Half of marketers struggle with campaign execution, while a quarter can’t track ROI
business marketing
MTE
Published on : May 28, 2026
28th May 2026: A new study has revealed that half (50%) of senior UK marketers score their business’s overall campaign execution as below average (less than 11 out of 20) - and only six percent would rate their teams’ performance as genuinely agile when it comes to defining, creating and executing marketing campaigns.
Results from the Marketing Experience (MX) readiness survey, developed by Intermedia Global (IMG), underline that a lack of operational discipline holds back marketing effectiveness.
The analysis evaluates how effectively an organisation’s marketing operations are functioning across core areas, which cover data and insight maturity, technology integration, campaign execution, operational efficiency and process alignment.
While only one in eight (13%) senior marketers don’t have a content strategy, more than half (56%) either don’t gather content and campaign performance insights at all, or produce reports but then don’t act on the findings.
When it comes to measuring campaign return on investment, just over a third of marketing departments (38%) say they measure ROI on some of their campaigns but not all, while a quarter (25%) say they actually have zero visibility on ROI.
Steve Kemish, CEO of IMG, says: “Many teams have invested in platforms and data, yet struggle to develop and execute campaigns efficiently. This points to a gap between martech investment and operational maturity.
“The underlying problem is that many teams still lack the integration, workflows and internal alignment needed to turn data into measurable business outcomes.”
The survey also revealed a huge gap between the best and worst performers in technology maturity, which recorded the widest spread in overall scores across any of the areas covered.
For example, nearly half (44%) say that their key martech tools (CRM, automation, analytics, DAM) work well together and would call their current setup ‘pretty good’, while a quarter (25%) say those tools in their organisation are ineffective and aren’t fit for the future.
Even more (56%) say that their teams understand the main features of the martech stack but underuse the advanced ones.
This aligns to another significant area of potential concern for many, the human element: half of marketing teams either offer only minimal onboarding and training for marketing technology when people first join, or leave it to new users to work it out for themselves.
Kemish concludes: “Overall, the research reinforces that modern marketing success is no longer just about creativity or investment in technology. It’s about operational maturity - how effectively organisations connect their data, systems, processes, people and execution to create a stronger Marketing Experience.”
