What you need to know:

• Even as three-quarters of marketers surveyed in this year's Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus 2025 report by Arktic Fox and Six Degrees Executive say overall marketing and digital budgets are flat or declining, CX and personalisation are being buttressed with 86 per cent of brands saying they plan to maintain or lift CX investment in the next 12 to 18 months, and in most of those instances, spending will increase.

• But there's a problem, says report author Teresa Sperti, in many cases the foundational scaffolding needed to support strong CX and personalisation initiatives is lacking.

• Perhaps that's why 57 per cent of Australian marketers admit their personalisation efforts are lagging the market, while 39 per cent say the same of their customer experience (CX) capability. Those results virtually unchanged from last year.

• More than half of marketers say they’re falling short on managing first-party data, and nearly as many are struggling to effectively use their martech stacks.

• While 82 per cent of marketing leaders say CX is a key strategic focus (72 per cent for personalisation), only 14 per cent of brands are advancing efforts to build a unified customer view, which is critical for delivering on both fronts.

• Ownership is often muddied: Just 35 per cent of marketing leaders say their organisation has clear CX ownership and accountability. Without a central vision, cross-team collaboration and execution are patchy. Sperti said that while the question was not specifically asked this year, there is no reason to assume the diffuse ownership of CX identified in previous, including last year, would have changed.  

• 58 per cent of leaders say their teams collaborate across functions to deliver CX, meaning 42 per cent still operate in silos, stalling cohesive execution.

• BOQ Group, PPG, and Dan Murphy’s all back the broad findings, even where their own experiences are different, and outline their own progress on CX and personalisation.

• Only 31 per cent of brands have a mature Voice of Customer (VoC) program to guide CX strategy, though leaders like BOQ and PPG are starting to embed VoC insights into decision-making.

Spending on CX and personalisation is capturing a growing share of stable or shrinking marketing budgets, but in many cases the critical foundational scaffolding is missing. The latest iteration of the annual Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus 2025 report by Arktic Fox and  Six Degrees Executive reveals that 57 per cent of marketers believe their personalisation efforts lag the market, a result consistent with last year’s study, while 39 per cent say the same about their customer experience capability.

Meanwhile, more than half concede they’re behind when it comes to managing customer and first-party data, and nearly as many are undercooked on martech utilisation.

Still, the ambition is clear and growing. CX and personalisation remain firmly planted on the strategic agenda, with 82 per cent of marketing leaders ranking customer experience as important or very important over the next 12 to 24 months. But while they say it's important, 70 per cent do not have clearly defined CX roadmaps with associated investment, says Teresa Sperti, the report's author. Personalisation isn’t far behind at 72 per cent and in consumer-led sectors like retail, where the fight for relevance is won or lost in milliseconds, its importance is only intensifying.

Among the key findings in this year's report:

• 86 per cent of brands intend to maintain or increase their overall investment in CX over the next 12–18 months but it may not be enough given that 68 per cent of leaders rate the current state of CX within their business as emerging at best.
• Only 35 per cent of leaders agree their organisation has strong clarity over ownership and accountabilities for CX.
• On the upside, 58 per cent of leaders agree their teams work cross-functionally to deliver on CX strategy and initiatives, and almost half agree that CX is measured as part of the key performance indicators of the business.

According to Sperti, three-quarters of brands said they're at best maintaining or decreasing their overall investment in marketing and digital. But on the flip side, 86  per cent said they plan to maintain or increase spending on CX.

“More than eight in ten say both CX and personalisation are important or very important," she said, but she also cautioned that for many brands, the necessary foundations were not in place to successfully extend those CX and personalisation capabilities.

“When you start to look at the foundations brands have in place, to power CX and personalisation (add) and the maturity they've built, it highlights where they'll face challenges – not just in CX itself, but also in areas like having a unified view of the customer and similar capabilities.” - can we remove this bit as not sure it makes total sense and we touch on unified view below.”

Sperti said those effective foundations involve a range of significant issues.

“First, having a unified view of the customer, to derive insights and activate experiences, from personalisation to delivering self-service experiences online. We know only 14 per cent of brands are advancing their efforts in building that unified view, so that’s a big one for me.”

The second, she said, is the ability to work cross-functionally, approaching problems from a customer point of view and collaborating across teams to solve them.

“We see that 58  per cent of leaders agree their teams are working this way, which means 42 per cent aren't. That’s a significant portion that isn’t, so that’s the second foundation.”

