Programmatic loyalty remains a priority for brands, yet growing the dedicated skill sets and headcount needed to execute these programs effectively can be a challenge. Companies often focus too heavily on day-to-day operations at the expense of strategic innovation, leading to misalignment across the business, gaps in customer experience, and a failure to meet the expectations of loyal customers. This report outlines the critical roles and responsibilities of a loyalty team, how to scale the function as your loyalty initiatives mature, and the characteristics of a loyalty organization with longevity.

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.

Every year, the arrival of spring brings open windows and blossoming trees. For many, it’s also time for spring cleaning. Whether you love or hate the spring-clean, it’s an important ritual in ushering in the warmer seasons. This year, we recommend extending your spring cleaning ritual to your company’s customer data for consumer personalization programs. […]

In Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2026 , 29% of B2C marketing decision-makers said that measuring the ROI of their marketing efforts was a top challenge; 20% stated that this difficulty was exacerbated by having too many metrics to measure. Linking objectives and key results (OKRs) is a goal setting and tracking methodology that aligns teams to organizational goals. B2C marketing executives can use OKR frameworks to link OKRs to the metrics that matter and build consensus on marketing measurement methods throughout the customer lifecycle. Use this template to measure marketing outcomes and identify how to plan and deliver effective marketing efforts across the customer journey.

Many organizations hit the ground running with consumer “personalization” because it’s built into business priorities or it’s a top-down mandate. But starting with execution and then backing into customer insight and vision mistakenly prioritizes business needs over customer needs. Forrester’s Consumer Personalization Maturity Assessment enables consumer-facing organizations to gauge their current maturity level and identifies areas where organizations can better prepare for designing and executing impactful consumer personalization programs.

Marketers need to carefully implement marketing operations management solutions (MOMSes) to realize their many operational benefits. The scope of an organization’s MOMS requirements can span financial planning and budgeting, project management and workload planning, content and asset planning and production, and marketing performance analytics — and implementation teams require specific considerations against each of those functional categories. B2C and B2B marketing teams should use this checklist to plan for a successful MOMS deployment and track the progress of their implementations.

With that love/hate Valentine’s holiday around the corner, retail America tells us it’s time to let the people in your life know you care about them. Valentine’s Day gift staples like flowers or chocolate may be the standard. But gift-givers who assume that their loved ones want these commonplace offerings may end up falling flat. […]

Personalized moments can occur anywhere across the customer lifecycle. But organizations often prioritize business-driven personalization tactics over customer-driven ones — and that’s a mistake. Rebalance consumer and business goals in your personalization programs before planning which personalization tactics to use. Read this report to see a full array of personalization tactics that you could incorporate into your personalization programs.

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.

Podcasting has reached a cultural and commercial tipping point. As this channel evolves to span audio, video, and social media, it offers brands new ways to connect with younger, harder-to-reach consumers. Yet, advertisers face challenges with fragmented buying ecosystems, inconsistent measurement, and brand safety concerns. This report helps marketers navigate these complexities by outlining the current podcasting landscape, highlighting its unique strengths, and offering strategic guidance for integrating podcasts into 2026 media plans and beyond.