’t switch off your old platform just yet

For a week or two after the migration, keep your old platform active as a backup. This gives you a safety net in case anything unexpected comes up. Run all your activities from the new platform during this time. Contacts getting duplicate communications or data falling out of sync is the last thing you want.

Only cancel your old platform when you’re confident that everything is working as it should on the new one, such as:

• Your data and assets have all moved across correctly
• Your integrations are up and running
• Your performance looks stable
• Your IP warming is complete (if that was relevant for you)

Get all your backups in place before you make the final call.

Get your team up to speed

Once everything is live, get everyone who’ll be using the new platform up to speed and feeling confident with it. Point them towards any help documentation, or set up training sessions with the platform vendor if they offer them. The sooner your team feels confident, the sooner you’ll start getting the most out of your new platform.

Before you start comparing platforms

If you’re still weighing up which platform to move to, here’s something that might help. G2 has ranked Dotdigital as a leader across 13 categories, based entirely on reviews from marketers who use it every day.

Here’s what those marketers consistently value most:

• Cross-channel marketing: Reach your customers across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media, all from one platform

• Personalization: Create dynamic content that adapts to individual customer behaviors, so every interaction feels relevant

• Reporting and insights: Get a clear picture of how your campaigns are performing and use that data to make better decisions

• Room to grow: Whether you’re a growing business or an established enterprise, Dotdigital is built to keep up with you

• People-first support: From onboarding to ongoing strategy, you’ll have access to a team of marketing experts, deliverability specialists, and customer success managers

Wherever you end up, the same advice applies

Switching platforms can feel like a race against the clock, especially when you’re excited about what’s waiting for you on the other side. But taking shortcuts here can lead to things like lost data, broken workflows, and a lot of unnecessary headaches.

Take the time to work through each step, test everything, and bring your team along with you. A well-planned migration sets you and your team up for long-term success, and the effort you put in now will show in your results.

We’ve had a busy time at Dotdigital too. To continue to serve you better, we expanded globally, advanced the functionality of our platform, and analyzed billions of messages to see what’s actually working for marketers. Here’s a look at the milestones that shaped our year, and some of the latest stats to help you plan for what’s next.

A bigger, bolder Dotdigital

This year has been one of incredible growth and momentum for Dotdigital. From welcoming new faces across the business, launching a new global entity, and a huge acquisition, the Dotdigital team has grown and settled in right away. 

• In June, we proudly welcomed Social Snowball to the Dotdigital family when we acquired the #1 influencer, affiliate, and referral platform
• In October, Dotdigital launched its Japan entity. This is an exciting milestone, allowing us to continue to grow and serve businesses in the SEA market 

• The Dotdigital team is expanding, with new hires now making up 17% of our workforce, including four key additions to our Senior Leadership Team

New channels, smarter AI, and faster marketing

It’s been a landmark year for Dotdigital’s platform. We launched a brand-new channel (hi, WhatsApp), shipped dozens of updates, expanded our integrations, and introduced game-changing AI tools to make marketers’ lives easier. 

• Our customers added 155 new 5-star G2 reviews this year, pushing us past 700 in total
• Since launching WhatsApp in April, marketers have already sent over half a million messages through Dotdigital
• We added 20+ new verified integrations, so you can connect, extend, and streamline your marketing tech stack with ease 
• We delivered 60+ platform updates and expanded our AI tools to simplify segmentation, instantly translate campaigns, and summarize survey responses 
• We launched new and improved Data Firehose and Snowflake integrations, making it simpler and faster to sync your data 
• Dotdigital earned 800+ G2 badges, including Leader status across marketing automation, personalization, and customer data platforms

The trends defined marketing this year

From record-breaking shopping moments to always-on email performance and evolving search behavior, this year’s data shows how marketers are scaling, experimenting, and refining strategies in real-time. 

Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing trends

• On average, brands began using “Black Friday” in subject lines 12 days before the big day
• More than 87 million people shopped online, a 7% increase from 2024
• US shoppers alone spent $11.8 billion on Black Friday 
• Global online spending hit a new peak, reaching $79 billion within 24 hours, marking a 6% year-over-year increase
• Shoppers used Buy Now, Pay Later services for $747.5 million worth of online purchases, reflecting a 30.85% rise from the previous year
• Campaigns sent via Dotdigital reached inboxes in an average of just 17 minutes
• Over 3 billion emails were sent on Dotdigital throughout November alone
• Email performance remained very strong, but the real standout was the way savvy marketers blended MMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications 
• Marketers sent 70+ million SMS messages in November using the Dotdigital platform
• The number of mobile shoppers grew by 7% year-on-year during Black Friday 2025

Email marketing trends

• Email sends have increased by 24% globally
• The global average unique open rate was 33%
• The average click-through rate (CTR) was 3% worldwide
• The global click-to-open-rate (CTOR) was 8%
• Dotdigital’s global delivery rate was 99.28%
• Mailing lists grew by 7.88% 
• Abandoned cart emails enjoyed an average open rate of 73% and a click-to-open rate of 14% globally
• Global email volume is on track to exceed 408 billion messages a day by 2027, up from an already staggering 4.2 million emails sent every second in 2024
• The global email marketing market size is set to soar to $36.3 billion by 2033, up from $14.8 billion in 2025

Search trends

• “Is SEO dead?” attracted 2,500 searches globally every month
• “Is email dead?” was searched 400 times per month worldwide
• Searches for “per my last email” exploded from 100 per month in 2015 to 2,600 today
• “Let’s circle back” grew from 500 to 2,000 monthly searches over the last 10 years
• “Move the needle” searches increased from 60 to 200 per month in the UK
• “Thinking outside the box” declined from 6,400 to 3,000 monthly searches in the US
• In January, informational queries made up 91.3% of those triggering an AI Overview, but by October that share had fallen to 57.1% as commercial (e.g., best noise-canceling headphones) and transactional (buy wireless headphones online) queries gained ground
• The industries with the most AI Overviews in November were Science (25.96%), Computers & Electronics (17.92%), and People & Society (17.29%)

Reports, research and real-world conversations

We doubled down on empowering marketers this year through four exclusive, data-rich reports. We also shared plenty of educational content and how-to sessions at events around the globe. Along the way, we’ve had great conversations, built meaningful connections, and made standout memories with our customers and partners.

• We analyzed the engagement metrics from over 10 billion emails and 500 million SMS campaigns to create our Global benchmark report
• We asked 3,000 consumers what brands could do to earn their loyalty in our Customer loyalty report
• 1,500 marketers told us how they’re really feeling, where they’re focusing, and what tools they’re using in our Secret lives of marketers report
• Our Content Marketing team subscribed to the email marketing of 100 global brands to showcase the email tactics, designs, and flows that leading brands are delivering in our Hitting the mark report
• We released 100 blogs packed with tips and tricks to inspire your next marketing campaign
• We organized 184 partner activities, including our fabulous DotSki event in Whistler, Canada
• We hosted 121 events and webinars, sharing advice, celebrating the wonderful world of marketing, and connecting with lots of brilliant marketers

Connecting through culture and community

Our employee groups have led inclusive, global initiatives that unite our people, celebrate culture, support wellbeing, and raise awareness of important issues.

