5 Things That Surprised Me About Marketers at Connections 2026

The marketing landscape has undergone a seismic shift over the past few years, and nowhere was that more evident than at Salesforce’s Connections 2026 conference. Held in late June, the event brought together thousands of marketers, data scientists, and CRM strategists to discuss the intersection of AI, automation, and customer engagement. As a technical analyst specializing in AI-driven marketing, I went in with a set of expectations shaped by the 2024–2025 hype cycle. What I found, however, challenged many of my assumptions. Here are the five things that genuinely surprised me about the marketers I met at Connections 2026. [Source](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/connections-conference-surprises/) ## 1. The Quiet Embrace of Agentic Workflows Over Chatbots Perhaps the most unexpected shift was how marketers talked about AI agents. In 2024, the buzz was all about generative chatbots—tools that could write email copy, generate social posts, or answer customer FAQs. At Connections 2026, the conversation had moved decisively toward **agentic workflows**: autonomous AI systems that not only generate content but also orchestrate multi-step marketing processes without human intervention. One senior marketing ops manager from a mid-size B2B SaaS company described how they had replaced a series of triggered email sequences with an AI agent that dynamically adjusted the customer journey based on real-time intent signals. Instead of a static 5-email drip, the agent would decide whether to send a case study, invite to a webinar, or trigger a sales call—all based on the prospect’s browsing behavior and CRM history. This is a fundamental shift from reactive automation to proactive orchestration. What surprised me most was the **lack of hype** around this. Marketers weren’t boasting about ‘cutting-edge AI’; they treated agentic workflows as a routine capability, much like how we now take A/B testing for granted. The implication is that the industry has already moved past the novelty phase and into practical, ROI-driven deployment. ## 2. Data Quality Has Become the #1 Bottleneck—Not AI Capability For years, the narrative was that AI models were the limiting factor. At Connections 2026, the opposite was true. Marketers consistently told me that the biggest barrier to scaling AI wasn’t model accuracy or compute cost—it was **data quality and hygiene**. One attendee from a Fortune 500 retail brand shared that their team spent 70% of their AI project time cleaning and deduplicating customer records before any model could be trained. This aligns with broader industry trends: a 2025 study from Gartner found that poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million per year. At the conference, multiple sessions focused on data governance frameworks, schema standardization, and the importance of a unified customer data platform (CDP). Marketers are realizing that no amount of sophisticated AI can compensate for dirty data. A concrete example came from a session on predictive lead scoring. The speaker demonstrated how a simple logistic regression model, trained on clean, well-structured CRM data, outperformed a complex neural network trained on messy data by 23% in terms of lead-to-opportunity conversion. The takeaway: invest in data infrastructure before model complexity. ## 3. The Rise of ‘Hybrid Marketers’ Who Code At past Connections events, the typical attendee was a creative director or campaign manager. In 2026, I encountered a new breed: **hybrid marketers** who could write SQL queries, build basic Python scripts for data analysis, and configure API integrations between Salesforce and other tools. This wasn’t limited to large tech firms; even a marketing manager from a 50-person B2B company casually mentioned that she uses Python to automate her weekly KPI dashboards. This dovetails with the growing trend of ‘citizen developers’ in marketing. According to a 2026 report from Forrester, 38% of marketing teams now include at least one person with intermediate coding skills, up from 12% in 2022. The consequence is that marketing departments are becoming more self-sufficient, relying less on IT for routine data tasks and more on internal tooling. One session that packed the room was a workshop on using Salesforce’s Einstein AI with custom Python scripts to build predictive models for customer churn. The presenter showed how a marketer with basic Python knowledge could pull historical data via API, train a random forest classifier, and deploy it as a Salesforce Flow—all within hours. For anyone still thinking marketing is purely about creativity, the message was clear: technical literacy is now a core competency. ## 4. Privacy-First Personalization Is No Longer a Trade-Off For years, the conventional wisdom was that personalization and privacy were in direct tension. More personalization required more data, which raised privacy risks. At Connections 2026, that narrative was thoroughly debunked. Marketers presented case studies where they achieved higher engagement using **zero-party data** (data customers intentionally share) and differential privacy techniques, without relying on third-party cookies. One particularly striking example came from a European luxury e-commerce brand. They replaced their legacy cookie-based recommendation engine with a system that only used on-site behavior data (e.g., time spent on product pages, items added to wishlist) and explicit preferences collected via a preferences center. The result? Email click-through rates increased by 34%, and cart abandonment decreased by 18%. Customers appreciated not being tracked across the web, and the brand still delivered relevant recommendations. This aligns with the broader regulatory environment. With GDPR, CCPA, and emerging state-level privacy laws in the U.S., marketers have been forced to innovate. The surprise was that the innovation didn’t come from clever workarounds, but from rethinking the value exchange with customers. Marketers are now designing ‘privacy-forward’ experiences that actually build trust, rather than just comply with regulations. ## 5. The Death of ‘Spray and Pray’ Campaigns—Finally This one might sound obvious, but the degree to which marketers have abandoned broad, untargeted campaigns was startling. In 2023, many still ran large-scale email blasts to their entire list. At Connections 2026, every marketer I spoke with was using some form of **hyper-segmentation**, often powered by AI clustering algorithms. The days of ‘send to all 50,000 subscribers’ are over. A session from a B2C travel company illustrated this well. They used a k-means clustering model to segment their customer base into 12 distinct micro-segments based on past booking behavior, seasonal preferences, and price sensitivity. Each segment received a tailored offer and messaging. The result: a 42% increase in repeat bookings and a 28% reduction in unsubscribe rates compared to their previous ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. What surprised me wasn’t the tactic itself, but the **ubiquity** of it. Even small businesses with limited data were using simple rule-based segmentation (e.g., high-value vs. new customers) combined with AI recommendations from their CRM. The bar for what constitutes ‘targeted marketing’ has clearly risen, and customers are voting with their attention (and wallets) in favor of relevance. ## Conclusion Connections 2026 was a reality check for anyone still caught up in the AI hype of 2024. The marketers I met were pragmatic, data-literate, and focused on fundamentals: clean data, privacy-first design, and agentic workflows that deliver measurable ROI. The surprise wasn’t that AI was being used—it was how **unremarkable** its integration had become. The next wave of competitive advantage will come not from the latest model, but from the discipline to execute well on the basics. For marketers looking to stay ahead, the recommendations are clear: invest in data quality up front, upskill your team in basic coding and data analysis, and embrace privacy as a competitive differentiator. The tools are available—the real work is in how you use them. *This article was informed by my observations at Salesforce Connections 2026 and the official blog post summarizing key surprises. All statistics cited are from publicly available industry reports or conference presentations.*

5 Things That Surprised Me About Marketers at Connections 2026

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