85% of SA Marketers have Adopted AI, but Mistrust Persists

The report delves into the latest trends regarding how marketers evaluate and implement AI in their operations, approach data acquisition, maintenance, and application strategies, and ensure customer trust and security amidst increasing vulnerabilities.

Key insights from the research include:

• Priorities for a new marketing era. Marketers are evolving their practices in a highly competitive landscape. They’re looking to AI — both generative and predictive — to help personalise at scale and boost efficiency.

  • Implementing / leveraging AI is marketers’ #1 priority on a global scale, as well as their biggest challenge.

  • Locally, improving use of tools and technologies is South African marketers’ number one priority, while building and retaining trust with customers is their number one challenge.

• Marketers shore up their data foundations. Businesses have long struggled to connect disparate data points to create consistent, personalised experiences across customer journeys. Yet as third-party cookies are depreciated and AI proliferates, that quest is only becoming more critical — and challenging.

  • 27%% of marketers in South Africa are fully satisfied with their ability to unify customer data sources.

  • 64%% of marketers in South Africa have access to real-time data to execute a campaign. 50% need the IT department’s help to do so.

  • Marketers in South Africa use an average of 9 different tactics to collect data, with loyalty programmes being the most common.

• Marketers embrace AI with an eye on trust. Marketers are intent on successfully applying AI in their operations with the right data, but are concerned about security

  • 85% of marketers in South Africa are already experimenting with or have fully implemented AI into their workflows.

  • AI implementation is also a point of differentiation: high performing marketing teams are 2.1x more likely than underperformers to have fully implemented AI within their operations.

  • The three most popular AI use cases among marketers in South Africa are: content generation, automation of customer interactions, programmatic advertising and media buying.

• Full personalisation remains a work in progress. To meet rising customer expectations around personalisation, marketers are graduating beyond broad audience segmentations, like location or age, to more specific identifiers like individual preferences or past interactions.  There’s also a difference between how the highest- and lowest-performing marketing teams adapt.

  • High performers in South Africa fully personalise across an average of 6.0 channels, compared with underperformers who fully personalised across 4.0.

• Marketers seek unified analytics. There is no shortage of data sources but putting that data to work is a challenge — especially when it demands a holistic or long-term view of data.

  • 53% of marketers in South Africa track customer lifetime value (CTV).

  • 89% of marketers in South Africa say they have a clear view into marketing’s impact on revenue.

• Deeper relationships emerge with account-based marketing (ABM) and loyalty programs. Companies are increasingly turning to strategies like ABM and loyalty programs for better acquisition and retention. Yet many of these programs’ information sources remain disjointed, as does the customer experience.

  • Only 58% of marketers in South Africa say loyalty data is fully integrated across all touchpoints.

  • 38% of marketers in South Africa say loyalty programme functionalities are accessible across all touchpoints.

  • 61% of B2B marketers in South Africa use ABM for customer acquisition, but less than half use it for upselling and cross-selling, 50% and 44%, respectively.

Methodology

Salesforce conducted a double-anonymous survey of 4,850 marketers between February 5 to March 12, 2024. Respondents were sourced from 29 countries across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. Additional methodology and survey demographic details can be found in the report. Cultural bias impacts country-level survey results.

Source: Salesforce