The State of Customer Engagement in EMEA in 2024

For the 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review (CER), we identified three major trends that are shaping how brands and customers interact all over the world. As we conducted this analysis, surveying 1,900 VP+ level marketing decision makers across 14 countries and three global regions, we also uncovered insights about developments that are unfolding in Latin America (LATAM), Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

Here are the top findings that reveal the state of customer engagement in EMEA in 2024, based on our analysis of marketing efforts in France, Germany, Spain, the UAE, and the UK.

The State of Customer Engagement in EMEA in 2024: 3 Key Takeaways

Delivering consistent experiences and harnessing the potential of AI for generating creative ideas, automating repetitive tasks, and optimizing strategies are priorities for marketers in Europe and the Middle East in 2024. Even though the majority of brands in the region report having exceeded their revenue goals in 2023, the fate of their marketing budgets are less certain in EMEA compared to in the US.

1. EMEA marketers are less likely to say they surpassed their revenue targets in 2023 compared to other regions—and optimism around budget increases in 2024 isn’t as strong as in the US or APAC

Only 85% of our study participants say their companies exceeded their revenue goals over the last 12 months, the lowest share across regions. When asked whether they expect their marketing budgets to increase over the next 12 months, only 71% indicated yes. This is a greater share than in LATAM, but is still short of the worldwide average.

2. In line with global AI adoption trends, 100% of EMEA marketing teams are using or are planning to use AI

The three biggest use cases in Europe and the Middle East are for generating creative ideas, automating repetitive tasks, and optimizing strategies in real time (including via testing). These three tied for first place as the top application survey participants selected for how their organizations are using or planning to use AI.

3. Brands in the EMEA region are more likely to make consistent customer experiences a top priority compared to companies in other parts of the world

A sizable 40% of marketers from Europe and the Middle East say they have made serving up consistent customer experiences a top priority and have invested in it, compared to only 30% in LATAM and 36% in the US and APAC. In a marketing landscape increasingly defined by the various platforms and channels that can be used to reach consumers, this effort could be a key differentiator for brands in the region.

Areas Where EMEA Brands Excel—and Areas for Improvement

In 2021, we introduced The Braze Customer Engagement Index, offering brands across the globe a shared framework for measuring customer engagement performance. The Index includes a ranking system with three levels of maturity based on how companies, industries, countries, or regions score across 12 key factors, including channels used for customer engagement, metrics for evaluating success, experimentation approaches, overall strategy, and more.

• Activate brands are those just getting started in customer engagement.
• Accelerate companies are notable for collaborating, experimenting, and employing data-driven strategies.
• Ace organizations are at the top of their field for utilizing streaming data to power full-fledged lifecycle-driven customer engagement approaches.

On the whole, the customer engagement maturity of EMEA brands is fairly uniform with what we observed globally. Collectively, companies in the region rarely outshine or lag behind their peers in other parts of the world.

Where EMEA Brands Excel

While for the most part, companies in the region demonstrate average levels of maturity across most of the 12 factors that influence customer engagement performance, we’ve identified one area where EMEA marketers stand out—namely, their testing and experimentation practices. The vast majority of our study participants from these countries (89%) say they use mid-to advanced-level tactics, such as partnering with business intelligence to ensure tests have statistical significance.

An Opportunity for Improvement for EMEA Brands

The only area in which companies in the region are noticeably trailing marketers in other parts of the world is within the context of how teams evaluate their customer engagement performance. One-third of the organizations based in Europe and the Middle East that we surveyed use introductory practices for assessing their results, compared with our findings at the worldwide level—30% of companies we surveyed globally are operating at the “Activate” level for this factor.

Get the 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review

To learn more about the state of customer engagement across the world, get your copy of the complete 2024 Global Customer Engagement Review. Inside, you’ll get insights about the customer engagement programs and strategies of top-performing brands.

About the Study and the EMEA Countries Represented

These findings are part of our broader fourth-annual Global Customer Engagement Review, which draws on the following sources:

• Market research featuring 1,900 VP+ marketing decision-makers across 14 global countries in three global regions; France, Germany, Spain, the UAE, and the UK represented the EMEA region.
• An analysis of Braze’s proprietary data, including 9 billion global customers and 2,000+ brands in 50+ countries, via our leading customer engagement platform.
• In-depth interviews with marketing leaders from best-in-class brands in five industries across three regions.