As marketing enters a new era of automation, personalization, and data-driven execution, many DTC leaders find themselves facing a familiar yet urgent question: Are we investing in what works, or what looks like it works?
Retail Dive and Wunderkind’s recent CMO State of the Union report, based on responses from 100 senior retail marketers, delivers a nuanced answer. While paid social dominates attention and spend, it’s email, text, and deep personalization that are quietly—and consistently—delivering the strongest ROI.
For C-suite executives navigating tight budgets, shifting consumer expectations, and emerging AI tools, this report is a timely diagnostic of what matters most in 2025.
The report confirms that paid social media is top-of-mind, with 90% of marketers using it and 68% prioritizing it as their primary channel this year. Nearly every respondent plans to increase spend in this area.
But peel back the layers, and a critical insight emerges: while paid social is excellent for awareness and reach, it ranks lower on effectiveness when it comes to driving actual business outcomes.
💡 Executive takeaway: Paid social remains vital for upper-funnel visibility—but it cannot carry the revenue engine alone. Leaders must shift from a "channel-first" mentality to an “outcome-first” strategy.
Email and SMS aren’t flashy, but they are quietly outperforming across KPIs like click-through, conversion, and lifetime value. Despite this, they receive a fraction of the strategic prioritization.
Executives should think of email and SMS as precision instruments—not blunt-force media buys, but highly tuned systems for compounding value from existing audiences.
Nearly every marketer in the study says they’re using personalization—but most are still stuck at the basics.
Tim Glomb of Wunderkind put it bluntly: “This basic level of personalization isn’t a competitive advantage anymore.”
💡 Executive takeaway: Modern personalization means using real-time behavior and intent signals—not just CRM data. It requires integration between your tech stack, identity strategy, and channel orchestration.
Every executive wants to talk about AI—but AI is only as good as the data it feeds on.
According to the report:
Despite this, AI use is on the rise. Retailers are applying it to inventory alignment, campaign planning, and customer segmentation, but still struggle to move from automation to autonomy.
The message is clear: to truly unlock AI as a decision engine, first-party data strategy must come first.
So, what should DTC and retail executives do with this information? Here’s how the most forward-thinking leaders are translating these insights into action:
Invest in paid social for reach, but optimize owned channels for conversion. Treat email and text as core revenue platforms, not just retention channels.
Move from “insert name here” to “real-time relevance.” Empower your teams to integrate behavioral triggers, browsing data, and dynamic content into campaign strategy.
Prioritize identity resolution and consent-based first-party data capture. Without this, neither AI nor personalization will scale with integrity—or impact.
Executive KPIs must move beyond open and click rates. Focus instead on conversion rate, revenue per message, and customer lifetime value to align marketing goals with enterprise growth.
In a year where many organizations are betting big on platforms that look innovative, the CMO report reminds us that effectiveness still lives in simplicity and substance.
Email. Text. Personalization. Data.
These aren’t new ideas—but when executed with intent and intelligence, they deliver what today’s consumers expect and what tomorrow’s CFO will demand: performance.