​Smart speakers are everywhere. They are on everyone’s phone, in their homes, and on every display stand this holiday period as the perfect gift idea.

It's been yet another year of significant mergers and acquisitions in the marketing, advertising and customer technology sphere.

​Change, disruption, uncertainty and engagement on the customer’s terms – looking at this year’s list of most-read stories on CMO, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d actively sought out these topics as areas to focus on. Yet it’s clear the transformation of marketing from broadcast to two-way engagement, thanks to the ongoing disruptive impact of digital and connectivity, has continued to dominate marketing industry discussions and thinking in 2019.

What does 2020 hold for digital marketers, and marketing generally? We ask a raft of industry experts from the marketing technology and industry community to give us their thoughts on 2020 and beyond, and what marketers will need to know moving forward.

If there’s one lesson Luxury Escape’s chief customer officer, Jason Shugg, has learnt through the process of overhauling marketing, sales and service technology, it’s the importance of communication.

“If there are two sources of truth, there is no truth.” It’s a comment that screams common sense. Yet when you look at the state of the relationship between marketing and sales teams, it’s still not often the case, agrees Salesforce SVP and GM of Pardot, Michael Kostow.

Better claims and rehabilitation management, transparency and improved member experiences are all coming to fruition for Zurich’s OnePath life insurance business after adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Southwest Airlines has edged a step closer to a 360-degree view of the customer while also lifting employee engagement after deploying a new platform to improve customer service management.

Marketers need to work harder to provide customers with transparency and an ability to control their own data as part of their ethical – and not just legal – responsibility towards them, Salesforce global CMO, Stephanie Buscemi, believes.

Being a leader is not a matter of having your name up in lights, making speeches or corralling power at the top. It’s identifying the power in other people and unleashing it, former US president, Barack Obama, believes.

Knowing consumers intimately, leaning in to brand ‘superpowers’ and digital capability, and disrupting from within have helped digital beauty retailer, e.l.f, buck category sales decline and chalk up 13 percentage point growth this year.

​It’s November so, naturally, the call out to grow a ‘mo and help prevent male suicide for Movember is top of mind. But how does a not-for-profit like the Movember Foundation harness its data to create a strategy for better personalisation, targeting, and all year round messaging? And, most importantly, how do they do this in a cost effective way?

​Differentiating Fitness First in what is a highly competitive and personal space cannot be easy, and yet Fitness First makes it looks so as it powers towards one-to-one, personalised customer experience (CX).

More than 30 per cent revenue growth online a year-and-a-half and a highly collaborative cross-functional workforce are just two achievements True Alliance has realised after transforming its digital platforms, processes and organisational approach.

Just because you can communicate with a customer in a highly personalised way, doesn’t mean you should, said director of marketing infrastructure at Monash University, Amin Foda, at Tealium’s recent Digital Velocity event.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Acquia, Confirmit, Xandr, Drift, Freshworks, HubSpot, Aprimo, Blis, AgilOne and Big IDea.

​Personalisation done right can have a dramatic effect on how customers experience a brand and a positive effect on marketing efforts, which flow through to the bottom line. At last week’s Sitecore Experience 2019 event in Sydney, three very different examples were provided to the audience on the experience of embarking on a personalisation programme and the impact of effective personalisation.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Pitney Bowes, Leadspace, Salesforce, Zendesk, RollWorks, AdRoll, Freshworks, AdKernel, AdSecure, SparkPost, Automattic, ZBS CRM, and more.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Salesforce, Adobe, Focusvision, Google, Openprise, Simon Data, Cere Network and CtrlShift.

News of Suncorp’s CEO of customer, Pip Marlow, departure has promptly been followed by her appointment as the new CEO of Salesforce Australia and New Zealand.

Parent company for retail power tool brands including Milwaukee, Vax, Ryobi and AEG, TTi, realised it needed to develop a single view of customer to meet the rising tide of customer expectations in the era of disruptors.