Next, she said, there is a need for a clear vision that everyone is aligned around and working toward. “When I talk about CX, I describe it as federated, meaning there’s a central owner or department who partners cross functionally to develop the vision and strategy for the organisation, and then they're partnering across the business to ensure teams are empowered to deliver the outcomes and are executing in line with the plan. Different teams are responsible and accountable for different parts, and they have to collaborate cross-functionally. Without that central vision, CX efforts are not necessarily laddering towards that north star and experience ambition. ”

She cautioned that teams are still operating in silos and pulling in different directions, based on what they think is important. She said that while more than a third of leaders agree that they have a strong CX vision, that means that two-thirds don’t, or are at best indifferent.

“That's a really foundational issue. If you don't know where you are trying to head, how can you ensure that everyone is pulling in the right direction?”

Marketer's Mi3 spoke to broadly supported the findings of the report.

For instance, Sharon Winton PPG's commercial strategy and transformation director, and previously the firm's head of marketing and sales strategy said, CX is a current focus across the organisation, with plans to engage in a more customer led approach fuelled by rich first party data and insights. "We’ve made some excellent progress in the last 12 months."

"Capturing data-driven insights to drive revenue growth and enhance the customer experience has become part of our culture, " said Winton.

"While still a work in progress we have made good ground. Priorities over the next 12 months include operational improvements around staff capability training, reporting cadence as well as investment in CRM to enable better segmentation and personalisation. PPG globally is investing in new technology to drive greater CX and help achieve our growth agenda."

Per Winton, "Investment in truly understanding our customers is informing exciting changes in both digital and physical customer experiences. For example, new websites with enhanced CX and personalisation tools, digital shelf optimisation and a new customer app experience to complement in-store enhancements."

She also noted the impetus for innovation from the changing ways that customers engage with brands.

"We recognise that customers are engaging with businesses and brands in a more conversational way, which is challenging us to build more engaging experiences across new platforms, including social and chat. We are confident this focus on CX and improvements through all touchpoints will yield great benefit long term."

The focus of CX and personalisation revealed in the study was also familiar to Melody Townsend, General Manager, Group Marketing, BOQ Group.

There's no doubt that the year ahead will continue to see more marketing leaders invest in CX. Nobody wants to get left behind, wondering why their customers aren't engaging like they used to..."

Townsend told Mi3 that the bank's CX investment is likely to see a focus on advertising performance, landing page personalisation, tailored abandoned cart and retargeting campaigns, cross-sell and upsell programs, retention programs and reporting. "To do this, I think we'll see more investment in specialised services who can help organisations create and orchestrate highly personalised journeys at scale, and navigate integrations with existing martech tools."

"Putting advertising messages into the market and attempting to shout the loudest is rarely a winning strategy today, " she said. "Rather, marketing leaders are thinking about how to target customers better, with more relevant and timely messages to drive more sustainable ROI."

However, she acknowledged that it remains a complex challenge: collecting accurate customer data from multiple sources, unifying that data into a single customer profile, and committing sufficient resources to continuously update and manage the personalisation program all require strategic and analytical rigour, financial investment, and time before delivering results.

"Over the past 12 months, we've been really focused on our personalisation program across all of our brands in the BOQ Group. Some brands are moving with pace, while for other brands, we're establishing strong foundations. Over the next 12 months, I expect this program to continue, with more test-and-learns, more investment, and more of the team across marketing, product, and distribution (sales) getting involved so that we are co-designing the program together."

Lisa Casy GM and Marketing for Dan Murphy's told MI3 Australia, "We aren't looking to make any significant changes into the space at this time. That said, she also noted that improving customer experience has been a consistent and unwavering strategic priority for the past few years, including over the last 12 months.

"Looking ahead to the next twelve months, our priority focus is on ensuring we have a strong understanding and effective application of our current customer technology, while also building a clear roadmap for what's needed to achieve our future goals."

She said that like many brands, Dan Murphy's has a deep understanding of its customers, their preferences, and their behaviour. "We leverage this knowledge to ensure our communications are tailored to their interests and are most relevant to them."

Voice of the customer

As to determining the success of all those investments in CX and personalisation, the report also delved briefly into the utility of Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs finding that 31 per cent of leaders surveyed stated their brands have built a robust VoC program to fuel strategic decisions related to CX.

For instance, according to BOQ Group's Townsend: "Our Voice of Customer program dashboards data and insights across many areas of the business, to understand the key operational metrics impacting customer experience. Over the past 12 months, there's been an increased focus on ensuring data informs insights, and insights inform action."

Reflecting on the report's findings on the importance of cross-functional teams, Townsend noted, "Accountability for the VoC program isn't limited to the team that prepares the monthly dashboard. Instead, more teams across the business are empowered to find solutions to known pain points.

For her part, PPG's Winton said Voice of the Customer is set to play a bigger role in future. "CX and personalisation are receiving resource and investment focus globally as well as in the ANZ region. With customer search and buying behaviour becoming more conversational with generative AI, the need to better understand and respond to customers in real time will be an important part of us enhancing the customer experience."