• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 6, 2016

Some 86% of marketers say they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020, meaning that they will become responsible for the entire customer journey. This requires a shift to focus on experience. The CMO will earn a new title, CEO -- not chief executive officer, but customer experience officer -- within the next four years, according to Sanjay Dholakia, who still owns the title CMO at Marketo.

The staggering complexities of moving from several channels to millions continues to weigh on the minds of executives, according to Dholakia. "Innovation will focus on the small screens, but also the world of no screens," he says -- and that will require technology platforms within a company to feed information into one database or hub in which all customer services can pull from, either call centers or online and in-store ordering.

Mobile devices and networks, at 59%; personalization technologies, at 45%; and Internet of things (IoT), at 39%; are the three technology-specific trends that will have the biggest impact on marketing organizations by 2020, according to the 2016 report, The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience.

The findings provide an in-depth look at how buyers engage with brands and the impact this will have on how marketers reach them in 2020. The study, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of Marketo, reveals the thoughts of nearly 500 CMOs and senior marketing executives worldwide.

To accomplish this, the report found that marketing leaders must have a single view of the customer that allows them to engage in two-way, personalized conversations across technologies, locations, and physical objects.

Unfortunately, data still lives in silos within organizations, although by 2020 marketers expect they will increasingly interact directly with their customers through technology and personalization as opposed to indirectly through media and advertising.

Some 63% of respondents say the top channels to the customer will become social media by 2020; 53%, World Wide Web; mobile apps, 47%; and mobile Web, 46%.

Eighty-seven percent of marketers believe their departments will exercise significant influence over business strategy by 2020, with 78 percent expecting to have the same influence over company technology decisions.