• We launched two new carbon offsetting projects in India and Bangladesh, accelerating clean energy adoption, cutting emissions, and improving health and livelihoods for millions through solar power and fuel-efficient cookstoves.
• In March, we celebrated International Women’s Week with a mix of virtual and in-person events, including networking sessions, confidence workshops, panel discussions, and a fantastic event with UK charity The Girls’ Network.
• In July, we celebrated Pride with a series of podcast episodes sharing employee stories, virtual Drag Bingo, and we marched in London Pride. 
• Over the summer, we launched Summer Fridays globally, giving employees Friday afternoons off to relax and enjoy the sunshine.
• In September, our teams shared step counts and photos from scenic walks all around the world as part of our ‘On Your Feet Dotdigital’ initiative to get outside and get active. 
• In November, we celebrated our second ECHO Week, a celebration of Ethnicity, Culture, Heritage, and Origin, supported by the DotDEI team and brought to life through podcasts, employee stories, and shared cultural traditions, art, and recipes.
• In December, our DotWellbeing group shared 24 thoughtful wellness tips with employees through a wellbeing advent calendar. Recognizing that the holidays can be joyful and also a stressful or difficult time for some.

See you in 2026

We’re hitting the ground running next year, building on everything we’ve made together, from smart tools that give you your time back to channels that allow two-way conversations. Our goal hasn’t changed; we’re here to help you show up for your audience when it matters most. 

Thanks for being a part of our community this year. We can’t wait to meet more of you in 2026 and help you work smarter, connect better, and deliver some serious marketing results. 

There are over 14,000 martech solutions available today. But with all this noise, it’s easy to get caught up in trends. The real winners are the tools that actually deliver results. That’s why businesses today need to be smart about their choices. Invest in the right solutions, embrace continuous digital transformation, and get ready for customers who expect more and more.

Investing wisely in martech and avoiding underutilization

According to Gartner, martech utilization declined from 42% in 2022 to 33% in 2023.

Has increased technology investment actually decreased productivity and speed to market? Perhaps so. 

It’s crucial to reflect on the primary goals of your investments and choose tools that align with your customers’ wants, needs, and expectations, as well as with their people, processes, and targets.

• The benefit of having an outside-in martech approach is that it helps marketers address rising consumer expectations and tackle privacy and governance concerns.
• To manage budgets effectively, companies should embrace AI and user-friendly technology that enables scaling and adapts to future needs. After all, a heavy reliance on external resources adds to the complexity of delivering real-time outcomes.

How to adopt a customer-first martech strategy

You should adopt a customer-centric approach when selecting and implementing solutions. By understanding and documenting the customer journey and experience, you can improve a brand’s tech-stack, leading to better problem-solving, more personalized strategies, and an overall enhanced customer experience.

1. Start with understanding the customer, their needs, and goals.
2. Design solutions that take the customer’s viewpoints as business goals.
3. Align data and technology in an architecture created to serve customers.

Know and build upon your owned data:

• Who: data that helps identify the human who’s part of the interaction
• When: data to define when the interaction occurs or occurred
• Where: data that describe the space where the interaction took place
• Why: data that uncovered the intent of the interaction
• What: data that describes what the brand offers throughout the interaction
• How: Data that defines how the brand responds to the customer interaction

Consolidate your martech

All-in-one solutions are ideal if you’re looking to consolidate and optimize your martech stack, providing comprehensive features and benefits, including:

• Unified customer experience through cross-channel marketing automation
• AI-powered personalization for audience segmentation and content tailoring
• Seamless integrations with popular CRM and ecommerce platforms
• Scalability and ongoing product improvements that futureproof your marketing initiatives
• Exceptional customer support to maximize the platform’s potential

To truly leverage the potential of the evolving technology landscape, you must combine innovation and collaboration to drive results. An all-in-one solution like Dotdigital can streamline your tech stack, making it easier to create data-driven marketing campaigns. This translates to more efficient marketing efforts, happier customers, and achieving your marketing goals faster.

Harnessing AI and machine learning in web development and marketing

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is changing the game in web development and marketing. By automating some repetitive tasks, personalizing user experiences, and providing insights, these technologies are making your marketing strategies easier. 

For instance, chatbots and virtual assistants powered by AI can now better understand and address user needs, so you can focus on more important tasks. Additionally, ML algorithms can analyze huge amounts of data and identify trends and patterns that can be used to improve web designs and marketing strategies. 

