Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 AI CRM, has released findings from its State of Marketing report. According to the survey of 4,450 marketing professionals, including 100 in Singapore, 87% confess to running generic campaigns. 86% of Singapore marketers still struggle to promptly respond to customers – above the APAC average of 71% – despite a clear consumer demand for instant, conversational and personalised brand interactions.
The research suggests the culprit isn’t lack of effort, but the lack of usable data. Siloed systems and poor data quality remain the top barriers to the promises of AI-driven personalisation.
The good news is: marketers with unified customer data have an early advantage over those with disjointed data sources. Globally, marketing teams who’ve satisfactorily unified their data are 42% more likely to regularly respond to customers compared to those who aren’t fully satisfied with their data underpinnings. They are also 60% more likely to use AI agents to help scale their efforts.
“Singapore marketers are under immense pressure to deliver personalised, real-time experiences, but they’re being held back by the very foundation they’re building on. When data is siloed and fragmented, AI tools can’t deliver on their promise. As customer journeys become more conversational, brands that unify their data across the customer journey will be better placed to deliver personalisation at scale, and build stronger customer relationships,” said Nipun Sharma, Vice President, Marketing, India & ASEAN, Salesforce.
Survey findings
Data is the biggest personalisation bottleneck
● Cross-departmental silos limit marketers to one-way communications.
○ 80% of Singapore marketers say customers now expect two-way conversations – the ability to reply to a marketing message and get an actual response. But 86% of Singapore marketers struggle to respond promptly because they can’t access the context they need.
○ Only 61% have complete access to service data, 58% to sales data, and 57% to commerce data.
● Marketers look to AI to scale personalisation efforts.
○ 75% of Singapore marketers say they need more personalised content than they’re able to
produce and nearly as many (81%) are turning to AI to help close the gap.
○ Perhaps unsurprisingly, their top AI use case is personalising content.
○ AI can help scale personalisation efforts, but the research shows most marketers are still getting
tripped up: 100% of Singapore marketers hit barriers to personalisation. Data issues, including
siloed data, poor data quality, and high volumes of data prove to be the most common barrier.
● High performers have narrowed this gap.
○ A notable exception: marketers using
○ AI agents report higher satisfaction with cross-functional data access. Whether that’s because deploying agents forced them to unify data first, or because the agents themselves improved connectivity, isn’t clear.
■ Across APAC, 76% of marketers with AI are satisfied with their ability to connect touchpoints compared to 55% of those without AI.
○ High-performing APAC marketers are 1.7 times more likely to use customer data to create relevant experiences and 1.7 times more likely to have unified their data sources.
AI rewrites the rules of discovery and engagement
● Marketers are caught between old playbooks and new realities
○ 77% of marketers in Singapore say they’re struggling to keep up with changing customer behaviours, surpassing the APAC average of 69%. Additionally, 53% haven’t figured out how to adapt their strategies to the widespread use of AI.
● Customer behaviours – and expectations – are already measurably different thanks to AI
○ Half of all Google searches now feature AI summaries that bypass brand websites entirely — shrinking the top of the marketing funnel — while customers increasingly consult LLMs for purchase decisions.
○ 85% of Singapore marketers have observed that AI is raising customer expectations, with 80% noting customers increasingly expect two-way conversations across all channels.
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