Data reveals the emergence of conversational commerce driven by COVID-19 and its impact on the digital marketing landscape

Drift, the leader in Conversational Commerce for B2B, partnered with Heinz Marketing to conduct a survey of over 500 B2B professionals for candid marketing insights surrounding conversational marketing — the use of targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with buyers 24/7/365 — and its growing impact on the industry. Those findings, just released today in a benchmark report titled 2021 State of Conversational Marketing uncover how the B2B customer experience has transformed over the past year.

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The report shows that marketers are shifting to real-time communication, fueled by AI-powered conversational marketing and new buyer expectations. The pandemic created a heightened sense of urgency, as personalized, frictionless online experiences proved critical to attracting potential customers. Paired with the proliferation of digital marketing, what once was considered a nice-to-have solution for many companies, is now a permanent fixture in successful marketing strategy and sales productivity.

“The pandemic accelerated digital transformation at a record-breaking pace, leaving marketers to reinvent the customer experience, while competing with the most recent positive experience their customer had,” said Katie Foote, Drift’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The findings in this report offer important insights for marketers and leaders to make thoughtful decisions about their 2022 strategies and plans. Particularly underscoring the importance of human-centered conversations while automating for scale.”

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Key report findings include:

• A majority of respondents (82%) found AI-powered conversational marketing to be very valuable to their sales and marketing strategy
• More than half of respondents (58%) adopted a conversational marketing solution in response to COVID-19
• Almost half of respondents (45.2%) say their engagement rates increased during the pandemic
• Of marketers who saw engagement with their conversational marketing solutions increase, 56% experienced increased sales productivity