David Schulhof, Director of Digital at The PHA Group says: 

“The enhancements in AI and machine learning tech have given marketers the capability to work faster and smarter with more extensive data sets. However, these tools are not magic wands. Success lies in a human-machine partnership, a hybrid approach. Marketers must adopt AI and ML tech to amplify expertise, not replace it. Define clear goals, provide high-quality data, and interpret insights critically. With this collaborative approach, marketers can remove more guesswork and have confidence in data-driven decision-making.”

Integrating user-centric design practices into marketing initiatives

The methods of communication between businesses and their customers are evolving at a fast pace. It’s important for your marketing team and web developers to stay up-to-date with these changes. Nowadays, customers expect personalized experiences, and brands should have a thorough understanding of their customers’ needs to provide such experiences.

To achieve this, your marketing and web development teams should work together. By doing so, they can create designs that work well on different devices and input modes. This collaboration ensures that the designs are responsive and accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities or the devices they use.

Josh Grant, Director of Absolute Design suggests:

“Collaborative efforts between marketing and web development teams are crucial because they ensure a seamless alignment of user-centric design principles with marketing strategies. This partnership enables the creation of responsive, accessible, and personalized digital experiences to meet diverse user needs and preferences. 

Through their joint efforts, these teams can effectively utilize data-driven insights, adapt to evolving user behaviors, and maintain an iterative approach to design, ensuring continuous improvement and relevance in the rapidly changing digital world. This collaboration enhances user engagement and drives more effective and impactful marketing outcomes.”

Leveraging data-driven insights for informed web design and marketing decisions

A data-led approach will be essential in designing attractive, functional, intuitive websites and effective marketing strategies in the coming years. A/B testing, heatmaps, and user feedback tools will become even more vital in determining the success of web designs and marketing campaigns. 

Combining data from various sources, including customer surveys, social media analytics, and website metrics, will provide valuable insights that inform design decisions and marketing efforts.

Dan Coleman, Director of Coleman Marketing says:

“Concepts such as cross-channel attribution, cross-device tracking, and connecting first & third-party data will likely become even more accessible to marketers. What’s more, AI will empower marketers to ask increasingly complex questions of the data in natural language without having to learn complex queries. This empowerment means how you design and integrate your data sources at the outset is paramount.”

The impact of emerging web technologies on marketing strategies

Emerging web technologies such as progressive web apps (PWAs), accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and Extended Reality (WebXR) are transforming the digital landscape, providing exciting new opportunities to enhance user experiences. To stay ahead of the competition, you must adapt your marketing strategy and incorporate these technologies.

PWAs offer an app-like experience through web browsers, increasing user engagement and loyalty with fast-loading content, offline access, and push notifications. AMP helps to improve site performance and reduce bounce rates by expediting content consumption on mobile devices. WebXR unlocks immersive experiences through Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), enabling the development of creative, interactive campaigns.

Josh Grant says:

“Emerging web technologies are reshaping digital marketing. They compel marketers to think innovatively, focusing on creating more engaging, interactive, and user-friendly experiences. As these technologies become more mainstream, they will provide a competitive edge to businesses that effectively integrate them into their marketing strategies, offering new ways to connect with and captivate their audience.”

Measuring the effectiveness of an integrated web development and marketing approach

To determine the effectiveness of a coordinated web development and marketing approach, businesses must define specific key performance indicators (KPIs), monitor customer behavior, and use data to guide decision-making. Advanced analytic tools with comprehensive reporting capabilities will be essential in providing deep insights and enabling informed choices.

Dan Coleman says:

“The key to succeeding will be to ensure that web development and marketing teams have compatible & complementary KPIs regarding commercial performance. The data can tell you the adjustments you need to make; those businesses with the agility to act on the data and make incremental improvements will outperform the competition.”

