The 2016 Digital Trends report, based on the fifth annual trends survey conducted by Econsultancy and Adobe, highlights the key digital trends, challenges and opportunities which marketers need to be aware of during 2016, covering topics ranging from customer experience and mobile to data-driven marketing and personalisation.

The 2016 edition of this research also focuses on the role of workflows and internal collaboration in the context of digital success. The report is based on a global survey of more than 7,000 marketers and ecommerce professionals carried out at the end of 2015.

The following sections are featured in the report:

  • Introduction and a look back at 2015
  • The many priorities within CX
  • Culture, politics and the push to improve CX
  • Data-driven… everything
  • People are mobile, but brands are standing still
  • Marketing to changing realities
  • Planning and execution in 2016

Findings include:

  • Just over a fifth (22%) of client-side respondents ranked optimising the customer experience as the single most exciting opportunity for the year ahead, slightly ahead of other areas such as creating compelling content for digital experiences and data-driven marketing (both 16%).
  • The priorities that sit atop marketers’ lists are tied together by their focus on the individual: personalisation (31%), content optimisation (29%) and social media engagement (25%) are overlapping capabilities with the customer at the centre.
  • When asked to identify their strategic priorities for 2016, more organisations chose data-driven marketing with their top vote (53%) than any other.
  • The vast majority (94%) say that optimising creative workflows will be important in delivering a great customer experience, while a similar proportion (91%) say the same about the importance of improving collaboration between creative and marketing teams.
  • Nearly half (46%) of respondents rank the process of creating a cross-team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives as 4 or 5 on the difficulty scale.
  • Just over half of company respondents (51%, compared to 61% of agencies) rank mobile as a top-three area of priority for their organisation (or their clients) in 2016.

Econsultancy’s Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefings, sponsored by Adobe, look at some of the most important trends affecting the marketing landscape.