Master all of the internet dance crazes. —CMO @SayKay

I would like to complete the Spartan Trifecta in 2019. I did a Spartan Sprint and a Tough Mudder this year, and I’m looking

forward to taking it to the next level! —GVP, Demand Generation, @GurdeepD

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I want to read 200 various books. —Head of APAC Marketing, @Ozekinote

I love exercising of any kind. This year, I really want to master a headstand!

—VP of Corporate Marketing, @D_Sieber

To continue to make fitness and overall health a top priority. —VP of Product, @CaseyCarey

To get my running personal best for 10k below 50 minutes! (Currently at 50.23) —Head of EMEA Marketing, @PeterBel

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Spend more quality time with my daughter, Lyra. It’s all about finding balance that works for you, so I’m looking forward to more activity-heavy weekends to maximize our time together. —Head of APAC Marketing, @Lauren_Adam

Spend more time speaking Spanish. I have been practicing for years and need to get out of my comfort zone and stumble in real-world situations. Did I just justify a trip to Spain? —GVP, Sales Enablement, @KLeeman1010

We're living in exciting times. Organizations have a broader reach across more channels than ever before. Through billions of glass surfaces across new mediums and media

ranging from social to mobile and email to chat, there is no shortage of ways to engage. There is no better time to be a marketer than now.

Marketers need to anchor and integrate every activity intended to jumpstart growth, retain customers, and add value.

You have to move beyond potential on paper and into unforgettable experiences for your customers and prospects—and that means finding innovative, data-driven ways to

leverage loyal customers who will advocate for your brand. To prepare yourself for this reality, we’ve put together predictions and trends to watch for in the coming year.

2019PREDICTIONS

HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT IN 2019:

HERE’S WHAT OUR LEADERS PREDICT FOR THE YEAR TO COME:

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE is increasingly the key di�erentiator that makes or breaks a business. B2B companies are now focused on how to delivering an extraordinary customer experiences at every interaction to meet that expectation. Those interactions need to be consistent with the brand’s promise.

Smartly planned, aligned, and executed

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING (ABM) strategies across sales, marketing, and commercial departments will increasingly become a critical part of successful marketing outcomes. This will help with reporting on sales leads and how they can be directly attributed to marketing e�orts.

MARKETING MEASUREMENT AND REVENUE ATTRIBUTION are a continued focus for marketers. Marketers have earned their seat at the table through measured e�orts that prove just how much marketing does to drive revenue.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)is at the core of digital transformation. Business that are successful in today's era leverage technology to empower marketers and increase personalization.

Companies are beginning to do this by creating more personalized content, employing chatbots, and monitoring down to the micro-moment to better

predict customer and prospect behavior. As this type of technology evolves, the results will deliver hyper-targeted and personalized campaigns that will help

marketers create a more seamless end-to-end buyer journey. Expect to see AI permeate throughout a marketer's journey in 2019.

DIGITAL MARKETING is bringing an entirely new level of reporting to the marketing table, but

proving the impact and ROI on marketing activities remains a challenge. Marketers should continue to upskill on data analytics and metrics.

ALIGNING METRICS AND KPIS across di�erent departments and job functions is becoming increasingly critical to

ensure that the entire organization is working toward the same goals.

SARAH KENNEDY, CMO Marketing leaders must align with their counterparts across finance, sales, and

IT—their CFO, CRO, and CIO peers. These are the three most critical functions that CMOs and marketing leaders must be in lockstep with to drive meaningful business

growth in 2019, and it’s not just the leaders themselves. It’s equally, if not even more, important that the example they set translates to every layer of leadership within their

teams. And the second thing is true full lifecycle marketing—marketing must go beyond new logo acquisition alone to continue to deliver value in 2019 and beyond.

 Retention is the new growth. CMOs will begin to more aggressively lead their teams

toward accountability for engaging across the entire customer journey and delivering value at every step. For B2B marketers specifically, supporting the breadth and depth

of engagement at an account level and accelerating the total relationship value for customers is now just as much the job of marketing as any other team. 2019 is the

year we begin to see marketing teams double down to unlock the power of prioritizing retention equally with new growth.