To sum up

In conclusion, the fusion of marketing and web development will redefine digital experiences and unlock new possibilities in the coming years. By taking advantage of emerging technologies, adopting user-centric design practices, and leveraging data-driven insights, businesses can stay at the forefront of this transformation and deliver exceptional value to their customers.

If you want to understand more, Dotdigital is hosting a panel discussion alongside Absolute Design, Coleman Marketing, and The PHA Group to explore this further. This panel discussion is for business owners, marketing professionals, web developers, and user experience designers who are keen on staying updated with the latest trends and technologies shaping the digital landscape. 

We aim to empower these innovative minds with valuable insights that facilitate a deep understanding of the symbiotic relationship between marketing and web development, enabling them to create outstanding digital experiences for their customers and stay ahead of the competition in the ever-changing digital world.

Geotargeting describes the use of location data to deliver targeted messaging and content based on an individual’s location.

Benefits of geotargeting as a marketing tool

An individual’s physical location has a big influence on their interests and needs when engaging with your marketing emails or website. Using geotargeting, you can tailor the customer experience to each individual based on where they’re located, ensuring they see the most relevant content to their current context. This in turn boosts conversion rates since it helps connect customers with the information they need to make a purchase decision.

Geotargeting vs geofencing

Whereas geotargeting uses technology such as website IP tracking to serve targeted location-based content, geofencing involves building a virtual ‘fence’ and displaying content to all shoppers who enter the selected area.

Example use cases of geofencing include:

One example use case is brick-and-mortar retailers targeting shoppers near the stores of their competitors to provide them with discounts for their own store.

Burger King famously took on McDonald’s using this approach, where customers within 600 feet of a McDonald’s were given the opportunity to order a Whopper for a reduced price and then received directions to their nearest Burger King to collect their meal.

Another example could be travel insurance providers targeting travelers who arrive at the airport to promote their services.

Look for a tool that lets you make use of geotargeting and geofencing technology, so you can benefit from both.

Examples of geotargeting in eCommerce and travel

1) Location-based dynamic content

Dynamic content allows you to automatically generate compelling creative that is unique, relevant and up-to-date the instant a shopper interacts with your marketing. When combined with geotargeting, it enables you to tailor your content to each individual based on their location.

eCommerce

For eCommerce businesses, an example of this could be matching a product’s location with a shopper’s location and behavior to recommend products in the shopper’s most browsed category that are available in their nearest store.

Travel

For travel businesses, an example of this could be highlighting offers for vacations that are currently enjoying sunny weather to a shopper who is experiencing rainy weather in their current location.

2) Nearest store

eCommerce

Incorporating nearest store information (i.e. displaying details of the shopper’s nearest store) on your website and in marketing emails is an effective way to drive footfall to physical locations, as well as providing a more convenient customer experience.

Travel

Travel companies can employ this tactic too by displaying details of the individual’s closest high-street store. This will encourage travelers who might be hesitant to book online to book a vacation in-store.

3) Currency and delivery information

eCommerce

Displaying the relevant currency and delivery information to each shopper based on where they’re located is a simple but highly effective use of geotargeting.

Shoppers will be more likely to make a purchase if they see products priced in their currency and they know what to expect from their local delivery process.

Travel

Likewise, travel businesses can display vacations and flights in the individual’s relevant currency and can use the traveler’s current location as the outbound country for flights, for example.

Geotargeting tools and technology

To implement geotargeting, you’ll need the right tools and technology in place to help you identify your users’ locations and deliver relevant content.

How Dotdigital personalization can help

With our geotargeting technology, you can serve dynamic content based on the individual’s nearest store or region. You can also refine marketing rules and customer segments using flexible location-based rules.

We enable you to define a customer’s location in a few different ways:

• A location merged in, e.g. from a field in your ESP
• The current geolocation of the individual based on their IP address
• A value stored in the person record, e.g. an imported known location

Our geotargeting tool has been designed to give you increased flexibility when defining locations. By combining this functionality with our versatile personalization features, you can use location-based marketing to engage your customers and drive revenue.

