Key Takeaways
For marketers today, AI has become part of doing business, with 75% of marketing organisations globally using some form of it. Now, we are seeing top-performing marketing teams making a meaningful shift. They are leaning into agentic AI and moving away from fragmented tools — toward unified, autonomous systems.
Our Tenth Edition State of Marketing report is packed with fresh insights to help you navigate this transition, drawing on a survey of nearly 4,500 marketing professionals worldwide. This includes insights from 100 respondents in Singapore and 150 in Thailand, providing a clear picture of how ASEAN marketers are evolving their use of AI.
The State of Marketing highlights three foundational shifts:
- AI is rewriting the rules of discovery and engagement
- Customer expectations are measurably different
- Data remains the biggest bottleneck to personalisation
Read on to explore the data behind these trends and discover actionable strategies to prepare your organisation for the future of agentic marketing.
State of Marketing 2026
Find out how top-performing marketing teams are deploying AI agents to reclaim up to eight hours a week and deliver true 1:1 engagement at scale.
AI is rewriting the rules of discovery and engagement
With the race to adopt AI and extract business value, implementing and operationalising AI currently ranks amongst the top five challenges and priorities for ASEAN marketers. They are also going beyond simply using AI to generate copy and images, and leveraging agents to further boost engagement and ROI.
Top AI use cases for ASEAN marketers include:
- Generating next-best actions or offers
- Predicting campaign performance or ROI
- Predicting customer behaviour
- Personalising content
The evolving use of AI offers marketers a needed advantage as they navigate a more challenging landscape. The pressure is building across the funnel: an overwhelming 90% of marketers in Singapore and 89% in Thailand say customer expectations are higher than ever, and 72% in both countries agree that acquiring new customers is getting harder.
AI is also completely transforming how customers discover and learn about brands in the first place. Search and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are fundamentally changing, with generative engines providing comprehensive answers without the user having to click through to a brand website.
To adapt, 66% of marketers in Singapore and 65% in Thailand are actively reshaping their SEO strategies. In fact, 86% of marketers in Singapore and 83% in Thailand have already optimised—or are in the process of optimising—for AI-driven search experiences like Google’s AI Overview (AIO).
Customer expectations are measurably different
The era of the “do not reply” message is officially over. AI is fundamentally raising the bar for what customers expect from brands, with 86% of global marketers agreeing that AI is elevating customer expectations. Locally, 80% of marketers in Singapore and 82% in Thailand observe that customers increasingly demand two-way conversations across all channels.
Despite knowing what customers want, bridging the gap between expectations and reality is proving difficult: 77% of marketers in Singapore and 53% in Thailand admit they are struggling to keep up with changing customer behaviours. When it comes to two-way conversations, a staggering 86% of marketers in Singapore and 65% in Thailand also struggle to respond promptly to inquiries.
While AI offers a solution to these challenges, 53% of marketers in Singapore and 52% in Thailand have not yet figured out how to adapt their strategies to the widespread use of AI.
The good news is that high-performing marketing teams are breaking through these barriers and setting a new standard for what’s possible. As an example, they are 1.5x more likely to frequently reply to customers via email and text compared with underperformers. They are also nearly twice as likely as underperformers to use AI agents.
Rara Avis Travel is one of many businesses using AI agents to enable two-way interactions 24/7. The business curates unique travel experiences in Mongolia, focusing on immersive tours and personalised itineraries. ‘Rara Avis’ means a rare moment, and the company aims to provide exceptional customer journeys — from the initial inquiry, to post-tour support.
Before implementing Salesforce, Rara Avis Travel faced challenges in efficiently managing customer enquiries and qualifying leads for both standard and custom tours. It has now automated inquiries and booking assistance with Agentforce.
When a customer initiates a chat via the website, the business’s Rara AI Agent can search the knowledge base for responses to tour-related questions, provide available pricing and details for tours, and run availability checks to present available dates.
Data remains the biggest bottleneck to personalisation
While marketers expect to reclaim eight hours per week through AI agents and redirect that time to high-value creative work, getting started requires building a solid data foundation and onboarding new tools. To successfully deploy agentic marketing and achieve their personalisation goals, teams need a unified view of the customer across the entire business.
Right now, building that unified view is a major hurdle. The average marketing organisation is juggling at least seven different data sources. This fragmentation leaves around 40% of marketing teams in Singapore and Thailand without full access to crucial sales, service and commerce data. It’s therefore no surprise that only 31% of marketers in Thailand and 26% in Singapore are completely satisfied with their ability to unify and leverage customer data to create relevant experiences.
Fixing this foundation is critical, especially given that marketers today need more personalised content than they can produce — a challenge faced by 79% of marketers in Thailand and 75% in Singapore.
Top marketers are already shifting from looking back at customers’ history to looking ahead, using data to predict customer behaviour and anticipate their needs. Take UEM Sunrise Berhad, one of Malaysia’s leading and award-winning property developers.
UEM Sunrise is using Data 360 to seamlessly integrate both structured and unstructured data. This includes business and customer data already in Salesforce, as well as new data such as population demographics from the government census.
Harnessing this data with Agentforce Marketing, UEM Sunrise Berhad will be able to better segment and communicate with customers based on their unique preferences and propensity to buy. Leveraging the Einstein Trust Layer, UEM Sunrise Berhad will also be able to use all its data to power AI without sacrificing data governance and security.
Build your foundation for the future of marketing
As the marketing landscape shifts from fragmented tools to unified, autonomous systems, the mandate for ASEAN marketers is clear. Brands must embrace AI to meet the rising demand for two-way, 24/7 engagement while simultaneously adapting to how customers discover products in an AI-first search environment.
Unlocking the potential of agentic AI — reclaiming valuable hours, scaling hyper-personalisation, and driving meaningful ROI — starts with building a trusted data foundation. By doing this necessary work, marketing teams can stay ahead of this seismic shift, redefine customer engagement, and deliver lasting value.
Inside the State of Marketing Report
Discover how AI is rewriting the rules of discovery and engagement, and how businesses are responding. Dive into the complete findings from our survey of 4,450 global marketers.
Read more:
- Unlock marketing insights from Dreamforce with Dreamforce Decoded for Marketing Leaders
- Check out the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms and see why Salesforce was named a Leader for the eighth year running
- See what Agentforce Marketing can do for you
