New eClerx Research: 78% of Marketing Leaders Say Martech Investment Fails to Deliver ROI
The eClerx Marketing Report 2026 exposes the activation gap blocking martech spend from generating business results, and offers best practices to close it
The findings suggest that martech stacks are designed to produce insights, but not to use them. The real barrier to ROI is not the martech stack itself—nor will additional tools solve it—but rather the need to bridge the gap between intelligence and execution.
The eClerx Marketing Report2026 captures insights from a survey of 366 U.S.-based marketing leaders, including CMOs, VPs, and heads of marketing operations, digital, brand, and growth. Participants represented organizations with annual revenues ranging from
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Stack maturity does not always translate to activation maturity,” said
Key findings of the eClerx Marketing Report 2026 include:
- 75% are making investment decisions based on partial data, while only 25% describe a fully data-driven environment.
- 47% are only moderately confident in their ability to measure true ROI across channels. The tools are there, but the trust is not.
- 24% use media mix modeling to reallocate budgets based on live performance data, while 86% navigate with last year’s map.
The report outlines practical steps marketing leaders can take to close their organization’s activation gap without additional martech investment. It also includes a Martech Maturity Scorecard, an assessment that helps organizations define the maturity of their activation architecture.
Download the eClerx 2026 Marketing Data Report: Mind the Gap here
About eClerx
eClerx provides AI-powered analytics, digital operations services, automation, and business process management to help clients unlock growth and drive business outcomes. eClerx partners with Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, telecom, media & entertainment, luxury, retail & fashion, and manufacturing. A publicly listed company, eClerx operates across 17 countries with over 21,000 employees, serving clients globally across the
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Media contact:
Head of PR, eClerx
prathibha.das@eclerx.com
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