You can:

• Display nearest store information, such as opening hours and maps
• Override locations if necessary (e.g. if a person’s nearest store is in Guilford but you know they shop more frequently in your London store)
• Filter product recommendations based on the customer’s location, so individual customers will only see products available near them
• Display content based on the live weather at the shopper’s location to provide them with relevant product recommendations, such as winter boots if it’s snowing
• Create geofences to show specific web content or send a specific email to customers in the proximity of a given location

FAQs

What is geotargeting in marketing?

Geotargeting is tailoring content, ads, or promotions to a specific audience based on their geographic location. It allows businesses to personalize marketing efforts, which improves relevance and engagement for local or regional audiences.

What is the difference between geofencing and geotargeting?

Geofencing sets geographical boundaries and triggers an action or actions when a device enters or exits the defined area. It’s often used for location-based alerts. Geotargeting, on the other hand, delivers content or ads tailored to specific geographic locations, focusing on audience relevance rather than proximity triggers.

What is the use of geo-location targeting in eCommerce?

Geo-location targeting enables businesses to tailor content, promotions, and product recommendations based on a user’s real-time or predetermined geographic location. This personalized experience enhances relevancy, engagement, and conversion rates.

But how do you optimize your website speed? And how do you know you’ve achieved a good speed?

In a recent webinar, we spoke to Nathan Amery, Head of Digital Marketing at Jewellerybox, as he explained how the Jewellerybox eCommerce website became the fastest website within the UK fashion sector. Watch the webinar on-demand and keep reading to discover some key insights from the event.

How to optimize website speed

Starting with the LCP

The first element of your page you will want to speed up is the parts of your page that your customers see first. The most important Core Web Vitals metric to take into account here is LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). This is about how quickly you can load the biggest page element that your users see first. The goal is to start loading it before everything else and reduce its size as much as possible.

To find out what your LCP is, open your website on Chrome or Edge and hit F12 on your keyboard to go into developer mode. Next, go into the Performance Tab, refresh your page and find the ‘LCP’ text amongst all the complex looking graphs. Hover over it, and you’ll see your LCP element highlighted on your page.

Some tips regarding the LCP are:

• Focus on your homepage images first
• Compress them using a service like TinyPNG
• Wherever possible, serve images at the size your users view them
• Ensure if you load a banner which mixes text and colored backgrounds, you create it with HTML & CSS – and not as an image
• If you are using a third party tool – such as Dotdigital personalization – load the third-party’s JavaScript (JS) first
• If the LCP element requires specific fonts to finish loading, get them loaded early
• Break out the CSS necessary for your LCP element to load and take it out of your CSS file. Instead, load it directly in <style></style> so it loads before the rest of your CSS.

JavaScript

Originally, JS was used to create interactive elements on a page. Nowadays, it is used to display a page (such as when you use jQuery). Keep in mind that every third-party plugin has its own JS snippet to add.

If you don’t know what JS elements you’re currently running on your page, hit F12 on your keyboard whilst in either the Chrome or Edge browser, go to the ‘network’ tab, then filter for JS. Once you’ve done that, refresh the page.

JS can significantly slow down your site if you keep old plug-ins that you don’t use anymore. Ask yourself:

• Is it for measurement? Do I use that data?
• Is it displaying something? Can I achieve the same thing with CSS/HTML?
• Does it need to be displayed on all pages?
• Is it more complex than necessary?
• Is it benefitting my users?

Remember, though, JS isn’t all bad. There are two behaviors of the code when it comes to loading on a page. These include:

• When the page is loading and the browser comes across a piece of JS, it will pause loading the rest of the page in order to fetch and download the JS content, slowing the rest of the page down. This is its default behavior.
• When you use the async tag, the browser will hit the JS and go to download it, whilst still rendering the rest of the page in the background. It will then wait until the full page has loaded before running the JS.

