AI was supposed to clean this mess up. That was the promise. Smarter decisions. Fewer spreadsheets. Less guesswork. Calmer, clearer Marketing Operations where machines handled the complexity and humans focused on strategy. Instead, many marketing teams are now running the most advanced stacks they have ever owned and have never felt less certain about what is actually happening.

We sat down with a few of our Europe based team to find out what they believe Marketing Operations in 2026 will look like - this is what they had to say.

It’s that time of year again - when office Slack channels slow down (thanks office holiday parties), email sends drop like the temperature outside, and Marketing Ops leaders everywhere dare to dream about real vacations. But before we collectively power down our dashboards, it’s worth pausing for a moment of introspection.

When a global organisation like The Associated Press (TAP) wants to modernise its Marketing Operations, the goal isn’t just new tools, it’s creating clarity, compliance, and consistency that scale.

These are the five shifts that we genuinely believe will move the needle in Marketing Operations in 2026... not vague futurism, but the disruptive, systemic changes already brewing under the surface.

When Progress acquired ShareFile, they faced a classic challenge in Marketing Operations: How to migrate an entire marketing automation system into an existing production platform without disrupting campaigns, losing data, or compromising compliance.

The future of Marketing Operations is not “AI everywhere.” It’s humans and AI working together, each doing what they do best. Nail the operating model, and AI stops being a novelty. It becomes the infrastructure behind campaigns that are smarter, faster, and actually work.

For Norstella’s marketing team, reporting had become a scavenger hunt. Data lived across multiple systems, filters didn’t align, and every “simple” question about performance meant another round of manual pulls, spreadsheets, and late nights reconciling mismatched numbers.

Playing it safe can be the very thing stopping teams from evolving. While the world around them accelerates... new tech, new data expectations, new pressures from sales and finance... many teams are still working with agencies that deliver “maintenance,” not momentum. And all the while, there are consultancies out there that operate on a completely different level.

For Dash Solutions, marketing is more than sending campaigns. It's about driving measurable impact in a competitive healthcare disbursements market. Despite a solid Account-Based Selling (ABS) foundation, the company was facing a familiar challenge: Marketing and sales often targeted the same accounts independently, account prioritization was inconsistent, and pipeline attribution was limited. Teams were spread thin, chasing the same prospects, and struggling to understand wh

Marketing Operations leaders occupy one of the most challenging roles in modern marketing. They are the glue that holds strategy, technology, and execution together, responsible for ensuring campaigns run smoothly, data flows accurately, and the marketing engine generates measurable impact. But today, MOPs leaders face a unique pressure that feels almost relentless: The pace of innovation.

Demandbase has spent the last decade turning intent into something you can operate against: Account-level signals, real-time activation and a growing set of integrations that let marketing and sales act in unison.

But let’s be honest, most teams saying they do ABM are running wildly different programs. One company’s “ABM” might be five named accounts and a stack of handwritten notes; another’s could be 5,000 accounts in a programmatic ad engine that auto-inserts the company name into a banner ad and calls it “personalisation.”

I never set out to become a Marketing Operations professional. Somewhere along the line, between a love for data and a desire to make marketers’ lives easier, I found myself buried in dashboards, drowning in workflows, and relentlessly answering questions that seemed to have no answer. And somehow, the world still expects me to smile through it.

You promised better pipeline, a cleaner CRM, and fewer late-night “where did that lead go?” panic emails next year. Good. This guide will get you there without buzzwords, or vague platitudes. It’s a practical, step-by-step plan you can start today (yes, today) so your Q1 doesn’t smell like 2024’s data dumpster fire.

When your Marketing Operations span multiple business units, consistency and visibility can make or break performance. One of our finance clients felt that complexity had grown quietly over time, until reporting felt fragmented, deliverability checks were reactive, and simple absences could throw campaign schedules off balance.

Sojourn Solutions spends its days in the messiest rooms of modern Marketing. We see teams with solid strategies, ambitious leadership, and stacks of tech that cost a fortune. Yet, time and again, Marketing Operations is expected to be the brain of the organisation while being treated like the underpaid assistant...

Oracle’s closing out the year with a release that quietly packs a punch. Eloqua 25D isn’t full of flashy headlines, but it does deliver real impact, smarter AI tools, stronger governance options, and some integration changes you really shouldn’t ignore.

Let’s start with a harsh truth: If your enterprise marketing team is still blasting generic emails, hoping for clicks, and “throwing stuff at the wall” to see what sticks, you’re doing it wrong. The old way of marketing - spray and pray - is basically a luxury you can’t afford anymore. Every wasted impression, every mis-targeted ad... well that's money slipping out the door. And worse, it’s annoying the very people you’re trying to woo.

HubSpot’s version of all-in-one is a different animal. It’s not about cramming every possible feature under one roof. It’s about forcing collaboration. It’s the architectural equivalent of locking your feuding sales and marketing teams in the same room until they figure it out. And guess what? That’s exactly what most organisations need.