A new study conducted by Albert and Forrester surveyed 156 decision-making marketers to examine their martech purchase behaviors. The findings revealed that even though marketers do utilize AI in their strategy, the majority still neglect the AI-autonomous solutions, which could relieve some of their major sore spots.

However, out of all respondents that reported to already adopting AI-powered marketing solutions, 74 percent admitted to using artificial intelligence strictly in an “assistive” fashion. While as little as 26 percent described AI as actually collaborative.

The researchers explain that marketers tend to have a quite limited view of applying AI to their trade because they see AI marketing as primarily supporting tactical campaign tasks. Only 39 percent of respondents said that AI can play a role in creative development and even less, 34 percent, said it can provide insights to other business functions.

Complicated martech stacks are blamed for customer engagement tactics not being relevant enough by 47 percent of participants and named the reason customer engagement is not delivered in the optimal channel by another 37 percent.

On the bright side, the researchers predict that AI technologies will continue to grow and evolve in the next five to 10 years; allowing marketers the freedom of automating certain processes and focusing on more important initiatives, such as personalization.

To help them better utilize AI in their digital strategy the researchers outlined some recommendations which include targeting AI solutions that support the function of a marketing team.

“The minority of respondents in our research who have already progressed to collaborating with autonomous AI-powered marketing solutions are reaping benefits in areas that align with marketers’ most pressing objectives. Over half say they have already realized or expect to realize more effective use of data, an improved customer experience, and more effective marketing campaigns,” the research stated.