The first behavior should be used if you need JS to display anything on your page immediately, whilst the second behavior is more useful when using, for example, a social sharing button or something else non-vital for customers to see.

Make sure you talk to your developers when installing a new plug-in to make sure it doesn’t sacrifice too much speed.

Optimizing with Dotdigital personalization

Here are some of the key ways Dotdigital works to minimize the effect that personalization can have on site speed:

• Our content and scripts load asynchronously and are appropriately cached, so as not to slow down the page load time.
• The script is hosted on a global CDN to reduce the time to serve and ensure the site won’t have an additional external dependency.
• We configure DNS prefetching for all clients, speeding up the time it takes your site to load.
• We provide the option to deploy personalization server-side as well as client-side. While client-side deployment has its advantages such as ease of implementation, server-side allows you to implement personalization with no impact on performance. Server-side personalization also makes it easy to comply with the Google Page Experience update as all changes are made on the server, before it reaches the browser.

Jewellerybox has also taken additional steps to speed up their site:

The company has added caching for non-personalized content, such as the bestseller product recommendations, meaning it didn’t have to load from the platform each time.

Additionally, personalized content is cached per user. If it were cached for everybody, everyone would see the same content, but by caching it per user, Jewellerybox can show personalized content based on the users’ previous browsing and purchase history.

Learn more about the impact of personalization on SEO.

3 quick win tips

Nathan shared three easy tips you may be able to implement very quickly.

Tip 1: Load jQuery from a CDN like Cloudflare instead of Google if you can, as loading from different domains takes longer. You can try the same with Google fonts.

Tip 2: Previously, EV SSLs were used for their security benefit and the visual clue in browsers to show the website is safe. When you had an EV SSL, the left hand side of your website’s URL would turn green with a lock symbol.

However, EV SSLs are no longer more useful than any other SSL, because it is no longer any more secure and browsers don’t show that visual clue anymore. Not only that, swapping it to a regular SSL should increase your site speed by up to one second.

Not sure what SSL you use? You can find out here and look for extended validation “yes” or “no”. If it’s a “yes”, switch your SSL.

Tip 3: Lazy loading images are images that don’t initially load when a user opens a page. Instead, they load when the user scrolls down on the page to where the image is. Nowadays, this can be used by most browsers via HTML. Below is an image of the lazy-loading tag to add:

Remember to only use this for images that your users can’t initially see when loading the page, and that the Safari browser will not recognize this command. It won’t break the page, but users using Safari won’t get the same benefit as those using Edge, Chrome or Firefox.

Fortunately, it is recognized in Google page speed scores, and it works with iFrames as well. This means that some video embeds work with the tag as well.

Testing

When you open your site on your browser at home or in your office, it’s likely your website loads very quickly. But your users could live in a more rural area with barely any wifi or data available. So how do you measure how fast your site is?

Google tests page speeds with bad connections. Their tests are based on a five-year-old smartphone working on 3G (which works out to be about 2% of the speed on a modern 4G connection with good signal).

Fortunately, you don’t need an old phone with a 3G connection to test your page speed; you can emulate it on your Chrome or Edge browser. This is done by pressing the F12 key on your keyboard, and then going into the performance tab. There, you can select ‘Fast 3G’ for the network setting and ‘4x CPU slowdown’  for the CPU setting.

As everything is slowed down now, it will show you the order in which the content on your page loads as well. This means you can check if your LCP and lazy-loading settings are correct, or if anything needs adjusting.

Final thoughts

Remember to keep auditing your website and making sure you can’t find any unnecessary JS, CSS or anything else that is slowing your site down. Remember that whenever you add something, such as a new plug-in, it is important to keep site speed in mind and to continue talking to your developers.

For detailed information you can use to speed up your website and reduce bounce rates, download our checklist: How to audit your page speed.

By Danielle Beuker

Digital Marketing Assistant