AI agents promise to easily automate and accelerate marketing use cases, capturing marketers’ attention: 42% of B2C marketing decision-makers in Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2026 say their organizations are currently piloting or experimenting with agentic AI. In Forrester’s Digital Business And Strategy Survey, 2025 , 49% of B2B or B2B2C marketing digital business strategy decision-makers are investing in AI agents. As AI agents proliferate across vendors’ product offerings, Forrester’s Marketing AI Agent Solution Evaluation Template can help martech decision-makers discern emerging agent validity and suitability for their requirements.

As organizations rush to deploy AI, too many forget the people it’s meant to serve. A human‑first foundation is what separates AI that frustrates from AI that truly drives better experiences.

The report explores how enterprise financial services organizations use real-time interaction management software (RTIMS), based on reference customer interviews. Key insights include the need for cross-functional collaboration that includes technology and business teams, a balanced focus on both customer and business metrics, and strategic planning with phased milestones to operationalize high-priority use cases. Additionally, organizations invest in RTIMS as a linchpin solution to help integrate their disparate technology ecosystems and optimize their enterprise customer data infrastructure to ensure AI readiness.

Real-time interaction management software (RTIMS) involves enterprise customer data management, customer analytics, “next best” decisioning logic, experience orchestration workflows, performance measurement, and integration capabilities that require significant effort to properly deploy. Firms need a comprehensive implementation plan to ensure success. B2C marketing teams should use this checklist to plan their RTIMS deployment and track the progress of their implementation.

Real-time interaction management software (RTIMS) empowers organizations to determine and orchestrate contextually relevant experiences for mutual value realization at the appropriate moment in the customer lifecycle via preferred customer touchpoints.RTIMS requires an ecosystem of integrated capabilities versus a single platform — though a sophisticated AI-enabled decisioning engine is critical. RTIMS is an enterprise challenge involving significant investments in both technology and people, with the benefit of sustainable ROI for successful implementations. This webinar discusses findings from our recent Forrester Wave on RTIMS solutions. Key takeaways: Understand the current RTIMS landscape.Discover which RTIMS capabilities are right for you.Hear about RTIMS best practices from leading firms.Target audience level: intermediate and advanced

B2C marketing executives can use Forrester’s B2C Marketing Technology Inventory And Assessment Tool to inventory and evaluate the marketing technology (martech) solutions they are using. The tool’s structured approach allows marketers to identify each technology type that their organization uses and its associated characteristics and costs, functionality against requirements, and user adoption. Marketers can then review their spending across vendors and products by budget owner, user group, or customer factors. The tool also provides investment recommendations based on user input related to functionality and adoption.

In an ideal world, brands would focus on ensuring that their customers realize value. But organizations struggle with cross-functional collaboration, conflicting team metrics, and strategies that prioritize revenue growth over total experience. And that’s just the business side — technology infrastructure can be just as problematic. Although there’s no simple solution, investments in real-time interaction […]

In our evaluation of real-time interaction management software (RTIMS) providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps you select the right one for your needs.

Cross-channel marketing hubs (CCMHs) include a complex array of data management, customer analytics, experience design, orchestration workflows, performance measurement, and integration capabilities that require significant effort to properly deploy. Vendors’ CCMH solutions vary widely in terms of cloud deployment and data center infrastructure, technology and services partners, and their ability to address regional and vertical-specific requirements. Firms must complete a comprehensive review to ensure success. B2C marketing teams should use this checklist to benchmark their global CCMH requirements against vendor capabilities.

The dust has settled on Dreamforce, Salesforce’s well-attended San Francisco fete. Our takeaway? Salesforce is setting the pace with a platform for AI agents embedded in business applications, and it’s made huge progress on its products and partnerships in the last year.