KATHY LEEMAN, GVP GLOBAL ENABLEMENT The past year was so transformational in the MarTech space. Sometimes it was di�icult to deliver up-to-date training and sales resources using the same historical methods: infrequent large-scale boot camps and ad hoc webinars.

In 2019, we are shifting to more dynamic delivery methods of digestible content that we reinforce consistently throughout the year. Sales enablement doesn’t have to be viewed as something forced on sales without providing much value. We can be a true business partner to sales by developing content with and for them.

CASEY CAREY, VP, PRODUCT MARKETINGIn 2018, many of us found ourselves in the “ABM trough of disillusionment.” It’s

really hard to pivot the business and simultaneously cobble together a complete tech solution. One of my goals for 2019 is to remove much of the friction and

complexity associated with ABM strategies and the associated solutions.

B2B marketers will begin to look at adding customer data platforms to their stacks in lieu of "data lakes," as available solutions add B2B specific capabilities

including account hierarchies, CRM integrations, and native persona support.

TAKASHI OZEKI, VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING, JAPAN Stakeholder engagement is a critical skill to be a fearless marketer. The marketer

needs to be an engine for the company's growth. To lead the company e�ectively, engaging well with each team is an essential skill. To engage with them,

understand their objective, set the common goal, utilize their language and most importantly, respect them.

Marketing is everywhere in your company. We see many recruiting teams starting to use marketing technology to engage with candidates. We all know that it is hard

to find great marketers in the job market as it’s very competitive, but there are many young, hungry fearless marketers within our own company. Seek them out,

give them a chance, and lead them!

GURDEEP DHILLON, GVP DEMAND GENERATION Demand capture and attribution will be incredibly important for marketers moving forward. Demand capture is di�erent from demand generation. This is about listening for, capturing, and dispositioning existing demand for your product or solution. I see SEM, SEO, intent data, and software review platforms as the primary sources for demand capture.

Marketers will need to refine skills around what it means to create an ideal customer profile. ABM and digital marketing are only as successful as the segmentation and targeting applied up front. Knowing what your best customers look like and how to match prospects to that profile will be what sets marketers apart. Having tools that enable this at scale will be even more valuable.

LAUREN ADAM, HEAD OF MARKETING, ANZIf you haven’t already, dip a toe into AI. Whether it is through chatbots or more intensive tools to predict customer behavior, marketers will start incorporating AI into their marketing, even if it’s only in a single area to begin with.

Many marketers have adopted multiple marketing technologies in the past 3-5 years. They will now look to bring together these existing technologies alongside attribution, data, and analytics technologies to create a clear view of the line between marketing activity and revenue and they need a marketing operations professional by their side.

DOROTHEA SIEBER, VICE PRESIDENT OF CORPORATE MARKETING

Today, customers expect an amazing and seamless end-to-end experience—in B2C and B2B. Marketing leaders need to truly embrace that and work closely with sales and customer

success to deliver those experiences.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a big part of that because it allows companies to personalize experiences based on individual preferences—whether that

is to personalize content for a customer interested in thought leadership around the evolving role of the CMO, or for a practitioner looking for detailed step-by-step guides about marketing metrics and analytics.

Going forward, AI will enable marketers to personalize not only content but entire experiences.

PETER BELL, SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKETING, EMEA We’re overly reliant upon email, and we can do better. Email isn’t going to disappear, but it’s not a solution to everything, and it performs better when integrated with other channels. Marketing teams will need more left-brain thinkers and data nerds that will round out the team to make it stand out from the competition.

GDPR created a mandate to do things right. We have to ensure we hold ourselves to these standards in 2019 and beyond.

WORK/LIFE BALANCE FOR 2019When we all close our laptops at the end of the day, we’re still human just like you. We like to have fun, and have set some high ambitions in 2019 that have nothing to do with work.

Here are some of our non-work related goals for the coming year:

WE HOPE YOU HAVE A FANTASTIC 2019!